I want you to imagine a musician who directly
inspired the iconic 12 -string guitar sound of
David Bowie. Right, which is huge in itself.
Yeah, massive. And a guy whose record was literally
a personal favorite of John Lennon. Oh, absolutely.
Now, I want you to imagine that this exact same
guy... was the very first person to mentor a
young Bob Dylan, you know, back in those smoky,
dimly lit coffee houses in Minneapolis. Just
kind of showing him the ropes? Exactly. I mean,
you would think this person would be a household
name, right? Framed in gold on the wall of, like,
every rock and roll museum on earth. You'd expect
documentaries. Box sets the whole nine yards.
Yeah. Documentaries analyzing every single move
he made. But, and this is the crazy part, imagine
that most people today have never even heard
his name. It really is one of the most, um...
glaring historical blind spots in modern music.
I mean, you were looking at someone who essentially
drew up the architectural plans for the entire
1960s folk and blues revival. He literally wrote
the blueprint. He did. Handed those plans over
and then just, well, quietly walked off the construction
site before anyone could hand him a trophy. Which
brings us to today. Today's deep dive is into
the life of Spider John Kerner. And we're pulling
this entirely from his comprehensive Wikipedia
biography. He was an American folk blues hero,
an absolute master of the guitar, and a guy who
possessed a very, very specific kind of genius.
A genius that wasn't just about music, really.
Right. And our mission here isn't just to, you
know, recount music history or list off old album
titles. We really want to uncover the blueprint
of a man who fundamentally shaped a massive...
boom, all while actively almost athletically
dodging the fame that ended up consuming all
of his peers. Which completely redefines what
a successful life as an artist actually looks
like, doesn't it? It kind of forces us to ask
what we're actually chasing when we talk about
ambition. It really does. Okay, let's unpack
this. Because to understand how John Koerner
built his musical legacy, we really have to look
at how his mind worked, like, long before he
ever picked up a guitar. Oh, for sure. His background
is so unexpected. Yeah. He was born in 1938 in
Rochester, New York, and he comes from this long,
traditional line of Methodist ministers. Right,
his father, his grandfather. Yep, even his great
grandfather, all ministers. But Corner takes
this sharp left turn. In 1956, he heads off to
the University of Minnesota, and he doesn't study
theology. He doesn't even study music. No, he
majors in aeronautical engineering. Aeronautical
engineering. I know. And that engineering mindset
is really the skeleton key to understanding everything
he did later. Because he didn't stick with it.
No, no. He dropped out in his second year to
just travel the country. He even enlisted in
the Marines for infantry training, which he actually
had to leave after surviving a really serious
car crash. Wow. Yeah. But the way he viewed the
world, like through this lens of mechanics and
structure that never left him. He didn't just
listen to music, he analyzed its load -bearing
walls, so to speak. I love that. And that mechanical
hands -on approach actually gave him his famous
nickname. Okay, the spider nickname. I gotta
say, I always assumed that was some kind of,
you know, old blues moniker he adopted just to
sound cool, like Muddy or Howlin'. Not at all.
It actually came from a day job. He was working
in an auto parts shop up in Minneapolis. Oh,
really? Yeah. And he had these really long, lanky
limbs. So instead of using a ladder, he had this
habit of literally scaling the storage shelves
to reach spare parts. Just climbing up the racks.
Exactly. His coworkers would watch him crawling
up the metal racks, and they just started calling
him Spider. That is such a great image. I mean,
you have the son of a minister finding his calling
not in the pulpit, but in the grease of an auto
shop and ultimately the grid of the blues. To
me, with that engineering back in, Corner sounds
like the original hacker of the folk scene. That's
a really good way to put it. Because he wasn't
just strumming an instrument, right? He was basically
reverse engineering it to see how the engine
worked. He was. What's fascinating here is that
he had this compulsion to tinker that bordered
on obsessive. Like he was an amateur astronomer.
But instead of just going to a store and buying
a telescope, he designed and built his own. Of
course he did. Right. He built a boat from scratch.
He built his own harmonica stand out of just
like wire and scraps. There was even a piece
in city pages that described a makeshift lawnmower
he assembled. Wait, what? Yeah, a lawnmower he
built partly out of old bicycle parts. A bicycle
lawnmower? Okay, see, that's bordering on mad
scientist territory right there. It really is.
But he applied that exact same mechanical hacking
to his primary instrument, the acoustic guitar.
