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Artist
Santo & Johnny
12+ albums
instrumentaloldiesSurf50sguitar
about
Santo & Johnny were an American rock and roll duo from Brooklyn, New York. They are best known for their instrumental "Sleep Walk", which became a regional hit and eventually reached the top of the Billboard pop chart when it was released nationally in 1959. At present, Santo is semi-retired and Johnny tours and records new material with his own band. Johnny is also the president of Aniraf, Inc., an international record company based in New York. Santo and Johnny Farina were born in Brooklyn, New York; Santo on October 24, 1937 and Johnny on April 30, 1941. Their father was drafted into the Army while they were children and was stationed for some time in Oklahoma. After hearing a steel guitar on the radio, he wrote to his wife, "I'd like the boys to learn to play this instrument". Upon returning from World War II, the boys' father found a music teacher who gave the boys steel guitar lessons. When Santo was a teenager, he was able to get a local music store to modify an acoustic guitar, allowing him to play it like a steel guitar. Within two years, Santo was performing in amateur shows on a new Gibson six-string steel guitar and had started receiving lessons from a steel guitar teacher who had studied in Hawaii. By the age of fourteen, Santo was composing songs, and formed an instrumental trio with a guitarist and drummer. This trio appeared at local dances and parties, performing both original compositions and some Hawaiian standards. With money Santo made from these perfor
