Fclucky

A new version of Last.fm is available, to keep everything running smoothly, please reload the site.

Don't want to see ads? Subscribe now

Wicked Grin is the twenty-eighth studio album from blues singer John P. Hammond.The album is a collection of songs written by Hammond's friend Tom Waits, who produced the project.It was released in March 2001 under Pointblank Records. Blues Foundation voters have rewarded Hammond with five Blues Music Awards as acoustic blues artist of the year and two more for the albums Wicked Grin and Got Love If You Want It. Following the elder John Hammond’s election to the Blues Hall of Fame in 2008, the Hammonds become the hall’s first father and son inductees. Listen free to John Hammond – Wicked Grin (2:19 [Clean], Heartattack And Vine [Clean] and more). 13 tracks (). All the songs on this album were written by Tom Wait. There are some really clever lyrics an example of which comes on the first track 2:19 - 'were you waving goodbye or drying your nails'. As it says on the album sleeve, this Really is the blues - raw and unsampled. Discover releases, reviews, credits, songs, and more about John Hammond* - Wicked Grin at Discogs. Complete your John Hammond* collection. Hammond's general refusal to deviate from that formula has become a bit of a trademark, but the new Wicked Grin suggests that the occasional departure might be worth his time. The album, a collection of Tom Waits songs produced by Waits, allows Hammond to stretch out a bit while underscoring his subject's connections to the blues.

Similar Albums

1. Roadworks

   8,452 listeners

2. The Harmonica According To Charlie Musselwhite

   9,263 listeners

3. Bring The Family

   113,754 listeners

4. Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues

   72,494 listeners

5. Down South in the Bayou Country

   16,158 listeners

6. Forever Gold

   27,801 listeners

7. In Your Arms Again

   6,702 listeners

8. Blues Breakers

   117,606 listeners

9. Great Guitars

   9,558 listeners

10. Paris, Texas

    94,548 listeners

11. Ice Pickin'

    53,497 listeners

12. South Of I-10

    23,621 listeners

1. Roadworks

   8,452 listeners

2. The Harmonica According To Charlie Musselwhite

   9,263 listeners

3. Bring The Family

   113,754 listeners

4. Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues

   72,494 listeners

1. Down South in the Bayou Country

   16,158 listeners

2. Forever Gold

   27,801 listeners

3. In Your Arms Again

   6,702 listeners

4. Blues Breakers

   117,606 listeners

5. Great Guitars

   9,558 listeners

6. Paris, Texas

   94,548 listeners

7. Ice Pickin'

   53,497 listeners

8. South Of I-10

   23,621 listeners

Scrobble Stats

Recent Listening Trend

John Hammond Wicked Grin

Don't want to see ads? Subscribe now

About This Artist

John Hammond

75,442 listeners

1. Lowell Fulson

   113,601 listeners

2. Lightnin' Hopkins

   284,980 listeners

3. Mississippi Fred McDowell

   142,669 listeners

4. Taj Mahal

   346,338 listeners

5. Eric Bibb

   82,122 listeners

6. Luther Allison

   135,145 listeners

7. John Lee Hooker

   807,580 listeners

8. Rory Block

   47,699 listeners

9. Charlie Musselwhite

   69,836 listeners

Trending Tracks

• 1

• 2

• 3

• 4

• 5

• 6

API Calls

JERSEY CITY

THIS city may or may not be the hotbed of hipsterism it has been made out to be lately, but it has at least one big point in its favor: John Hammond Jr. lives here.

Mr. Hammond, a blues legend with a voice like Robert Johnson’s and a demeanor that belies his tear-it-up might before an audience, has a history of being on hand during significant cultural moments.

John Hammond Wicked Grin Album

As a Greenwich Village resident in the 1960s, he got Jimi Hendrix the local gig that would kick-start his career. Later Mr. Hammond played a weeklong residency at the Gaslight, another local spot, with Eric Clapton and Mr. Hendrix.

By 1965 he had helped introduce Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson and Levon Helm of the Band to the world through his fourth album, “So Many Roads” (Vanguard), after luring them to New York as session players. And though his father, the celebrated music-business executive John Hammond, gets credit for signing Bob Dylan to Columbia Records in 1961, it was the younger Mr. Hammond whom Mr. Dylan turned to early on for the low-down on musicians.

“Bob always looked to me for guitarists,” Mr. Hammond recalled recently in his bright, narrow, LP-lined apartment in Jersey City. On Mr. Dylan’s 1965 and 1966 “electric” tours, he said, Mr. Robertson, Mr. Hudson and Mr. Helm were in Mr. Dylan’s traveling band; Mr. Hammond had introduced them.

Now 64, he spends about 250 days a year on the road playing the blues, and says performing is his only reprieve from a stutter he’s had since childhood. Touring a countrywide circuit of blues festivals this summer, he will perform closer to home next month, with shows at the Brokerage Comedy Club in Bellmore, N.Y., on Sept. 12 and the Havana nightclub in New Hope, Pa., on Sept. 13.

Mr. Hammond released his 31st album, “Push Comes to Shove” (Back Porch Records), in January. That it is among the best in his career, according to critics and Mr. Hammond himself, may have something to do with the life he has carved out here not far from the Holland Tunnel entrance.

“This is the nicest place I’ve ever lived,” said Mr. Hammond, from a leather couch. He credits his wife, Marla, executive producer of the new album, for making it so. When he met her 16 years ago, while living in New York, “I had been through a hideous divorce,” he said. “I lost everything.” Marla helped him get back on his feet financially, he said.

The Hammonds were married in 1993, and they bought their apartment in 1998, when a nearby charter school was once an abandoned brewery and the Grammy Award on their living room shelf (from 1984, for Best Traditional Blues Recording for Mr. Hammond’s album “Blues Explosion”) would have been an unlikely find in the neighborhood.

Newsletter Sign Up

• Opt out or contact us anytime

“Jersey City is also the most integrated city I’ve ever lived in,” he said. “There’s a certain lightness that’s wonderful, and it’s so ready for culture. Right now it’s like New York ought to have been, or was once, or something.”

Life here has afforded him the comfort level to take risks. If there is a scuff on Mr. Hammond’s mostly spotless reputation, it is over his reliance on the material of his heroes and mentors; he regularly interprets the songs of Bo Diddley, Willie Dixon and Lightnin’ Hopkins.

In 2003, though, more than 40 years into his career, he turned an artistic corner. “Somehow, I had the perspective on things to start writing,” he said.

Songs have come slowly. For the 2003 album “Ready for Love” (Back Porch Records), he wrote one song; for “In Your Arms Again” in 2005 (Back Porch Records), three. On “Push Comes to Shove,” he has five writing credits.

Hammond Wicked Grin

With them, a newfound sense of adventurousness has reared up: to produce the new CD, he enlisted the artist G. Love, a longtime fan.

“Garrett was really on the ball,” said Mr. Hammond, who calls G. Love by his given name, Garrett Dutton. “Everybody there to play came to play. There was elements of what I did in the ’60s and ’70s, and elements of the album I did with Tom Waits,” he said, referring to “Wicked Grin” (Virgin Records, 2001), an acclaimed collection of covers of Mr. Waits’s songs produced by Mr. Waits.

Notable about the recording was the studio in which it took shape. “It was this hole in the wall in West Orange our engineer knew of,” Mr. Hammond said.

Then again, he said, “I’m used to raunchy joints.”