John Hartford — “The Six O’Clock Train and a Girl with Green Eyes”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — April , 2024

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,182) John Hartford — “The Six O’Clock Train and a Girl with Green Eyes”

Country? Folk? Either way, this ’68 B-side by the legendary John Hartford is gentle on my mind, “bounc[ing] along like the happy ’60s pop song it is”; from The Love Album, which “finds [Hartford] using slightly bigger arrangements, gaining confidence, and more or less coming into his own.” (Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr., https://www.allmusic.com/album/love-album-housing-project-mw0000462545)

Hartford’s website tells us:

John Hartford won Grammy awards in three different decades . . . and wrote one of the most popular songs of all time, “Gentle On My Mind”. . . . He added music and narration to Ken Burns’ landmark Civil War series, and was an integral part of the hugely popular “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack and Down From The Mountain concert tour. But that hardly explains John Hartford [–] an American original [who] was a musician, songwriter, steamboat pilot, author, artist, disc jockey, calligrapher, dancer, folklorist, father, and historian. At an early age, John fell in love with two things: music and the Mississippi River. In 1965 he moved to Nashville. The following year he was signed to RCA Records by the legendary Chet Atkins. It was Atkins who convinced John to add a “t” to his last name, becoming John Hartford. In 1967 his second RCA release “Earthwords & Music” featured the single “Gentle on My Mind”, a song Hartford wrote after seeing the movie Dr. Zhivago. That year, the song earned four Grammy awards. Hartford would take home two awards, one as the writer and one for his own recording of the song. The other two went to Glen Campbell who had heard Hartford’s version on the radio and decided to record it. Campbell’s rendition became an instant classic, and the song became one of the most recorded and performed songs of all time . . . . Hartford often said that “Gentle On My Mind” bought his freedom. . . . to explore his various creative curiosities . . . . In 1968 John Hartford left Nashville for Los Angeles, where he played on the Byrds’ classic album, Sweethearts of the Rodeo. He became a regular guest and contributor on CBS’s Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and later on The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour. He would also earn his riverboat pilot’s license by the end of the decade. John Hartford became mentor and mystic for a generation of pickers, singers, and songwriters. His landmark record, Aereo-plain (1971) . . . bridged a musical gap between traditional bluegrass and a progressive new audience . . . . In 1976, John won another Grammy award for his contemporary folk masterpiece, Mark Twang [which] featured a set of quirky river-centric original songs, presented in stripped down arrangements, typically featuring only Hartford accompanying himself on banjo, fiddle, or guitar while tapping his feet on an amplified sheet of plywood. . . . becom[ing] his trademark sound for many years as a solo act. . . . He died on June 4, 2001, after a long battle with non-hodgkin’s lymphoma.

https://www.johnhartford.com/about-john/

James Manheim adds:

Hartford was a multi-talented old-time musician, a riverboat captain, a satirical songwriter, a one-man showman of exceptional talents, and one of the founders of both progressive country music and old-time string music revivalism. He was a prolific recording artist who issued no fewer than 33 albums during his lifetime that ranged across old-timey fiddle music, bluegrass and newgrass, folk, blues, jazz, and country . . . . While he never again attained the success of “Gentle on My Mind,” he was quite successful . . . . [He] grew up in St. Louis near the Mississippi River he would always love. His took his first job on a riverboat at age ten. As a boy he liked the traditional country music he heard on the Grand Ole Opry radio broadcast from Nashville, and by age 13 he was an accomplished fiddler and five-string banjo player . . . . Soon he added guitar and mandolin to his repertoire. He founded his first bluegrass band in high school . . . . Hartford made a few singles for small local labels in the early ’60s. In 1965 he moved with his [family] to Nashville, taking a DJ job at . . . . It didn’t take him long to meet the other architects of the city’s songwriting renaissance – Kris Kristofferson, Mickey Newbury, and the Glaser Brothers [see #76], who . . . began promoting Hartford and his songs around Music Row. . . . In 1968 Hartford moved to Los Angeles . . . . By the end of the decade, Hartford also earned his riverboat pilot’s license. Financially secure thanks to “Gentle on My Mind,” he decided to spend the rest of his life pursuing an artistic vision rooted in country music traditions. In 1971, Hartford returned to Nashville and founded a bluegrass band . . . . The all-acoustic Aereo-Plain album . . . featured a free bluegrass feel often cited as seminal both by progressive bluegrass musicians and by adherents of the modern jam band movement. In the mid-’70s Hartford worked out a solo act in which he appeared in a trademark bowler hat and black vest.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/john-hartford-mn0000221603#biography

Here Hartford is live:

Here is Jason Carter:

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