John Hammond: Singin' The Blues

JOHN HAMMOND is sitting on a black wooden box hunched over his guitar, which is balanced on a two-by-four suspended between two wooden chairs in a dark, cramped corner behind Fat Chance's piano on the stage of the Longbranch Saloon. It was easy to see why Jimmy Hines, the pub's proprietor, laughed when I asked where John Hammond's dressing room was. The dark, cramped corner behind the house band's piano WAS John Hammond's dressing room.