Sonny Landreth | |
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Background information | |
Birth name | Clide Vernon Landreth |
Born | Canton, Mississippi, U.S. | February 1, 1951
Genres | Blues, country blues, zydeco |
Instrument | Guitar |
Years active | 1973–present |
Labels | Provogue Records |
Website | sonnylandreth |
Clide Vernon "Sonny" Landreth (born February 1, 1951) [1] is an American blues musician from southwest Louisiana who is especially known as a slide guitar player. He was born in Canton, Mississippi, and settled in Lafayette, Louisiana. [2] [3] He lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana.
Landreth is known as "the King of Slydeco" [4] and plays with a strong zydeco influence. [2] Guitarist Eric Clapton has said that Landreth is one of the most advanced guitarists in the world and one of the most under-appreciated. [2]
Landreth is best known for his slide guitar playing, having developed a technique where he also frets notes and plays chords and chord fragments by fretting behind the slide while he plays. Landreth plays with the slide on his little finger, so that his other fingers have more room to fret behind the slide. [5] [6] [7] He is also known for his right-hand technique, which involves tapping, slapping, and picking strings, using all of the fingers on his right hand. He wears a special thumb pick/flat pick hybrid on his thumb so that he can bear down on a pick while simultaneously using his finger-style technique for slide. [7]
Landreth is known for his use of Fender Stratocaster guitars and Dumble Amplifiers. He is also known to use Demeter and Fender amplifiers on occasion. Landreth uses Jim Dunlop 215 heavy glass slides and Dunlop Herco flat thumb picks. His guitars are fitted with DiMarzio and Lindy Fralin pickups, a special Suhr back plate system, and D'Addario medium nickel wound strings gauges 0.13 - 0.56.[ citation needed ]
Landreth first played in Clifton Chenier's Red Hot Louisiana Band, as the only white member of the band. [7] In 1981, he released his first record, Blues Attack, which also featured C.J. Chenier on saxophone and Mel Melton on harmonica. [8] In 1982, Landreth and Melton formed the band Bayou Rhythm, and eventually added C.J. Chenier to the lineup. The band recorded Way Down in Louisiana in 1985 [9] Landreth also frequently played in John Hiatt's band, and with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. [7]
Vince Gill stated that "Tell Me Lover" was based in part on Landreth's song, "Congo Square". [10]
In 1998, Landreth was involved in the multi-artist project "Begegnungen (Encounters)" mounted by Germany's Rock-Superstar Peter Maffay. They performed together on a new version of Landreth's "C'est chaud" on the album and some more songs in the 30 concerts at the arena tour later the same year, documented on the live album Begegnungen Live, released in early 1999. A further guest of Maffay at the Begegnungen album and tour was Keb' Mo'.
Landreth has recorded with Jimmy Buffett, and accompanied him on his 2004,2006, 2007, and 2010 summer tours.[ citation needed ]
Landreth took the main stage at MerleFest in 2011.[ citation needed ]
Landreth appeared on HBO's Treme, Season 3, Episode 8 [11]
Landreth performed at Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival in 2004, 2007, 2010, 2013 and 2019. [12]
In 2014, Landreth was a guest performer on Eli Cook's album, Primitive Son . [13]
Landreth has released at least the following albums:
with John Hiatt:
with Eric Johnson:
with others:
Zydeco is a music genre that was created in rural Southwest Louisiana by Afro-Americans of Creole heritage. It blends blues and rhythm and blues with music indigenous to the Louisiana Creoles, such as la la and juré. Musicians use the French accordion and a Creole washboard instrument called the frottoir.
Electric blues is blues music distinguished by the use of electric amplification for musical instruments. The guitar was the first instrument to be popularly amplified and used by early pioneers T-Bone Walker in the late 1930s and John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters in the 1940s. Their styles developed into West Coast blues, Detroit blues, and post-World War II Chicago blues, which differed from earlier, predominantly acoustic-style blues. By the early 1950s, Little Walter was a featured soloist on blues harmonica using a small hand-held microphone fed into a guitar amplifier. Although it took a little longer, the electric bass guitar gradually replaced the stand-up bass by the early 1960s. Electric organs and especially keyboards later became widely used in electric blues.
Stanley Dural Jr., better known by his stage name Buckwheat Zydeco, was an American accordionist and zydeco musician. He was one of the few zydeco artists to achieve mainstream success. His music group was formally billed as Buckwheat Zydeco and Ils Sont Partis Band, but they often performed as merely Buckwheat Zydeco.
Clifton Chenier, was an American musician known as a pioneer of zydeco, a style of music that arose from Creole music, with R&B, blues, and Cajun influences. He sang and played the accordion. Chenier won a Grammy Award in 1983.
