Eric Bibb
@ the Love Supreme Jazz Festival
6 July 2013

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Biography

Eric Bibb’s father, Leon Bibb, certainly helped his son dig a little deeper. An acclaimed singer in stage musicals and a senior figure on the New York folk scene of the 1960s, Leon gave his son his first guitar when he was seven, and introduced him to a who’s-who of musical icons. Bibb’s godfather was actor singer and activist Paul Robeson; his uncle was jazz pianist and composer John Lewis. Family friends included Odetta, Pete Seeger and Josh White.

A professional player at 16, playing in the house band for his father’s television talent show, Something New, Bibb went on to study (psychology and Russian) at Columbia University, but “after a while it just didn't make much sense; I didn't understand why I was at this Ivy League school with all these kids who didn't know anything about what I knew about,” he says now. Aged 19, he left for Paris, where a meeting with American studio guitarist Mickey Baker focused his interest in blues guitar.

A few years later he moved to Sweden and settled in Stockholm, where he found a creative environment that, oddly, reminded him of his teenage days in Greenwich Village. He made a handful of albums, starting in 1972, and began meeting and playing with local musicians as well as newcomers from all over the world. He laughs: “There was a budding world music scene going on, long before it became a marketing concept.”

His breakthrough album, “Good Stuff” was released in 1997 and led to Bibb signing to a British label, which in turn released “Me to You,” featuring appearances from some of his personal heroes, among them Pops and Mavis Staples and Taj Mahal.

The album furthered Bibb’s international reputation and was followed by tours of the UK, the United States, Canada, France, Sweden and Germany. And so it went through the 90s and the first decade of the new century - he made consistently good records, and built audiences from Stockholm to Sydney, Vancouver to Vienna, Paris to Peoria, New Orleans to Newcastle, and from B.B. King’s club in New York to the Bluebird Café in Nashville.