Ramblin' Jack Elliott

Ramblin' Jack Elliott (born Elliot Charles Adnopoz; August 1, 1931) is an American folk singer and performer.

Born in Brooklyn, New York to Jewish parents in 1931, he attended Midwood High School in Brooklyn and graduated in 1949. Elliott grew up inspired by the rodeos at Madison Square Garden, and wanted to be a cowboy. Encouraged instead to follow his father's example and become a surgeon, Elliott rebelled, running away from home at the age of 15 to join Col. Jim Eskew's Rodeo, the only rodeo east of the Mississippi. They traveled throughout the Mid-Atlantic states and New England. He was only with them for three months before his parents tracked him down and had him sent home, but Elliott was exposed to his first singing cowboy, Brahmer Rogers, a rodeo clown who played guitar and five-string banjo, sang songs, and recited poetry. Back home, Elliott taught himself guitar and started busking for a living. Eventually he got together with Woody Guthrie and stayed with him as an admirer and student.

With banjo player Derroll Adams, he toured the United Kingdom and Europe. By 1960, he had recorded three folk albums for the UK record label Topic Records. In London, he played small clubs and pubs by day and West End cabaret nightclubs at night. When he returned to the States, Elliott found he had become renowned in American folk music circles.

Woody Guthrie had the greatest influence on Elliott. Guthrie's son, Arlo, said that because of Woody's illness and early death, Arlo never really got to know him, but learned his father's songs and performing style from Elliott. Elliott's guitar and his mastery of Guthrie's material had a big impact on Bob Dylan when he lived in Minneapolis. When he reached New York, Dylan was sometimes referred to as the 'son' of Jack Elliott, because Elliott had a way of introducing Dylan's songs with the words: "Here's a song from my son, Bob Dylan." Dylan rose to prominence as a songwriter; Elliott continued as an interpretative troubadour, bringing old songs to new audiences in his idiosyncratic manner. Elliott also influenced Phil Ochs, and played guitar and sang harmony on Ochs' song "Joe Hill" from the Tape from California album. Elliott also discovered singer-songwriter Guthrie Thomas in a bar in Northern California in 1973, bringing Thomas to Hollywood where Thomas' music career began.

Elliott appeared in Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue concert tour and played "Longheno de Castro" in Dylan's movie Renaldo and Clara. In the movie, he sings the song "South Coast" by Lillian Bos Ross and Sam Eskin, from whose lyric the character's name is derived.

"My name is Longheno de Castro

My father was a Spanish grandee

But I won my wife in a card game

To Hell with those lords o'er the sea"

Elliott plays guitar in a traditional fingerpicking style, which he matches with his laconic, humorous storytelling, often accompanying himself on harmonica. His singing has a strained, nasal quality which the young Bob Dylan emulated. His repertoire includes American traditional music from various genres, including country, blues, bluegrass and folk.

Elliott's nickname comes not from his traveling habits, but rather the countless stories he relates before answering the simplest of questions. Folk singer Odetta claimed that her mother gave him the name, remarking, "Oh, Jack Elliott, yeah, he can sure ramble on!"

His authenticity as a folksy, down-to-earth country boy, despite being a Jewish doctor's son from Brooklyn, and his disdain for other folk singers, were parodied by the Folksmen (Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer) in the satirical documentary A Mighty Wind in the name of their "hit" album Ramblin'. A Mighty Wind also referred to a former member of the New Main Street Singers, Ramblin' Sandy Pitnick, a somewhat geeky-looking white man in a cowboy hat, apparently in parody of Elliott.

Elliott's first recording in many years, South Coast, earned him his first Grammy Award in 1995. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1998.

His long career and strained relationship with his daughter Aiyana were chronicled in her 2000 film documentary, The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack.

At the age of 75, he changed labels and released I Stand Alone on the ANTI- label, with an assortment of guest backup players including members of WIlco, X, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The album was produced by Grammy-winner Ian Brennan (music producer, author). Jack said his intention was to title the album Not for the Tourists, because it was recorded partially in response to his daughter's request for songs he loved but never played in concert. When asked why he did not, he told her, "These songs are not for the tourists."

In 2012 he was featured on two tracks (4, 12) on the album Older Than My Old Man Now by Loudon Wainwright III.

In September 2016, Rolling Stone had reported that he will appear alongside Bob Weir, on Weir's new solo album Blue Mountain, on the track "Ki-Yi Bossie".

Studio

• 1955: Woody Guthrie's Blues
• 1957: Jack Elliot Sings
• 1958: Jack Takes the Floor
• 1958: Ramblin' Jack Elliott in London EMI Records 33 SX 1166 recorded 5/7 November 1958
• 1960: Ramblin' Jack Elliott Sings Songs by Woody Guthrie and Jimmie Rodgers
• 1960: Jack Elliott Sings the Songs of Woody Guthrie
• 1961: Songs to Grow On by Woody Guthrie, Sung by Jack Elliott (Folkways Records)
• 1961: Ramblin' Jack Elliott (Prestige/Folklore)
• 1962: Country Style (Prestige/Folklore)
• 1964: Jack Elliott (Vanguard)
• 1968: Young Brigham (Reprise)
• 1970: Bull Durham Sacks & Railroad Tracks (Reprise)
• 1981: Kerouac's Last Dream (Folk Freak/re-release by Conträr Musik, Germany)
• 1995: South Coast (Red House)
• 1998: Friends of Mine (HighTone)
• 1999: The Long Ride (HighTone)
• 2006: I Stand Alone (ANTI-)
• 2009: A Stranger Here (ANTI-)

Live

• 1962: Jack Elliott at the Second Fret

With Derroll Adams

• 1957: The Rambling Boys
• 1963: Roll On Buddy
• 1969: Folkland Songs
• 1969: Riding in Folkland
• 1975: America

Compilations

• 1963: Talking Woody Guthrie (Topic)
• 1964: Muleskinner (Topic)
• 1976: The Essential Ramblin' Jack Elliott (Vanguard)
• 1989: Hard Travelin' (reissue of Jack Elliott Sings the Songs of Woody Guthrie and Ramblin' Jack Elliott)
• 1989: Talking Dust Bowl: The Best of Ramblin' Jack Elliott
• 1990: Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Spider John Koerner, U. Utah Phillips: Legends of Folk (Red House)
• 1990: Jack Elliott Plus / Jack Elliott
• 1995: Me and Bobby McGee (reissue of Young Brigham and Bull Durham Sacks & Railroad Tracks)
• 1995: Jack Elliott: Ramblin' Jack, The Legendary Topic Masters
• 1999: Ramblin' Jack Elliott: Early Sessions
• 2000: Best of the Vanguard Years
• 2004: The Lost Topic Tapes: Cowes Harbour 1957
• 2004: The Lost Topic Tapes: Isle of Wight 1957
• 2007: Vanguard Visionaries

Additionally, Three Score and Ten, Topic Records' 70th-anniversary boxed set released in 2009, included "Talking Dustbowl Blues" from Woody Guthrie's Blues as track twelve on the seventh CD.