Ramblin’ Jack Elliott

Artist’s Website

One of the great American musical treasures, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott has had a rich and storied life. As a budding musician, Jack developed his voice under the tutelage of Woody Guthrie, truck hitching across the country off and on for a couple of years with Woody, carrying “only razors and guitars.” The pair eventually landed in the McCarthy-free enclave of Topanga Canyon CA in the 1950s, where Elliott played for James Dean and later married Dean’s former flame. On the other coast, Elliott was also a fixture of the Greenwich Village scene, and once spent “three days and a lot of wine” listening to Jack Kerouac read On the Road. But it is his relationship with a young Bob Dylan that Elliott is perhaps most famous for, though back in the 1960s the up-and-coming Dylan was often mistakenly dubbed the “son of Jack Elliott.” Today Elliott simply states “Dylan learned from me the same way I learned from Woody.”Ramblin’

Jack Elliott is one of folk music’s most enduring characters. Since he first came on the scene in the late ’50s, Elliott influenced everyone from Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger to the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead. The son of a New York doctor, Elliott used his self-made cowboy image to bring his love of folk music to one generation after another.

Despite the countless miles that Elliott traveled, his nickname is derived from his unique verbiage: an innocent question often led to a mosaic of stories before he got to the answer. According to folk songstress Odetta, it was her mother who gave Elliott the name when she remarked, “Oh, that Jack Elliott, he sure can ramble.”