Loading details…
Artist
Michael de Jong
12+ albums
folkbluesacousticsinger-songwriterguitar
about
Michael De Jong (Fontenay-le-Comte, France, 1945 - 10 March 2018) was a Dutch–American blues guitarist and singer songwriter. In the early days when he played with the Michael De Jong Band there were influences in his music by Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Jimmy Reed and other 1950s blues and rockabilly. Later he played (mostly solo) sober intimate songs using just a guitar and his hoarse worn out voice. He wrote about his struggle with life, about women ("Gods masterpiece"), love and the decay of society. De Jongs father (Gerben De Jong ("Gep"), 1919 – 1994) was a Dutchman who fled the Netherlands during World War II. In France his father married a French Basque woman, that time De Jong was born. After the War, they lived in The Netherlands until the family emigrated to the United States in 1950. (Which is why Michael has no less than three different passports.) At the age of five De Jong grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he ended up as the foreign outsider. When he was six years old he joined the church choir, he never stopped singing again. His first performance was at this age: he sang "Ave Maria" in the boys church choir. In contradiction of this, he spent his ninth birthday in a youth institution for setting his school on fire. The reason for this: in front of his schoolmates he was blamed to be a bad Catholist, because his parents didn't donate enough money to the church. De Jong was caught early, otherwise he would have burned down the church, the
