Loading details…
Artist
Barry Melton
12+ albums
bluesclassic rockfolk rockrocksan francisco
about
Barry "The Fish" Melton (born June 14, 1947) is the co-founder and original lead guitarist of Country Joe & The Fish and Dinosaurs. He appears on all the Country Joe and the Fish recordings and he also wrote some of the songs that the band recorded. He appeared in the films made at Monterey Pop and Woodstock, and also appeared as an outlaw in the neo-Western film Zachariah and other films in which Country Joe & The Fish appear. An attorney and member of the State Bar of California, Melton has maintained a criminal defense practice since 1982. Melton was born in Brooklyn, New York, United States, the son of secretary Taube "Tillie" (née Kuchuck) and James Melton, an HVAC engineer who taught at Los Angeles City College. His mother was from an East Coast Jewish family (her parents were from Odessa) and his father was from a Texas pioneer family and shares ancestry in colonial Virginia with George Washington, as well as deep roots in Ireland. Raised in Brooklyn's Brighton Beach neighborhood and the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, California, Melton served as a Congress of Racial Equality volunteer during Freedom Summer and participated in a demonstration against Trần Lệ Xuân during her September–October 1963 lecture tour of Europe and the United States. Having previously studied under Kay Kyser guitarist Milton Norman for much of his youth at the instigation of his parents, Melton initially befriended future bandmate Bruce Barthol in his high school's folk music club. After
