John Studebaker “Jack” Hardy [ 1 ] ( November 23, 1947 – March 11, 2011 ) was an american english singer-songwriter and dramatist based in Greenwich Village, who was influential as a writer, performer, and mentor in the union american english and european tribe music scenes for decades. He was cited as a major influence by Suzanne Vega, John Gorka, and many others who emerged from that scene in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Hardy was the author of hundreds of songs, and toured indefatigably for about forty years. He was besides the founding editor program of Fast Folk Musical Magazine, a periodical celebrated within music circles for twenty years that shipped with a wide album ( and former, covenant magnetic disk ) in each consequence, whose entire catalog is now separate of the Smithsonian Folkways collection. Hardy died on the morning of March 11, 2011, in Manhattan. He was 63. The cause was complications of lung cancer. [ 2 ] [ 3 ]
career [edit ]
Jack Hardy was powerfully identified with New York ‘s Greenwich Village family music scenery. Beginning in the mid-1970s, Hardy hosted Monday-night songwriter ‘s circles and pasta dinners at his apartment on Houston Street, a gathering excellently open to both established artists and novices. He besides began a little, informal songwriters ‘ group at The English Pub in Greenwich Village, which late became a more formal songwriters ‘ night at the Cornelia Street Cafe in December 1977. This group would late evolve into the Songwriter ‘s Exchange, releasing an album on Stash Records in 1980. finally, the group formed a concerted, led by Hardy, and in 1981 took over the book of the Speakeasy, which became a thrive venue for songwriters. Hardy was besides the fall through and first editor program of Fast Folk Musical Magazine in 1982. Hardy was a graduate of the Pomfret School in Connecticut and the University of Hartford. Although more popular in Europe than in his native America for much of his career, the end of the twentieth century brought a reignite interest in his music on his native shores. throughout, he toured indefatigably on both sides of the Atlantic. Hardy was a lyrical writer ; his songs were political, although normally subtly thus. His music was often tinged with a celtic spirit, although his last few albums took on more of a nation & western dash. Both budget-conscious and disdainful of arrogant aesthetic egos, Hardy recorded all of his albums ( about 15 of them, in a 40-year career ) in the same manner : by rehearsing a small band and then recording the entire album “ be to tape ” in a menstruation of 48 hours or less. In the last few years of his life, Hardy toured with long-time acquaintance and companion songwriter David Massengill as a duet called the Folk Brothers. In songwriter circles, Hardy was american samoa well known as a teacher and mentor as he was as an artist. Songwriters gathered at his hallowed Houston Street apartment one night a week to play their latest ( and normally unfinished ) work, and to face criticism from Hardy and their assemble peers. Fueled by pasta and wine, the weekly songwriters ‘ sessions were celebrated for the artistic and political conversations that flowed in them and the boastfully act of noteworthy songs that emerged from them. Jack suffered neither egos nor nerves, and when the initiation to a newfangled song got excessively long and/or apologetic from a songwriter, Hardy would bark, “ Shut up and sing the sung. ” The hundreds of songwriters who frequented Hardy ‘s apartment gatherings over the years included name both stranger and celebrated – among them, Suzanne Vega, Shawn Colvin, Brian Rose, Richard Shindell, John Gorka, Wendy Beckerman, Tracy Allard, Frank Tedesso, Christian Bauman, Linda Sharar, Rod MacDonald, Lucy Kaplansky, Matthias Clark, Bob Chabot, and Christine Lavin. The hebdomadally songwriter ‘s session itself made it into a issue of songs by Hardy alumni, including “ Jack ‘s Crows ” by John Gorka, the title song of Gorka ‘s second album, and “ Boulevardiers ” by Suzanne Vega. The group was besides immortalized in fictional form in Christian Bauman ‘s 2008 fresh “ In Hoboken, ” which included two chapters that took place in the Houston Street apartment, and a character named “ Geoff Mason ” who bore a hit ( and, according to a public radio interview with Bauman, designed ) resemblance to Hardy.
While Hardy ‘s name never achieved the charge of fame of Vega, Gorka, or the many he recorded for Fast Folk ( including Tracy Chapman, Lyle Lovett, David Wilcox, Elliott Murphy or The Roches ), he continually built on his solid catalogue of literate, well-crafted songs. Hardy was awarded the Kate Wolf Memorial Award by the World Folk Music Association in 1996. [ 4 ] Hardy attended college at The University of Hartford, and in 1969 – then editor of the University of Hartford ‘s The News-Liberated Press – Hardy was arrested and convicted of libel after publishing a lewd cartoon that attacked then president of the united states Richard Nixon. Hardy was convicted and paid a $ 50 very well. While the conviction was later overturned on solicitation, Hardy remains the only person in the history of the United States that has ever been arrested and convicted of libeling the President of the United States. [ 1 ]
Jack Hardy was predeceased by a buddy, Jeff, who played bass in Jack ‘s isthmus and appeared on many of his recordings. Jeff Hardy, who worked as a chef for a fiscal services firm located in the World Trade Center, died in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 .
discography [edit ]
- Jack Hardy (1971)
- Early and Rare (1965–1974, vol. 1 of The Collected Works of Jack Hardy)
- Mirror of My Madness (1976)
- The Nameless One (1978)
- Landmark (1982)
- White Shoes (1982)
- The Collected Works of Jack Hardy, Part I, Volumes 1 – 5, 1965–1983
- The Cauldron (1984)
- The Hunter (1987)
- Retrospective (1990)
- Through (1991)
- Two of Swords (1992)
- Civil Wars (1994)
- Songs of Jack Hardy (tribute), Volume One: Of the White Goddess (1995)
- The Collected Works of Jack Hardy, Part II, Volumes 6 – 10, 1984–1995
- The Passing (1997)
- Omens (2000)
- Bandolier (2002)
- Coin of the Realm: Songs for the New American Century (2004)
- The Tinker’s Coin – Celtic Anthology (2005)
- Noir (2007)
- Rye Grass (2009)