How so? Well, early on, he met the legendary
Tennessee bluesman Big Joe Williams. Now, Williams
played this highly customized nine -string guitar.
Kornor looked at that and thought, I can re -engineer
my own setup to get a bigger sound. So he modified
his standard acoustic into a seven string. OK,
wait. Break that down for me. I'm not a guitar
tech. What does adding one string, because I
know he tuned it an octave apart, right? Right.
He added a second G string, tuned an octave apart
from the standard one. So what does that actually
do to the sound? Why go through all that trouble?
So when you tune a string an octave apart, you're
hitting the exact same musical note. but at a
higher pitch. When you strike that chord, you
get this incredibly rich, resonant doubling effect.
It creates this continuous vibrating hum, like
a drone underneath the main melody. And like
a bagpipe. Similar concept, yeah. But in the
context of the blues, it actually mimics the
sound of traditional West African string instruments,
like a conting, which is basically the ancestor
of the banjo. It anchors the rhythm. Wow. So
by making this one mechanical alteration to his
guitar, Kerner was able to sound like two people
playing at the same time. That is brilliant.
Yeah, this hands -on approach to just rebuilding
his physical surroundings, it perfectly set the
stage for how he was about to deconstruct the
whole folk blues genre itself in the 1960s. He
wasn't just playing traditional music. He was
modifying the machinery of the genre. And he
brought that modified machinery right into the
heart of the Minneapolis music scene, right?
This is early 1960s. He forms this loose knit
trio with Dave Ray and Tony Glover. Colonel Ray
and Glover. Exactly. And in 1963, they release
an album called Blues Rags and Haulers. I know
it made a splash, but the ripples of this record
reached way further than I think most people
realize. The shockwaves were staggering, honestly.
You mentioned John Lennon earlier. Yeah. Lennon
actually gave an interview in 1964 where he explicitly
called out blues, rags, and hollers as a personal
favorite. Which is huge. The Beatles were exploding
then. Exactly. But the David Bowie connection
is even more revealing, I think. In 2016, Bowie
told Vanity Fair that this specific album is
what introduced him to the sound of the 12 -string
guitar. No way. Yeah. Bowie actually said Kerner's
group demolished the, quote, puny vocalizations
of folk trios like the Kingston Trio. He said
they showed everyone how it should actually be
done. Demolish the puny vocalizations. That is
such a vivid, distinctly Bowie way to put it.
It really is. But it makes perfect sense. If
you think about the folk music that was commercially
popular right before that moment, groups like
the Kingston Trio, it was very sanitized. It
was guys in mashing striped sweaters, singing
very polite, perfectly polished harmonies. Bowie
recognized that Karner was bringing the dirt
and the grit back into the music. It was raw.
It was incredibly authentic. And that rawness
is exactly what drew a young Bob Dylan to him.
Koerner was actually the very first musician
Dylan met when he arrived in Minneapolis. At
a place called the Ten O 'Clock Scholar, right?
Yep, a coffee house in Dinkytown. Dylan actually
writes about this in his autobiography, Chronicles,
and he paints this incredible portrait of Koerner.
He describes him as tall and thin with a look
of perpetual amusement on his face. Which is
a great description. And he notes something really
fascinating. Dylan says Koerner was saw spoken
in regular conversation, but the second he started
singing, he transformed into a field holler shouter.
Oh, that term is so important. A field holler
goes all the way back to the antebellum south.
It was unaccompanied vocal music sung by enslaved
people in the fields. It's loud, it's highly
rhythmic, and it's meant to carry across vast
distances. Right, it has to cut through the air.
Exactly. It's the absolute emotional bedrock
of the blues. So when Dillon says Koerner sounded
like a field holler shouter, he means Koerner
had this booming, unvarnished power that completely
bypassed all that polite coffeehouse etiquette.
He just blew the doors off the place. Basically,
yeah. And because Koerner was a few years older
and already kind of an established force, he
took Dillon under his wing, he taught him folk
and blues songs, and they played together constantly.
Here's where it gets really interesting, though.
If you look at Koerner's role here, he is basically
acting like the open source software developer
of the 1960s folk scene. Oh, I like that analogy.
Right. He wrote the foundational code and then
he just freely gave it away. He mentored the
guy who would literally become the voice of a
generation without ever aggressively demanding
a patent or glory or royalties for being the
catalyst. And Koerner's reflection on that time
is just wonderfully grounded. He later said,
we were all doofy. You know, we were thinkers
and drinkers and artists and players, and Dylan
was one of us. He's another guy. No ego at all.
