John Benson Sebastian was born on March 17,1944 and is an American singer, songwriter and musician who founded the rock band The Lovin' Spoonful.
49 Facts About John Sebastian
2.
John Sebastian was born in New York City and grew up in Italy and Greenwich Village.
3.
John Sebastian's godmother was Vivian Vance, who was a close friend of his mother.
4.
Sebastian grew up surrounded by music and musicians, including Burl Ives and Woody Guthrie, and hearing such players as Lead Belly and Mississippi John Hurt in his own neighborhood.
5.
John Sebastian graduated from Blair Academy, a private boarding school in Blairstown, New Jersey, in 1962.
6.
John Sebastian next attended New York University for just over a year, but dropped out as he became more interested in musical pursuits.
7.
John Sebastian became part of the folk and blues scene that was developing in Greenwich Village, which in part later gave rise to folk rock.
8.
One of John Sebastian's first recording gigs was playing guitar and harmonica for Billy Faier's 1964 album The Beast of Billy Faier.
9.
Bob Dylan invited him to play bass on his Bringing It All Back Home sessions and to join Dylan's new electric touring band, but John Sebastian declined in order to concentrate on his own project, the Lovin' Spoonful.
10.
John Sebastian left the Lovin' Spoonful in 1968 and did not play with any later versions of the band, except for a brief reunion with the other three original members to appear in Paul Simon's 1980 film One-Trick Pony, and again for a single performance at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2000.
11.
The proposed musical included 20 songs, some of which John Sebastian performed in concert, but the musical was never produced.
12.
John Sebastian traveled to the festival as a spectator, but was asked to appear when the organizers suddenly needed an acoustic performer after a rain break because they couldn't set up amps on stage for Santana until the water was swept off.
13.
Documentary remarks by festival organizers indicated that John Sebastian was under the influence of marijuana or other psychedelic drugs at the time, hence his spontaneity and casual, unplanned set.
14.
John Sebastian has confirmed in later interviews that he was a regular marijuana user at the time and had taken acid at Woodstock because he was not scheduled to perform.
15.
In September 1969, a month after Woodstock, John Sebastian performed a similar set of solo and Spoonful material at the 1969 Big Sur Folk Festival and was featured in the subsequent documentary Celebration at Big Sur.
16.
Sebastian's second Reprise album, Cheapo Cheapo Productions Presents Real Live John Sebastian, was hastily recorded in an effort to provide an authorized live album.
17.
John Sebastian considered forming a permanent band with them, but Harris and Taylor chose to join Stephen Stills's band Manassas.
18.
On his next album, Tarzana Kid, John Sebastian returned to using a rotating group of well-known recording artists and session musicians, including Lowell George, Phil Everly, Emmylou Harris, the Pointer Sisters, David Grisman, Russell DaShiell, Ry Cooder and Buddy Emmons.
19.
John Sebastian has stated that his musical career suffered in the early 1970s from being out of step with the trends set by emerging artists such as Alice Cooper, and that he made more money by buying and selling real estate than he did from his music.
20.
However, in 1976, John Sebastian had an unexpected No 1 single with "Welcome Back", the theme song to the sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, causing the label to rush the production of an album, titled Welcome Back.
21.
John Sebastian played harmonica with the Doors on the song "Roadhouse Blues", under the pseudonym G Pugliese to avoid problems with his contract and to avoid association with Jim Morrison, who was then facing trial on charges of lewd behavior after the Miami concert incident.
22.
John Sebastian appeared on two Doors live albums, playing on "Little Red Rooster" on Alive, She Cried and on seven songs on Live in Detroit.
23.
John Sebastian is credited with playing three instruments on the 1970 Gordon Lightfoot album, Sit Down Young Stranger.
24.
John Sebastian played the autoharp instrumental break between the second and third verses of Randy VanWarmer's 1979 hit "Just When I Needed You Most".
25.
Since the 1980s, John Sebastian has been active in several music-related areas, not only writing and performing his own material but performing roots music, developing soundtrack and instructional material, hosting and appearing on television programs, and writing a children's book about a harmonica-playing bear.
26.