The Crossroads Guitar Festival is a series of music festivals and benefit concerts founded by Eric Clapton. The festivals benefit the Crossroads Centre founded by Eric Clapton, a drug treatment center in Antigua. The concerts showcase a variety of guitarists, selected by Eric Clapton personally. To the 2007 audience, Clapton declared that each performer was one of the very best, and had earned his personal respect.
From the Reach is the eleventh studio album from Sonny Landreth. Released on May 20, 2008, it is his first album to be released under his own label Landfall Records. The album features appearances by Jimmy Buffett, Eric Clapton, Robben Ford, Vince Gill, Eric Johnson, Dr. John, Mark Knopfler, and Nadirah Shakoor.
Levee Town is the seventh studio album by Sonny Landreth. Released on Sugar Hill Records October 17, 2000 and re-released in an Expanded Edition on Landreth's own LandFall Records April 21, 2009.
Sherman Robertson was an American blues guitarist and singer who has been described as "one part zydeco, one part swamp blues, one part electric blues and one part classic rhythm and blues."
Lay Your Burden Down is a studio album by Buckwheat Zydeco, released in 2009 through Alligator Records. The album ranked number five on Billboards Top Blues Albums. In 2010, the album earned Buckwheat Zydeco the Grammy Award for Best Zydeco or Cajun Music Album. This is Buckwheat Zydeco's first record with Alligator Records and was produced by Steve Berlin, who produced his 1994 album Five Card Stud.
Iron Mike Norton is an American blues musician who plays slide guitar. Known as "the King of Swamp Stomp", Norton developed a style of blues that combines elements of traditional hill country slide guitar, with modern elements of hip-hop and other modern urban styles of music.
Osez Joséphine(Dare Joséphine) is the eighth studio album by French rocker Alain Bashung, issued in 1991 on Barclay Records. Rolling Stone magazine considered it the greatest French album of all time.
Roots is an album by blues guitarist and singer Johnny Winter. His first studio album in seven years, it was released by Megaforce Records on September 27, 2011.
Mascot Label Group is an independently owned record label. Founded in 1989 in The Netherlands under the name Mascot Records, the company was renamed Mascot-Provogue in 1999 and since 2010 has been known as the Mascot Label Group. The company is based in the Netherlands and has offices in New York, Cologne, Stockholm, Milan, Paris and London. It was distributed by ADA and Warner Music Group until 2022; it is now digitally distributed by FUGA internationally and physically distributed by AMPED in the United States. Mascot Label Group is the parent company of the following labels: Mascot Records, Provogue Records, Music Theories Recordings, Cool Green Recordings, The Funk Garage, and The Players Club.
Crossroads Guitar Festival 2013 is a music DVD, concert film and eleventh live album by the British rock musician Eric Clapton and was released on November 18, 2013, through Warner Bros. Records. It features recordings by various artists that performed during the Crossroads Guitar Festival 2013. The release reached international album, DVD and Blu-ray charts and was certified by various organisations with gold and platinum awards.
Crossroads Guitar Festival 2007 is the Rhino Entertainment and Warner Brothers release to the 2007 Eric Clapton Crossroads Guitar Festival. The concert was recorded on July 28, 2007 at the Toyota Park in Bridgeview, Illinois. The recordings were released on both Compact Disc and DVD on November 28, 2007 in the United States. The CD and DVD releases sold more than two million copies worldwide and reached various international charts.
Crossroads Guitar Festival 2010 is a concert film released on November 8, 2010, by the British rock musician Eric Clapton under Rhino Records and the Warner Music Group. It is sometimes credited as a "Various Artists" compilation release. The music film features 40 tracks on the DVD and Blu-ray format. Crossroads Guitar Festival 2010 was released worldwide, reached various international music charts and was awarded several certification awards for outstanding sales and shipments.
Live in San Diego is the thirteenth live album by British rock musician Eric Clapton. It was released through Reprise Records as a live album on 30 September 2016 and as a 2-hour live DVD on 10 March 2017.
Mel Melton is an American musician, singer, and chef. Much of his music is in the Zydeco style and his cooking primarily focuses on the culture of southern Louisiana.
Primitive Son is the sixth album by Virginia-based blues rock artist Eli Cook. It was released in April 2014. The album leans more to the grunge/hard rock side of Cook's work, and features a slew of guest musicians such as Leslie West and Vinny Appice.
The live and video album Crossroads Guitar Festival 2019 is the sixth release in the series of Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festivals to support his rehabilitation centre in Antigua, the Crossroads Centre, documenting the 2019 performances from two concerts held on September 20 and September 21, 2019 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas. The album was released on November 20, 2020 through Warner and Rhino Records.