Guitar Portraits

In 1988, Buster Brad Jones entered Guitar Player Magazine's International Guitar Competition with his own composition Back Porch Boogie and a rendition of Limehouse Blues. He entered on a whim, at the last minute, using a $1.50 K-Mart cassette tape and a boom box. There were almost 900 entries, and he won on the first ballot. In 1990, he won the National Fingerpicking Championship at Winfield, Kansas. In the last years he has performed with Chet Atkins, Tommy Jones, Marcel Dadi, Thom Bresh and John Knowles. He is a regular at the annual conventions in Nashville and France of the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society. In France they have dubbed him LE MACHINE GUN. Stefan Grossman has been recording, performing and writing about acoustic fingerstyle techniques and styles for over forty years. During the period from 1965-1975 he studied and traveled with some of the legendary figures in the story of blues guitar i.e. Rev. Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, Fred McDowell, Son House and Skip James. In the last years he has recorded and performed solo as well as with John Renbourn, Paul Simon, Sam Mitchell Jo Ann Kelly, Duck Baker and Mickey Baker. At the age of 12, John Miller was inspired to play the guitar after seeing Mississippi John Hurt perform at the Philadelphia Folk Festival. He bought his first guitar at the age of 16 and launched into an intensive period of study of Country Blues guitar, learning the music of John Hurt, Mance Lipscomb, Bo Carter, Blind Blake and other greats. By the time he was twenty-seven, John had released five solo albums to international critical acclaim. Those albums ranged from Country Blues and Old Time country music to the songs of George Gershwin. For the next 15 years, John focused on teaching, founding two music camps, composing and building a vocabulary in Jazz and Latin music.