Jim Kweskin (born July 18, 1940, Stamford, Connecticut) is most notable as the founder of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, also known as Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band, with Fritz Richmond, Geoff Muldaur, Bob Siggins and Bruno Wolfe. They were active in Boston in the 1960s. Maria D'Amato, known after her marriage to Geoff Muldaur as Maria Muldaur, formerly with the Even Dozen Jug Band, joined the band in 1963. During the five years they were together, the jugband successfully modernized the sounds of pre-World War II rural music. Kweskin released six albums and two greatest hits compilations on Vanguard Records between 1963 and 1970; Jim Kweskin's America on Reprise Records in 1971; and four albums on Mountain Railroad Records between 1978 and 1987. Jim Kweskin is probably best known as a singer and bandleader, but he is also known for his guitar stylings, adapting the ragtime-blues fingerpicking of artists like Blind Boy Fuller and Mississippi John Hurt while incorporating more sophisticated jazz and blues stylings into the mix. In 2013, the band held a reunion tour that included Jim Kweskin, Maria Muldaur, Geoff Muldaur, Richard Greene, Bill Keith, Cindy Cashdollar & Sam Bevan, most of whom were amongst its original members.

In the 1960s, Kweskin was a member of the Fort Hill Community, which was founded by Mel Lyman in Boston. In the 1980s, he stopped recording and performing regularly in order to devote himself to building houses. The Fort Hill Community evolved into the Los-Angeles-based Fort Hill Construction, of which Kweskin was a founding partner and where he works as vice president.

For further reading:

Eric Von Schmidt and Jim Rooney, Baby, Let Me Follow You Down: The Illustrated Story of the Cambridge Folk Years, 1979 (out of print)

Jim Kweskin Jug Band members:

Jim Kweskin – guitar, vocals, comb
Mel Lyman – harmonica, banjo
Bill Keith – banjo, pedal steel guitar
Fritz Richmond – jug, washtub bass
Richard Greene – fiddle
Maria Muldaur – vocals, percussion, fiddle
Geoff Muldaur – guitar, vocals, mandolin, washboard, kazoo
Bruno Wolfe – vocals
Bob Siggins – vocals, banjo
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