John Rankin is the best known solo acoustic guitarist in the New Orleans area, and has cultivated a large and diverse audience seeking sophisticated musical styles for many years. Rankin was recently the 2003 Big Easy Award for Best Folk Artist by Gambit Weekly. He followed up his well-received 1984 album, Something I Ate, in 2002 with a CD of New Orleans solo guitar styles called Guitar Gumbo. The new CD has already won critical acclaim from the New Orleans press including OffBEAT Magazine, The Times-Picayune and Gambit Weekly.
He
has performed at every New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival since 1981,
was second place winner of the 1985 American Finger-Style Guitar Festival,
and won the 1992 Big Easy Award for Best Folk Music. Rankin has opened
for such acts as the Roches, Leo Kottke, Donovan, Doc Watson, the Rascals,
J.J. Cale, John Fahey, Roger McGuinn, David Lyndley, Doug Kershaw, Leon
Russell, Graham Nash, and many others. In addition to teaching guitar
at Tulane University, Loyola University, and the University of New Orleans,
he regularly performs recitals around the Deep South.
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Well known for his nightclub work, Rankin blends together New Orleans style rhythm & blues and jazz, latin, folk, blues, and standards, as well as a dazzling array of original instrumentals. He uses many different guitars to create a palette of different guitar styles, including 12 strings, a custom 7 string archtop, a National resonator, custom 6 strings, and a classical guitar, and also plays harmonica in a neck rack and sings. He is well known for his guitar arrangements of New Orleans piano R & B syles. "What I'm going for," he said in a recent interview, "is fingerstyle guitar versions of some of the great New Orleans piano styles, with understated vocal and guitar that swings!"