Tom Ball

Veteran singer/harmonica participant/guitarist Tom Ball is usually best-known for his longtime collaboration with Kenny Sultan, who’s also a guitarist. When Ball and Sultan are carrying out together like a blues-oriented acoustic duo — frequently without bass or drums — Ball’s main role is definitely that of a vocalist who takes on harmonica. In the blues globe, people have a tendency to think about Ball like a vocalist rather than an instrumentalist. However in truth, Ball is definitely both a vocalist and an instrumentalist — so when he isn’t carrying out blues-oriented duets with Sultan, he could be a good classical guitar picker such as John Fahey, Leo Kottke, Robbie Basho, and Stefan Grossman. The past due Fahey (given birth to 1939, passed away 2001) composed the reserve on what continues to be known as picker music — pickers are essentially folk instrumentalists who enjoy classical guitar (frequently unaccompanied), and Ball is one of the many rootsy, earthy, down-home guitarists that has been significantly inspired by Fahey’s enhancements. While picker music virtually falls in to the folk category, a picker can possess a number of affects; typically, pickers will pay attention to anyone from Woody Guthrie, Costs Monroe, as well as the Carter Family members to Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Acoustic nation blues, bluegrass, old-time nation, and string rings have had a solid influence in the picker field, and Ball continues to be affected by all those factors. He in addition has been suffering from European traditional music; admirers of Ball’s instrumental function have already been impressed by his capability to play Johann Sebastian Bach about a minute and Merle Travis another. Regrettably, Ball hasn’t documented lots of unaccompanied solo tasks, however the self-produced Electric guitar Music (that was documented for the Kicking Mule label in 1987) is certainly a fine exemplory case of what he can perform by himself. What perform Ball’s duets with Sultan and his unaccompanied instrumental function have as a common factor? Both are types of what continues to be loosely thought as root base music; Ball brings significant amounts of blues feeling towards the table whether or not or not he’s playing something with 12 pubs. Ball, who was simply delivered in 1950 and was raised in LA, started playing electric guitar at age 11 and harmonica at 14. The virtuoso transferred to Santa Barbara, CA (a couple of hours north of L.A.), in 1978, and he produced a duo with Sultan the next season. Ball and Sultan, whose duets have already been significantly influenced with the renowned Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee group, provided their initial album being a duo, Who Drank My Beverage?, for Kicking Mule in 1983. The Ball/Sultan duo continued to record many albums for the Chicago-based Traveling Fish Information in the ’80s and ’90s.