John Sebastian has continued to tour and play live, both solo and with a variety of backing bands.
27.
John Sebastian had a long association with the eclectic rock band NRBQ, dating back to the early 1980s, when he played on NRBQ's album Grooves in Orbit.
28.
John Sebastian has said that NRBQ "to a large extent, picked up where The Lovin' Spoonful left off" because of NRBQ's "wide range of musical styles that they're not only able but accurate at playing," and he expressed appreciation for NRBQ's support during a low point in his career.
29.
In turn, John Sebastian helped NRBQ by using them on his own Nelvana and Disney Channel soundtrack projects during a period when litigation prevented them from recording.
30.
John Sebastian has used NRBQ as his own backing band, appeared regularly at their concerts, and recorded frequently with the band members, and NRBQ founding member Terry Adams refers to John Sebastian as an "honorary member" of the band.
31.
John Sebastian is a frequent contributor to film and TV soundtracks.
32.
John Sebastian wrote the music and provided the singing voice of "Daniel Mouse" for the Canada-based Nelvana animated television special The Devil and Daniel Mouse about two mice attempting to succeed in the music business.
33.
John Sebastian supplied music for several more Nelvana productions, including Strawberry Shortcake: Housewarming Surprise, Strawberry Shortcake Meets the Berrykins, The Care Bears Movie, The Care Bears Adventure in Wonderland, and "Care Bear Countdown", the theme song for Nelvana's The Care Bears Family TV series.
34.
John Sebastian wrote and performed the theme song of the KNBC syndicated children's program That's Cat, and hosted a 1986 Disney Channel family special entitled What a Day for a Daydream.
35.
Since the 1980s, John Sebastian has hosted several television programs about 1960s and 1970s music, including paid programs for compilation sets, a syndicated live music and interview program called Deja View, and a half-hour program called The Golden Age of Rock and Roll, which featured video footage of 1960s bands performing on variety shows.
36.
John Sebastian hosted a Lovin' Spoonful retrospective broadcast on PBS in March 2007, talking about various Spoonful numbers in between vintage video clips of the band up to the time he left.
37.
In 1993, John Sebastian authored a children's book, JB's Harmonica, illustrated by his godfather Garth Williams, about a young bear whose musical aspirations are overshadowed by the talents of his famous musician father.
38.
John Sebastian has released a series of instructional DVDs, CDs, downloads, booklets, and analog tapes for learning to play guitar, harmonica, and autoharp, or for learning specific styles or songs.
39.
Materials offered with Sebastian as an instructor have included An Easy Guide to Tuning Your Guitar, John Sebastian Teaches Eight Lovin' Spoonful Hits, John Sebastian Teaches Blues Harmonica, Learn to Play Autoharp, and The Fingerpicking Blues of Mississippi John Hurt: A Spoonful of Classic Songs.
40.
In November 1992, John Sebastian made a cameo appearance on the sitcom Married.
41.
John Sebastian appeared on Eels' 2005 release, Blinking Lights and Other Revelations.
42.
On January 12,2014, John Sebastian appeared on CBS News Sunday Morning to talk about his career with and without the Lovin' Spoonful, Eric Clapton, and the Martin guitar.
43.
John Sebastian is credited with helping to popularize the art of tie-dyeing clothing among music fans and festival goers in the late 1960s, by publicly appearing in outfits that he tie-dyed himself after learning the process from Ann Thomas of Water Baby Dye Works.
44.
John Sebastian's tie-dyed yellow patterned denim jacket, which he dyed himself and wore at Woodstock, has been prominently displayed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
45.
John Sebastian was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2008.
46.
That same year, John Sebastian married Loretta "Lorey" Kaye, a waitress at Steve Paul's The Scene who later worked for Hit Parader magazine; they divorced in 1968.
47.
In 1972, John Sebastian married Catherine Barnett, a photographer and artist who has designed numerous album covers.
48.
Since the early 1990s, John Sebastian has struggled with throat problems that eventually affected and changed his singing voice, but he has continued to perform and tour.
49.
John Sebastian has released various formats and packages of long-playing instructional materials for Homespun Tapes, which are not included in this table.