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Artist
John Ellis
12+ albums
jazzsaxophonenew waveguitarpost-punk
about
There are multiple artists that go by the name of John Ellis. 1. John Ellis, an American jazz saxophonist 2. John Ellis, an English guitarist and songwriter and founder of punk rock band The Vibrators 3. John Ellis, a South African singer, songwriter and guitarist and founder member of the contemporary Christian music band Tree63. 1. John Ellis, the tenor saxophone player, grew up with a love of baseball, dewberry cobbler, and turkey and stuffing. Raised in rural tobacco country in North Carolina, he was more familiar with the sounds of hunting rifles and the dangers of snapping turtles than he was with the sounds and dangers of jazz. He was a pretty unlikely candidate for a career in music at all, as a matter of fact, but somewhere between singing hymns in his father’s church, fooling around with Scott Joplin Rags on the piano, and marching in the high school band, he began to realize that music was the only thing he really wanted to do. As a sophomore in high school he began his serious study of music at the North Carolina School of the Arts, where his now famous brother, David Ellis, had studied a couple years earlier in the Fine Arts department. There, John apprenticed with the world-renowned saxophonist James Houlik, who is still one of his most important mentors. After four years at NCSA, John moved to New Orleans, hoping to begin a serious study of jazz. He spent one year at the University of New Orleans under the direction of legendary jazz patriarch Ellis