None. There was no myth making in Corner's mind.
They were just people figuring it out together.
If we connect this to the bigger picture, that
open source mentality really came from his philosophy
regarding art and tradition. How do you mean?
Well, he and his bandmates were massive record
collectors. They deeply studied old folk and
blues discs from labels like Folkways Records,
which was essentially the sonic archive of American
history. But he wasn't just a historian trying
to perfectly recreate a museum piece, was he?
No, and that's the crucial distinction. Corner
told an interviewer that listening to those old
records made him realize that if you want to
be like those legendary bluesmen, you don't copy
them. Right. Instead, you steal from them and
write your own stuff. Steal the essence, not
the exact notes. Exactly. The music writer Elijah
Wald pointed out that Kerner was unique because
he was one of the few young white artists in
that revival who shaped completely personal style.
He didn't just awkwardly try to mimic older black
performers. He digested the history and re -engineered
it to something entirely new. OK, so let's look
at where this puts him. It's the mid to late
60s. His influence is at an absolute boiling
point. He's recorded a solo album for Electra
Records. And in 1965, he plays the legendary
Newport Folk Festival. Which, we should really
clarify for anyone who doesn't know, was the
center of the musical universe for this genre.
The ultimate stage. If you were on the main stage
at Newport in 1965, you have been officially
anointed by the culture. Right. And then in 1969,
he teams up with Willie Murphy and releases an
album called Running, Jumping, Standing Still.
Crawdaddy magazine actually called it perhaps
the only psychedelic ragtime blues album ever
made. Which sounds like a total contradiction
in terms. Because ragtime is highly structured,
right? Heavily syncopated music. And psychedelic
rock is mind expanding, chaotic, heavily reliant
on studio effects. But he made it work. Fusing
the two was a massive critical triumph. Bonnie
Raitt even covers one of his songs on her debut
album shortly after. So the trajectory is locked
in. He is standing at the threshold of massive
global rock star fame. And what does he do? He
hits the brakes. Hard. Unbelievably hard. He
splits up the duo in the early 1970s, officially
retires from music, and just moves across the
world to Copenhagen, Denmark. Yep. And he doesn't
go there to be like a tortured expatriate artist
living in a villa off his royalties. He tries
his hand at filmmaking. He makes this unsuccessful
black and white film called The Secret of Sleep.
Right. And to make ends meet, he works as a bartender.
He works as a department store cleaner. He literally
works in a porcelain factory. incredibly abrupt
transition from the main stage at Newport to
switching the floors of a Danish department store.
See I have to push back here because I am trying
to wrap my head around this. I know it's wild.
You're telling me he voluntarily traded the momentum
of the entire 1960s counterculture, having David
Bowie taking notes from him, having Bob Dylan
looking up to him to work the graveyard shift
in a porcelain factory? Yeah. I'm sorry, but
that sounds like he was running from something
or dealing with major burnout. You can't just
call that artistic freedom. It looks like massive
self -sabotage. I hear you. And from the outside,
it absolutely looks like throwing the winning
lottery ticket out the window. Exactly. raises
an important question about what winning the
lottery actually meant in the music industry
at that time. We are so conditioned to believe
that the ultimate goal of any creative endeavor
is maximum scale, maximum wealth, stadium tours,
global fame. Sure. But Kerner saw the machinery
of fame and his engineering brain recognized
that it was a meat grinder. You mean the toxicity
of the 70s rock scene? Just look at his contemporaries,
Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, the
burnout, the substance abuse, the total loss
of autonomy. Koerner operated on a completely
different metric. He didn't want any part of
that machine. Exactly. Years later, in a 2013
interview with Record Collector magazine, he
directly addressed his lack of fame compared
to people like Dylan or Bonnie Raitt. And his
answer is incredibly revealing. What'd he say?
He said, I think you have to really want that
kind of success and adulation. And I'm just not
like that. It's just not in my character to go
chasing after fame. It's not in my character.
I guess if you view fame as a full -time job
of maintaining an ego, walking away isn't sabotage
at all. It's self -preservation. Precisely. He
stepped away when he needed to. He lived a normal
life. Yeah. And when his interest in music eventually
returned, it was entirely on his own terms. Right.
