BARRY FINNERTY'S BIO: LONG VERSIONI, BARRY FINNERTY, was born in San Francisco on December 3, 1951. My father, Warren, was an award-winning actor (he received the Village Voice Obie for Best Actor of 1960 for 'The Connection') and my mother, Ruth, was an excellent classical pianist who later got her PhD and taught English at UC Berkeley.I began playing piano and reading music at age 5, then got my first guitar (a classical) for my 13th birthday.
I got my first electric guitar, a Fender Jaguar, for my 14th birthday while living in Hong Kong (my mom had gotten a Fulbright grant to teach there for a year), and that same year my first band, The New Breed, opened the show for Herman's Hermits! I seemed to get some attention for my ability to play the guitar solos from the Kingsmen's 'Louie Louie' and the Rolling Stones' 'Heart Of Stone' note for note! The band also played songs by the Who, the Kinks, and the Yardbirds.
Barry Finnerty New York City Rar Free
Jeff Beck was my first real guitar hero.I returned to San Francisco in 1966 and played in high school bands while absorbing the new hippie rock scene at the Fillmore and Avalon Ballrooms. Here I heard Jerry Garcia with the Grateful Dead, Mike Bloomfield with the Butterfield Blues Band, and later, Eric Clapton with the Cream, and Jimi Hendrix, along with virtually all the top bands of the time. Hearing Jerry Garcia's smooth melodic playing influenced me to trade in my Jaguar for a red single cutaway Guild Starfire. But I really identified more with Jeff Beck, so I traded that one in for a '57 cherry sunburst Les Paul.with a Bigsby tremolo! (I had it removed.I had worked hard on my finger vibrato and I didn't want anyone to think I was cheating!) The price of that guitar.500 bucks.
Now it would be worth at least $25,000!Around that time, I began to be interested in jazz, and studied jazz guitar and theory with Dave Smith at Sherman Clay music store in downtown SF. I listened to records by guitarists such as Howard Roberts (my first real jazz influence), Kenny Burrell, and George Benson, as well as Dave Brubeck (with Paul Desmond), Miles Davis ('Kind Of Blue') and John Coltrane. I traded in the Les Paul for a 1960 blond Gibson Johnny Smith.
I played and sang in a band, Beefy Red, that opened shows at the Fillmore and Avalon and featured some of the Bay Area's top young musicians. In 1969 I entered UC Berkeley and studied philosophy, astronomy, ear training and sight singing, which considerably advanced my musicianship and conceptual abilities.
In 1971 I attended the Berklee School of Music in Boston for one semester, during which time I went to New York and heard some real heavyweight artists, live, including George Benson (who I still consider the greatest jazz guitarist in the world, bar none!), Joe Henderson, Chick Corea, and the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra. I could see that I wasn't quite ready yet, so I returned to San Francisco for two more years of 'seasoning.'
I played some gigs around the area and bought another Les Paul from my old high school band mate Adam Silver.a beautiful '59 sunburst.for $500 again!In April, 1973, I moved to New York City, determined to break into the world of big time professional jazz. A good friend from the Bay Area, saxophonist Alex Foster, had been there already for a few months and had just started to play with Chico Hamilton, and after auditioning, I got the gig! Three months later, in June, 21-year-old Barry was performing at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland on the same bill as Miles Davis! A live recording of that concert, featuring one of my first compositions, 'In View', was released on Stax Records, for which I never received one cent of royalties.welcome to the music business!The early '70s were good years for jazz in New York. There used to be jam sessions almost nightly at various downtown lofts, where guys would come to hone their chops.
All kinds of players would come and sit in, including Mike and Randy Brecker, Joe Farrell, Dave Liebman, Steve Grossman, Tom Harrell, Woody Shaw, all good people for a young player to brush elbows with. In fact, they were all pretty young then, too!In 1974, on a recommendation from Billy Cobham, who had heard me at a club, I got the gig with Airto and Flora Purim. They were quite hot at that time having just done Chick Corea's 'Light As A Feather' album. We played the Monterey Jazz Festival that year with bassist Charles Fambrough and pianist Mike Wolff.
Barry Finnerty New York City Rar Player
The Jon Hammond Show now on Cable TV in New York City for 28 years, here we go backto a segment with rare footage of Jon Hammond Band inside the now defunct Frankfurt jazz club - die Jazz Kneipe, Jon Hammond at the XB-2 Hammond organ along with James Preston of Sons of Champlin on drums, Barry Finnerty guitar and Sgt. Hach bod incubator model 205 manual lymphatic drainage for breast cancer. Al Wittig of U.S. Air Force on tenor saxophone. A concert with Jon's band with very special guest Lee Oskar of War on harmonica in Brotfabrik in Frankfurt Hausen and then incredible live documentation of a live radio broadcast inside the studios of AFN Radio at Frankfurt Headquarters on the air with the voice of AFN Margie Glad circa 1994, Jon's debut of a new song then entitled Nu Funk or Hip Hop Chitlins - in Trio, enjoy folks!Sincerely, Jon Hammondhttp://www.HammondCast.comMusic.