1. Shawn Phillips was born on February 3,1943 and is an American singer-songwriter and musician, primarily influential in the 1960s and 1970s.
22 Facts About Shawn Phillips
1. 2.
Shawn Phillips's work is rooted in folk rock but straddles other genres, including jazz fusion and funk.
3.
Shawn Phillips grew up in various locations around the world, including Tahiti, and learned to play guitar as a child.
4.
Shawn Phillips returned to live in Texas in the late 1950s, and, after a time in the US Navy, moved to California.
5.
Shawn Phillips played in folk clubs in the early 1960s, alongside singer-songwriter Tim Hardin, comedian Lenny Bruce, and others, and when in Saskatoon, Canada, met and taught guitar techniques to aspiring singer Joni Anderson.
6.
Shawn Phillips recorded his first single, an adaptation of Bob Gibson's version of "Frankie and Johnnie", in 1964.
7.
Donovan has since acknowledged that Shawn Phillips did indeed write the music of the song.
8.
Shawn Phillips appeared on several of Donovan's albums, including Fairytale, Sunshine Superman, and Mellow Yellow.
9.
Shawn Phillips is credited with teaching George Harrison his first lessons on the sitar.
10.
Shawn Phillips played the character Paul Taylor in the 1966 film Run with the Wind, which he wrote songs for.
11.
Shawn Phillips returned to England to write and perform, with The Djinn, the music for the controversial Jane Arden play Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven at the Arts Laboratory on Drury Lane in London in February 1969.
12.
Shawn Phillips continued to tour and secured a double standing ovation for his impromptu solo performance in front of 657,000 people at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival.
13.
Shawn Phillips was approached to be the lead in the Broadway production of Jesus Christ Superstar, and started rehearsing the show, but withdrew because of contractual disagreements with the show's producer, Robert Stigwood.
14.
Shawn Phillips was a complete enigma, American-born but raised internationally, with a foreigner's keen appreciation for all the music of his homeland and a seasoned traveler's love of world music, with none of the usual limits on his thinking about music.
15.
Shawn Phillips never courted an obvious commercial sound, preferring to write songs that, as he put it, 'make you feel different from the way you felt before you started listening,' primarily love songs and sonic landscapes.
16.
Later in the 1970s, Shawn Phillips began experimenting with jazz and funk music.
17.
Shawn Phillips moved to RCA Records, and released Transcendence, produced by Michael Kamen, on which he hired Herbie Hancock's band The Headhunters to fill out the album with instrumental jam.
18.
Shawn Phillips semi-retired from music in the early 1990s and certified as an Emergency Medical Technician, a Firefighter in Spicewood, TX.
19.
Shawn Phillips moved to Port Elizabeth, South Africa in 2003 with his wife Juliette and worked as a Sea Rescue Volunteer with the National Sea Rescue Institute.
20.
In 1994 Shawn Phillips toured South Africa with his manager Arlo Hennings.
21.
Since 2016, Shawn Phillips has resided in Louisville, Kentucky, with Juliette and their son, Liam.
22.
Shawn Phillips's uncle, David Atlee Shawn Phillips, was a top CIA officer who was associated with the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.