Dakota Dave Hull

Last updated
Dakota Dave Hull
Dakota Dave Hull.jpg
Background information
Birth nameDavid Hull
Born (1950-04-19) April 19, 1950 (age 73)
Fargo, North Dakota, U.S.
Genres blues, ragtime, folk
Occupation(s)Musician
Instrument(s)Guitar
Years active1980s–present
Labels Flying Fish
Website www.dakotadavehull.com

"Dakota" Dave Hull (born April 19, 1950, in Fargo, North Dakota, United States) [1] is an American acoustic fingerstyle guitarist who plays in a variety of styles: blues, gospel, ragtime, and folk music. He is also a recognized music historian and published one book, 2012's Ragtime Guitar in the Classic American Style. [2]

Contents

Musical career

Hull was born in Fargo, North Dakota, which led to his nickname "Dakota Dave". He has long been a fixture of the West Bank music scene in Minneapolis, Minnesota. [3] He has toured the world playing solo fingerstyle guitar in multiple genres including American folk music, ragtime, gospel, and blues. [4] He hosted the radio show The Dakota Dave Hull Show on KFAI radio in Minneapolis for 20 years [5] [6] and was a frequent performer on A Prairie Home Companion . [7]

Hull has engineered, produced and performed with many artists, include Doc Watson, Dave Van Ronk, Utah Phillips, "Spider" John Koerner, Duck Baker, Dave "Snaker" Ray, and Peter Ostroushko.

Critical reception

Reviewing Hull's 1991 album Reunion Rag for AllMusic, Richard Foss praised "Hull's astonishing skill as both a guitarist and composer. At times Hull sounds like John Fahey during the latter's sunnier moments, playing bright ragtime pieces and introspective tunes inspired by American traditional and old timey music. ... Many of these pieces deserve to become classics." [8]

Discography

Solo

With others

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dave Van Ronk</span> American folk musician (1936–2002)

David Kenneth Ritz Van Ronk was an American folk singer. An important figure in the American folk music revival and New York City's Greenwich Village scene in the 1960s, he was nicknamed the "Mayor of MacDougal Street".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fingerstyle guitar</span> Playing technique

Fingerstyle guitar is the technique of playing the guitar or bass guitar by plucking the strings directly with the fingertips, fingernails, or picks attached to fingers, as opposed to flatpicking. The term "fingerstyle" is something of a misnomer, since it is present in several different genres and styles of music—but mostly, because it involves a completely different technique, not just a "style" of playing, especially for the guitarist's picking/plucking hand. The term is often used synonymously with fingerpicking except in classical guitar circles, although fingerpicking can also refer to a specific tradition of folk, blues and country guitar playing in the US. The terms "fingerstyle" and "fingerpicking" are also applied to similar string instruments such as the banjo.

The Music of North Dakota has followed general American trends over much of its history, beginning with ragtime and folk music, moving into big band and jazz. With the development of mass media, local artists in North Dakota, as in the rest of the country, saw a rapid loss of opportunity to create, perform, and sell popular music to the regional audience that had previously provided a market. Punk Music is a major genre in the modern youth scene of North Dakota.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flatpicking</span> Playing technique on the guitar

Flatpicking is the technique of striking the strings of a guitar with a pick held between the thumb and one or two fingers. It can be contrasted to fingerstyle guitar, which is playing with individual fingers, with or without wearing fingerpicks. While the use of a plectrum is common in many musical traditions, the exact term "flatpicking" is most commonly associated with Appalachian music of the American southeastern highlands, especially bluegrass music, where string bands often feature musicians playing a variety of styles, both fingerpicking and flatpicking. Musicians who use a flat pick in other genres such as rock and jazz are not commonly described as flatpickers or even plectrum guitarists. As the use of a pick in those traditions is commonplace, generally only guitarists who play without a pick are noted by the term "fingerpicking" or "fingerstyle".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stefan Grossman</span> Musical artist

Stefan Grossman is an American acoustic fingerstyle guitarist and singer, music producer and educator, and co-founder of Kicking Mule records. He is known for his instructional videos and Vestapol line of videos and DVDs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tim Sparks</span> American musician and composer

Tim Sparks is an American acoustic guitar player, singer, arranger and composer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Preston Reed</span> American guitarist

Preston Reed is an American fingerstyle guitarist. He is noted for a two-handed playing style and compositional approach that uses the guitar's body as a percussion instrument.

