John Campo Tom ryan

John Campo Guitarist, Composer, Teacher, Writer & Novelist started playing at an early age studying & writing music in High School. He was soon signed to a recording contract with Kapp records, recording an album and several singles with them, So Tenderly making it to #7 on billboard charts. At age 17 he was sharing the stage with the Everly Bros. BJ Thomas, Fifth Dimension and other groups working throughout the 1960’s and even got to play the Fillmore East. In the early 1960’s he also worked as a union musician playing 5 string & 4 string banjo all over the country with bluegrass bands and Dixieland bands. The early 1970’s brought him to study Jazz at the New School with Ron Parker Judy Garlands guitarist and Jazz Interactions / Jazz Mobile with Dr. Billy Taylor, Jimmy Heath, Ted Dunbar, Mal Waldron and a teaching position of his own at Brooklyn Conservatory of Music. Up until 1975 he played with Miles Davis, Sonny Stitt, Julis Hemphill, Marvin Blackman, Eddie Jefferson, Junior Cook, Don Pullen, Ted Curson, Hilton Ruiz, Barry Alschul, Angela Bofill, Jesse Hill, Rashied Ali, Blue Mitchell, EW Wainwright. In 1976 after recording with Sam Rivers he went on a tour of the far east with Sam, Dave Holland, Mike Nock, Robert Lee Battle, & Warren Smith. In the summer of 1977 he formed his own Quintet playing their first gig at Michael Brecker’s club Seventh Ave South in NYC. For the next several years he played stints in Boston, Tuson, San Fransisco, & Miami until the middle 1980’s, sharing the bill with Jaco Pastorius, John Abercrombie, Mike Stern, and others. He has stayed local through the 1990’s and paired down to doing trio gigs in clubs, restaurants, and private parties. As Teaching became more a priority he has honed a solo career, which spawned accompanying several up and coming Jazz & R&B singers. In the last five years he has concentrated on writing music & lyrics and arrangements that are centered around methods long lost in music but live again set in his post bop R&B triplet feel. He is currently working with a driving rhythm guitarist, playing his arrangements of Standards, Jazz, Latin, Pop, & Blues in a fresh semi-acoustic sound that falls somewhere between New Orleans & Harlem traditions.