Southwest Louisiana-based guitarist, songwriter and singer
Sonny Landreth is a musician's musician. The
blues slide guitar playing found on his two Zoo Entertainment releases, Outward Bound (1992) and
South of I-10 (1995) is distinctive and unlike anything else you've ever heard. His unorthodox guitar style comes from the manner in which he simultaneously plays slide and makes fingering movements on the fret board.
Landreth, who has an easygoing personality, can play it all, like any good recording-session musician. His distinctive guitar playing can be heard on recordings by
John Hiatt,
Leslie West and
Mountain, and other rock & rollers.
Landreth was born February 1, 1951, in Canton, MS, and his family lived in Jackson, MS, for a few years before settling in Lafayette, LA.
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Southwest Louisiana-based guitarist, songwriter and singer
Sonny Landreth is a musician's musician. The
blues slide guitar playing found on his two Zoo Entertainment releases, Outward Bound (1992) and
South of I-10 (1995) is distinctive and unlike anything else you've ever heard. His unorthodox guitar style comes from the manner in which he simultaneously plays slide and makes fingering movements on the fret board.
Landreth, who has an easygoing personality, can play it all, like any good recording-session musician. His distinctive guitar playing can be heard on recordings by
John Hiatt,
Leslie West and
Mountain, and other rock & rollers.
Landreth was born February 1, 1951, in Canton, MS, and his family lived in Jackson, MS, for a few years before settling in Lafayette, LA.
Landreth, who still lives in southwest Louisiana, began playing guitar after a long tenure with the trumpet. His earliest inspiration came from Scotty Moore, the guitarist from
Elvis Presley's band, but as time went on, he learned from the recordings of musicians and groups like
Chet Atkins and
the Ventures. As a teen,
Landreth began playing out with his friends in their parents' houses.
"They would ping-pong us from one house to another, and though we were all awful at first, as time went on we got pretty good. It's an evolutionary process, just like songwriting is,"
Landreth explained in an interview on his 44th birthday in 1995. After his first professional gig with accordionist
Clifton Chenier in the 1970s (where he was the only White guy in the Red Beans and Rice Revue for awhile),
Landreth struck out on his own, but not before he recorded two albums for the Blues Unlimited label out of Crowley, LA, Blues Attack in 1981 and Way Down in Louisiana in 1985. If anyone is living proof of the need to press on in spite of obstacles, it is
Landreth.
The second of those two albums got him noticed by some record executives in Nashville, which in turn led to his recording and touring work with
John Hiatt. That led to still more work with
John Mayall, who recorded
Landreth's radio-ready "Congo Square." More recently, he's worked with New Orleans bandleader and pianist
Allen Toussaint (who guests on several tracks on
South of I-10, as does
Dire Straits guitarist
Mark Knopfler).
On
Landreth's brilliant albums for Zoo, the lyrics draw the listener in to the sights, sounds, smells and heat of southwest Louisiana, and a strong sense of place is evident in many of
Landreth's songs. Although his style is completely his own and his singing is more than adequate,
Landreth admits that writers like William Faulkner have had a big influence on his lyric writing. The fact that it's taken so long for academics at American universities to recognize the great body of poetry that
blues is concerns
Landreth as well.
Robert Johnson is
Landreth's big hero when it comes to guitar playing. "When I finally discovered
Robert Johnson, it all came together for me,"
Landreth said, noting that he also closely studied the recordings of
Skip James,
Mississippi John Hurt and
Charley Patton. ~ Richard Skelly, All Music Guide
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