Richard Royall "Duck" Baker IV is an American acoustic fingerstyle guitarist who plays in a variety of styles: jazz, blues, gospel, ragtime, folk, and Irish and Scottish music. He has written many instruction books for guitar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tony Glover</span> American blues musician and music critic (1939–2019)

David Curtis Glover, better known as Tony "Little Sun" Glover, was an American blues musician and music critic. He was a harmonica player and singer associated with "Spider" John Koerner and Dave "Snaker" Ray during the early 1960s folk revival. Together, the three released albums under the name Koerner, Ray & Glover. Glover was also the author of diverse "harp" songbooks and a co-author, along with Ward Gaines and Scott Dirks, of an award-winning biography of Little Walter, Blues with a Feeling: The Little Walter Story.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Danny Kalb</span> American blues guitarist (1942–2022)

Daniel Ira Kalb was an American blues guitarist and vocalist. He was an original member of the 1960s group the Blues Project.

John Pearse was a British guitarist, folk singer and music educator, who came to prominence in the 1960s presenting the popular BBC2 television guitar tuition series, Hold Down a Chord.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John James (guitarist)</span> Welsh fingerstyle guitarist and songwriter (born 1947)

John James is known, primarily, as a solo acoustic fingerstyle guitarist, composer and entertainer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ernie Hawkins</span> Musical artist

Ernie Hawkins is an American acoustic blues guitar player, singer, songwriter, recording artist, and educator.

Elmer Ellsworth McMeen, III, is an acoustic steel-string fingerstyle guitarist. His specialty is fingerstyle arrangements of sung or strongly melodic pieces, ranging from the Irish genre, to hymns, gospel tunes and pop music. He has also composed instrumentals for guitar, and has published a book of Irish and Scottish instrumental music that he arranged for classical string trio. That book is called Celtic Treasures for String Trio. He plays and arranges guitar music almost exclusively in the CGDGAD tuning. Acoustic Guitar magazine called McMeen "the king of CGDGAD tuning".

<i>Sidewalk Blues</i> 2009 studio album by Tim Sparks

Sidewalk Blues is an album by American guitarist Tim Sparks, released in 2009. It marks a return to 'roots' music for Sparks after three albums of klezmer and jazz recordings on the Tzadik Records label.

Folk baroque or baroque guitar is a distinctive and influential guitar fingerstyle developed in Britain in the 1960s, which combined elements of American folk, blues, jazz and ragtime with British folk music to produce a new and elaborate form of accompaniment. It has been highly important in folk music, folk rock and British folk rock playing, particularly in Britain, Ireland, North America and France.

Mary Flower is an American musician and music educator on the independent Yellow Dog Records label. A blues and ragtime fingerstyle guitarist and vocalist, she combines intricate syncopated Piedmont style fingerpicking with lap-slide guitar.

<i>The Art of Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar</i> 1979 studio album by Duck Baker

The Art of Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar is an album by American guitarist Duck Baker, released in 1979. It was reissued in 1994 by Shanachie Records with six bonus tracks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stefan Grossman discography</span>

Stefan Grossman is an American acoustic fingerstyle guitarist and singer. His discography consists of 22 studio albums, 2 live albums, 12 compilations, 22 videos, and 14 collaborations with other artists. In addition, his production, compositions and guitar work have been featured on a number of albums by other artists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terry Robb</span> Musical artist

Terry Robb is a Canadian fingerstyle guitarist, composer, arranger and record producer living in the United States. He plays electric and acoustic guitar, and is associated with the American Primitive Guitar genre through his collaboration with steel string guitarist John Fahey. He is a member of the Oregon Music Hall of Fame and Cascade Blues Association Hall of Fame, and was honored with the eponymous "Terry Robb" Muddy Award for Best Acoustic Guitar in 2011. His original compositions draw on the Delta blues, ragtime, folk music, country music and jazz traditions.

References

  1. Clark, Jerome (Winter 2006). "Dakota Dave Hull: Voodoo King of the Acoustic Guitar" (PDF). Sing Out! . Vol. 49, no. 4. pp. 65–70. Retrieved 2020-07-31.
  2. Dakota Dave Hull (1 January 2012). Ragtime Guitar in the Classic American Style. Independent Publisher. ISBN   978-1-4675-5613-2.
  3. "Dakota Dave Hull releases two new albums". Mprnews.org. Retrieved 10 November 2020.
  4. "Dakota Dave Hull". Thecountryblues.com. 20 July 2014. Retrieved 10 November 2020.
  5. "The Dakota Dave Hull Show | KFAI". Old.kfai.org. Retrieved 10 November 2020.
  6. L. A. Heberlein (2002). The Rough Guide to Internet Radio. Rough Guides. pp. 126–. ISBN   978-1-85828-961-8.
  7. Dick Weissman (5 September 2019). A New History of American and Canadian Folk Music. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 211. ISBN   978-1-5013-4416-9.
  8. Deming, Mark. "Reunion Rag – Dakota Dave Hull". AllMusic . Retrieved 2020-08-07.