Blues singer John Hammond is a man of rare reputation. A strong living presence in the tradition, he has consistently been one of its steadiest and most disciplined students. His latest, J.J. Cale-produced recording, Long As I Have You, once again sees him in the musical territory to which he has committed his career - the blues of Blind Boy Fuller, Sonny Boy Williamson and Howlin' Wolf.
And while this is where Hammond is happiest, given his family background he might have gone just about anywhere musically. Although his parents split up when he was six, he remained in contact with his father, who happened to be one of the most significant figures in 20th-century music. As a talent scout and producer, John senior had played a key role in launching the careers of, among others, Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, Artie Shaw, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. It was a busy house. "Of course, when I was very young I really wasn't sure of what was going on, but I knew he was involved in the music business somehow. As I got older I realised what he was doing in terms of production and recording and putting musicians together. My uncle was Benny Goodman and my father had put a lot of artists into his orchestra including Charlie Christian and Teddy Wilson. It's mind-boggling really. One of his really close friends was Count Basie, who was at the house often, and many of his band members too.
"At a later stage I was aware of the significance of my father's work but I don't think it really affected my choosing what I did. He was initially a little worried about my selection of occupation, as any parent would be - he knew how hard life on the road was - but once he saw I was really dedicated, he was really supportive."
Growing up in New York City, carrying his father's name and with access to just about everything and everybody, Hammond nonetheless remained at first entirely a fan, gravitating towards blues and rhythm and blues. Many of the artists he heard on the radio such as Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard and Ray Charles were people he could actually see perform and at first he devoted himself to that scene. Then, aged about 17 or 18, he got his first guitar.
"It was when I heard Blind Boy Fuller and Robert Johnson for the first time. That's what made me interested in actually playing. My friends thought I was nuts! They didn't understand it at all. But I wasn't a happy camper in my teen years and I was looking, whether consciously or unconsciously, to get out on my own in life. And I was more concerned with what I wanted to do than what my friends thought of it.
"I started professionally at 19. That's how fast it happened for me. It was at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles which is probably the greatest club I can remember and my first show was opening for The Staples. That was unbelievable."
Later the same year, Hammond recorded his first album for Vanguard. It was perfect timing, given that American music was beginning to be discovered by Americans themselves. There was an openness about the folk scene in particular that saw various forms included under that general heading. The careers of older blues singers were in some cases revitalised as they adapted their material to a whiter, folkier audience. Meanwhile, young whites such as Hammond were digging deeper into the music of the Delta, which had long since been abandoned by most urban blacks. For Hammond, however, these considerations were merely talking points for academics.
"I wasn't concerned with critics and newspaper people saying you can't be white and sing the blues and all this kind of stuff. I just let that roll off my back. I went on with it because I loved the music more than anything and I think that is the only criteria. But yes, there weren't many blues players around at that time who were not old and black.
"In terms of the artists who performed in clubs, I heard people like Josh White and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. This was really the 1960s folk revival. It had brought blues, old-time and bluegrass all to the forefront and I was just in the right place at the right time. I got on to that folk circuit - the coffee house circuit - and I just fitted right with the whole folk boom."
In 1961 Hammond put a band together with Jimi Hendrix on guitar, and it was during these gigs that Chas Chandler first lured Hendrix to London and so the young John was now having some of the same effect as his father. When Hendrix returned, a year later, he and Eric Clapton sat in with Hammond for a week of shows which are still talked about in guitar circles. And while Hammond speaks highly of Clapton's ability, he is aware that the very idea of a white man such as himself or Clapton singing and playing the blues is inevitably a controversial one. He can see there is perhaps a certain irony in someone such as Clapton achieving such global status as a blues guitarist, but it doesn't concern him in the slightest. He simply points out that nobody can really question the talent or the love for the music. And for him that is all that really matters.
Certainly, to accuse anyone such as John Hammond of some sort of cultural theft would be entirely wrong. For many years now, American musics have been rubbing up against each other, causing sparks and, sometimes, quite spectacular explosions. This has happened so effortlessly in some cases because, musically, it has never been a simple case of black and white. For Hammond it is a perfectly natural expression for a black performer such as Ray Charles to sing a country song, or for a white performer such as Elvis Presley to sing blues. The music is the important thing and whether a historian with a particular agenda likes it or not, musical confusions have always been always a fact.
"Going back to the 1920s, there were white blues artists. But because of the rampant racism in the United States they had to re-title their styles. So instead of it being a blues artist it was a hillbilly artist or whatever. All these terminology things are very silly. I mean music is music and it inspires people from every background.
"Howlin' Wolf, who I got to work many shows with, told me his idol was Jimmie Rodgers. And of course one of Jimmie Rodgers's idols was Blind Lemon Jefferson. So music transcends colour and race and all that stupid stuff. When you hear opera stars such as Jessye Norman, obviously steeped in that tradition of classical music, nobody gives her a hard time! Or Eric Clapton. Good is good and that's what it eventually boils down to. If you are good and you pull it off then nobody really questions you."
One of Hammond's particular favourites is Robert Johnson, the Delta blues singer whose extraordinary music has perhaps only been equalled by his own myth. Such is his devotion to Johnson that Hammond once fronted a television documentary called The Search for Robert Johnson which looked at Johnson's life, music and early death - a death which, according to the myth, was the inevitable result of a pact with the Devil. There is a further connection with Hammond's father here. In 1938 Hammond senior organised a hugely influential Carnegie Hall concert called From Spirituals to Swing. It featured Count Basie, Big Joe Turner, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and others. Robert Johnson was also due to appear but, in the end, he couldn't be found. He was dead. Certainly Johnson's talent had been quite astonishing and had required some supernatural explanation, but for Hammond himself the idea of the musical gift, while still mysterious, does not necessarily require the actual sale of your soul.
"Well, that one about Robert Johnson just got blown up in some writer's imagination and that's where it came from. And in those days in rural America if you weren't playing church music then you had already sold your soul anyway. For me, I have no idea how this music came through me. I didn't study to do this. I play by ear and I don't question it. I just get up there and let it happen.
"I have worked very hard at having a career because that is something you have to work at. That part of it isn't a gift. That's something you have to make happen. I've just been very fortunate to have been in the right place at the right time and to have had the nerve to do it."