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Artist
Dick Weissman
12+ albums
Allspotify
about
Dick Weissman was born in Philadelphia, where he began piano lessons at the age of seven. His musical career was interrupted by a teenage career as a semi-professional ping pong player. Following the advice in Pete Seeger's banjo book, Dick bought a five string banjo at a pawn shop in the skid row section of town, abandoning it when he couldn't figure out how to tune it without breaking strings. While attending Goddard College in Vermont, Dick met Lil Blos, who offered to teach him how to play the banjo. At about the same time Dick won a guitar in payment of a gambling debt that was part of his ping pong expertise. Spending his junior year in New York and New Mexico, Dick met the gospel blues guitarist Gary Davis in New York, and had the great experience of sitting in on a number of occasions with Gary at the house of Tiny Ledbetter, Leadbelly's niece. Dick studied with guitarist Jerry Silverman during this New York sojourn, and met the superb banjoist Stu Jamieson in Albuquerque. After graduating from college, Dick moved to New York, and spent the next four years alternating between attending graduate school and becoming active in the folk music scene in Greenwich Village. Eventually he dropped out of Columbia, performed with Happy Traum, did a two week gig at Folk City opening for Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, and with John Phillips and Scott McKenzie formed the folk-pop band The Journeymen. Three and a half years, three Capitol albums and several hundred concerts later
