Life and Early Career
Sebastian's father, John Sebastian, was a noted classical harmonica player and his mother was a radio script writer. He is the godson of Vivian Vance (Ethel Mertz of I Love Lucy). He grew up surrounded by music and musicians, including Burl Ives and Woody Guthrie and hearing such players as Leadbelly and Mississippi John Hurt in his own neighborhood.
One of his first recording gigs was playing guitar and harmonica for Billy Faier's 1964 album The Beast of Billy Faier. He also recorded with Fred Neil on the Bleecker & MacDougal album and Tom Rush's self-titled album in 1965. He came up through the Even Dozen Jug Band and The Mugwumps, which split to form the Lovin' Spoonful and The Mamas & the Papas. Sebastian was joined by Zal Yanovsky, Steve Boone and Joe Butler in the Spoonful, which was named after "The Coffee Blues," a Mississippi John Hurt song. Sebastian also played autoharp on occasion.
The Lovin' Spoonful became part of the American response to the British Invasion and was noted for such folk-flavored hits as "Jug Band Music," "Do You Believe in Magic," "Summer in the City," "Daydream," "Nashville Cats," "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?," "Six O'Clock," "You Didn't Have to Be So Nice" and "Younger Girl." The band, however, began to implode after a 1967 marijuana bust in San Francisco involving Yanovsky, a Canadian citizen. Facing deportation, he gave up the name of his dealer, which caused a fan backlash and internal strife. Neither John Sebastian nor Joe Butler was involved in the matter; neither was even in San Francisco at the time. Yanovsky subsequently left the band and was replaced by Jerry Yester.
Read more about this topic: John Sebastian
Famous quotes containing the words life, early and/or career:
“Presidents quickly realize that while a single act might destroy the world they live in, no one single decision can make life suddenly better or can turn history around for the good.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)