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Artist
Mike Wilhelm
12+ albums
spotify
about
Mike Wilhelm (Michael Ray Wilhelm, March 18, 1942 – May 14, 2019) was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter, best known as a founding member of the influential Bay Area band The Charlatans, who have been widely credited as starting the Haight-Ashbury psychedelic scene during the 1960s. He later played with the bands Loose Gravel and The Flamin' Groovies. Wilhelm was born in Los Angeles on March 18, 1942, and first learned to play blues guitar in his teens, from legendary Tennessee bluesman Walter "Brownie" McGhee. He served for a short time in the U.S. Navy before starting his professional music career as an opening act for the Chambers Brothers. In 1964, Wilhelm became a founding member of the Charlatans. The band's music had more pronounced jug band, country and blues influences than many other Bay Area groups, while their distinctive late 19th-century fashions exerted a strong influence on the Summer of Love in San Francisco. The Charlatans' recorded output was small, with their one and only studio album, The Charlatans, appearing in 1969, two years after the band's 1965-1967 heyday. Despite being influential on the San Francisco counter-culture scene during the late 1960s, the Charlatans never managed to break into the national Billboard charts and broke up at the end of 1969. During the 1960s, when the photographer Herb Green asked Jerry Garcia who his favorite guitarist was, Garcia responded "Mike Wilhelm" without hesitation. A version of Buffy St. Marie's "C
