John Kay (musician)

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John Kay at the Chesapeake Bay Blues Festival on August 4, 2007

John Kay (born April 12, 1944 in Tilsit in East Prussia as Joachim Fritz Krauledat ) is a German - Canadian rock musician in North America. He became known worldwide through the blues rock band Steppenwolf .

Life

As part of the escape from East Prussia , his mother Elsbeth Krauledat, née. Zimmermann, with the toddler in front of the advancing Red Army to Arnstadt in Thuringia . The father Fritz Krauledat died two months before the birth of his son in World War II . In 1948 mother and son fled the Soviet occupation zone again to Hanover , where his mother married a second time. On the radio station BFBS of the British armed forces, the color-blind and light-sensitive Joachim listened to Anglo-Saxon music. His eyesight is said to be only 21%, which leads to the status legally blind (blind according to Canadian law). In 1958 the family emigrated to Toronto , Canada and later moved to Buffalo , USA .

Musician

While in Germany, Kay had geared his listening habits to the AFN soldier broadcaster . He developed a penchant for rock 'n' roll and country blues . In Canada, John Kay joined the blues band Sparrow in 1965 , from which Steppenwolf emerged in California in 1967 . The band became world famous in 1969 with the song Born to Be Wild , (1967) the title track of the cult film Easy Rider , which has since become a rock classic . Kay wrote other hits, like the protest song Monster , with which he criticized the America of the Nixon era . One review states that Kay, with an "arrogant, rasping blues voice, scowling expression behind dark sunglasses and a stage gear made of black leather, was the figurehead for his band Steppenwolf", "who decorated their driving rock with Kay's citizen-fright appeal".

After various line-up changes, the Steppenwolf group disbanded in 1980 , but they still gave a few concerts every year under the name John Kay & Steppenwolf .

Kay already recorded solo albums with and with Steppenwolf during his time . The first appeared in 1972 under the name Forgotten Songs and Unsung Heroes . The sixth and for the time being the last was published in 2001 ( Heretics and Privateers ).

John Kay moved to Tennessee in 1989 with his wife Jutta, whom he met in 1965 . They later moved to Vancouver , Canada . Since the end of 2013 he has been living with his family in Santa Barbara (California) again , where he had lived in the 1960s and 1970s.

Since Kay had named his band after the novel Der Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse , the city of his birth, Calw , invited him to the International Hermann Hesse Festival in 2002. Likewise other groups inspired by Hesse such as Anyone's Daughter .

Kay was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1996 and Canada's Walk of Fame in 2004 .

Discography

Studio Albums (as John Kay & Sparrow)

  • 1969: John Kay & Sparrow (recordings 1966–1967)
  • 1993: John Kay & Sparrow (recordings 1966–1967 remastered and supplemented with some songs)

Studio albums (as Steppenwolf)

  • 1967: Steppenwolf
  • 1968: The Second
  • 1969: At You Birthday Party
  • 1969: Monster
  • 1970: 7
  • 1971: For Ladies Only
  • 1974: Slow Flux
  • 1975: Hour of the Wolf
  • 1976: Skullduggery

Studio Albums (as John Kay & Steppenwolf)

  • 1982: Wolf Tracks
  • 1984: Paradox
  • 1987: Rock & Roll Rebels
  • 1990: Rise & Shine
  • 1996: Feed the fire

Live albums

  • 1969: Early Steppenwolf Live (recorded as The Sparrow in 1967)
  • 1970: Steppenwolf Live (as Steppenwolf)

Live albums (as John Kay & Steppenwolf)

  • 1981: Live in London
  • 1995: Live at 25
  • 2004: Live in Louisville

Studio albums as a solo artist

  • 1972: Forgotten Songs and Unsung Heroes (debut as a solo artist)
  • 1973: My Sportin 'Life
  • 1978: All in Good Time
  • 1987: Lone Steppenwolf
  • 1997: The Lost Heritage Tapes
  • 2001: Heretics and Privateers

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c Barry Graves, Siegfried Schmidt-Joos, Bernward Halbscheffel: Rock-Lexikon . Rowohlt TB, Reinbek 2003 ISBN 978-3-499-61588-7
  2. ^ Canadian Music Hall of Fame - Inductees. Canadian Music Hall of Fame , accessed August 6, 2017 .
  3. John Kay on canadaswalkoffame.com