Jazz Articles about John Martyn

About John Martyn

Rediscovery

John Martyn Grace & Danger Island Records1980 Today's Rediscovery is the late, great singer/songwriter John Martyn's classic Grace & Danger. Martyn emerged, in the mid-'60s, as a singer/songwriter with surprising facility on guitar and a pure, emotive voice. At a time when bands like Fairport Convention were exploring the meeting place of rock attitude and British traditionalism, Martyn's early recordings, like his 1967 Island Records debut London Conversation, were steadfastly acoustic and ...

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Album Review

Various Artists: Johnny Boy Would Love This…A Tribute to John Martyn

Read "Johnny Boy Would Love This…A Tribute to John Martyn" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
August 13, 2011

With the release of Heaven and Earth (Hole in the Rain, 2011), it seems that the world has heard the last of John Martyn, who passed away in 2009 a few months shy of his 61st birthday. This most personal of singer/songwriters has left a remarkable legacy, and while Johnny Boy Would Love This...A Tribute to John Martyn covers 30 of his best songs, it still doesn't hit all of them, speaking to a rare prolificacy in Martyn's first two ...

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Album Review

John Martyn: Heaven and Earth

Read "Heaven and Earth" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
May 28, 2011

In a world filled with happiness and hurt, there's a gaping chasm between those that are aware and those that aren't. When John Martyn passed away months before his 60th birthday in 2009, the world lost one of the most painfully confessional singer/songwriters of the past half century. “Some people keep diaries," said Phil Cunningham in a 2007 BBC2 TV series, “John makes records." That Martyn could sing “Hurt in Your Heart," from his heart-wrenching breakup record, Grace & Danger ...