Unofficial Leo Kottke Web Site. Leo on Record: 6 And 12 String Guitar

Leo on Record: 6 And 12 String Guitar (1969)

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Production Credits

All selections written by Leo Kottke, except "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" by J.S. Bach, arranged by Leo Kottke; published by Overdrive Music (ASCAP), administered by Bug Music.

Original Cover Design:  Annie Elliot
Reissue Art Direction:  Geoff Gans
Design:  Rachel Gutek
Remastering:  Bill Inglot & Dan Hersch/Digiprep

This album was originally released as Takoma #1024, 1969.

Original Liner Notes:
by Leo Kottke
      Leo Kottke was born in Athens, Georgia on the morning of September 11, 1867.  Beyond that point his history is unclear.  He first turned up in East St. Louis where he tended bar for 15 minutes and played his guitar -- his first 12-string, a Mexican cheapy with a nail behind the 12th fret -- for 5 minutes.  He left in terror of constant requests for "Your Smile is Like a Melody" and many more requests for his departure.  (Three years later in 1965, while languishing in the indolent splendor of the Warrenton Country Music Festival in the jungles of Virginia, Kottke was heard to comment, "'Your Smile is Like a Melody' is obviously one of the finest songs ever written."  His face was still pale.).
      When he was pre-school age his favorite songs were the "Red River Valley," the "Washington Post March" and "The Blue Tango."  He obviously had not changed by the time of his interment as a 10-year-old in Wyoming when he declared his love for "Tumbling Tumbleweeds", Gene Autry and The Songs of the Pioneers) and Floyd Perkins.  Yet this was the year, his eleventh or so, that sealed his fate and wrenched him from a course obviously headed for the immortality of a bathroom wall.  It was the year he squashed his hand in a car door, second-degree burned his nose while shagging golf balls in Lincoln, Nebraska, fell out of a treehouse, and beat up Herby Stipe.  These are, of course, ordinary events in any boy's life; but for a lad who only 2 years before had gotten lost in a ravine while trying to learn how to whistle, they were harbingers of reality.

      Luckily, these events were followed by a move to Muskogee, Oklahoma where Kottke, due to the hostile reaction of the natives when confronted by strangers, became a recluse, gave up the trombone (the trombone was a major reason for Kottke's hostile reception) and took up the guitar.  His first has a cowboy stenciled on the front.
      Being a recluse, nothing more after this point can be seen of his development.  Until the disturbance in East St. Louise, Kottke is for all intents and purposes nowhere and nothing.  (He was the first to admit this when confronted by interviewers in Fort William, Canada after his abortive attempt to stowaway on a boat leaving to tour Lake Superior.)  It may seem odd, with hindsight, that after being aroused by reality in Wyoming, Kottke should retreat from it in Oklahoma.  But consider Oklahoma, and the consider Kottke's trombone.  Finally, consider Kottke's voice which sounds like geese farts on a muggy day.
      All that is left to be said is that Kottke's voice does not appear on this album.  His guitar does.