He formed a new band in Denmark. shifted his
focus more toward traditional acoustic folk,
and eventually moved back to Minneapolis. He
put out the 1974 album, some American folk songs
like these, too. I want you, the listener, to
pause and think about that. You're probably commuting
right now, or maybe sitting at your desk trying
to climb your own career ladder. Imagine getting
to the very top rung, looking around at the view
and saying, actually, the air is too thin up
here. I'd rather go do something quiet and completely
ordinary. It defies everything we're taught about
ambition. It really does. But the irony is his
return to Minneapolis sparked a whole new chapter
that was deeply sustainable. Because Korner refused
to chase global superstardom, he was able to
cultivate something arguably much more enduring.
He created a profoundly localized living legacy
right in his own neighborhood. He became practically
an institution at Palmer's Bar on the West Bank
in Minneapolis. He spent so much time there,
he literally had his daily newspaper delivered
to the bar. That's how you know you're a regular.
Seriously. And when they shot the 2005 Matt Dillon
film, Factotum, at Palmer's, Corner was right
there as an extra, just sitting at the bar in
his natural habitat. And his community fiercely
recognized his value, didn't they? Oh, absolutely.
He was inducted into the Minnesota Music Academy
Hall of Fame. in the Minnesota Blues Hall of
Fame. And his influence bled into other art forms
too. Yeah, the sci -fi writer Spider Robinson
even adopted the first name Spider out of pure
admiration for Koerner's music. That's incredible.
And then there's the star on the outside mural
of the First Avenue nightclub. Alright, the legendary
venue. For anyone who knows Minneapolis, getting
your name painted in one of those stars on the
outside of First Avenue is the holy grail. It's
not some award bought by a PR firm or decided
by a corporate committee. It's an honor recognized
performers who have made a major visceral contribution
to the culture of that specific city. It is arguably
the most prestigious public honor an artist can
receive in Minneapolis. It's a permanent mark
on the physical landscape of the city he helped
shape. Sadly, Kerner passed away from bile duct
cancer in May of 2024 at the age of 85. Yeah.
So... What does this all mean? How do you wrap
up the story of a guy who built the ship but
completely refused to sail it into the corporate
harbor? I think you have to look at how he dispersed
his worldly musical possessions at the very end.
Okay. When he officially played his retirement
shows and stepped away from performing in 2023,
he had two primary instruments. He took his 12
-string Epiphone guitar and donated it to Palmer's
bar. Right. His favorite spot. It sat there in
a glass display case, and when Palmer's eventually
changed hands and closed for a bit, it was gifted
to the nearby Cedar Cultural Center, where it
sits in the lobby today. A museum piece, essentially.
A relic of the neighborhood behind glass. Right.
But then, he takes his other primary instrument,
his 12 -string Gretsch guitar, and he gives it
to his friend. a fellow blues musician named
Charlie Parr. Okay. But he does just hand it
over as a keepsake. He gives it with a specific
directive. He demands that Parr continue using
it on stage. Wow. That actually changes the whole
perspective on his legacy. To give away your
main instrument but demand it keeps working.
It's the musical equivalent of planting a tree
knowing you will never sit in its shade. He was
actively ensuring that the music, the physical
vibration of the strings, outlives the man. It
perfectly reinforces his core operating value,
doesn't it? Knowledge, art and physical instruments
are meant to be used, not hoarded. Definitely.
His legacy isn't just historical data trapped
in a Wikipedia biography. It's a living, breathing
thing that is physically still being played out
loud on stages today under those hot lights.
He hacked the guitar, he hacked the folk genre,
and ultimately he hacked the concept of legacy
itself. That brings us right to you, the listener.
We live in an era that is completely obsessed
with virality. We are constantly told from the
minute we wake up that we need to build our brand,
you know, Chase Clout. optimize our output, and
just engage in this relentless cycle of self
-promotion. It's exhausting. It is. And Spider
John Corner's life is a masterclass in doing
what you love purely for the joy of the craft.
It's a reminder that true success doesn't always
have to look like sold out stadium tours and
private jets. Sometimes it's much simpler. Sometimes
ultimate success looks like playing the music
you love entirely on your own terms and having
your daily newspaper delivered to your favorite
local bar where everybody knows your name. It
is a profound rejection of the ego that usually
drives not just the entertainment industry, but
so much of modern life. It really is. And it
leaves us with something to think about. When
Spider -John gave his Gretsch guitar to Charlie
Parr, he demanded that it stay out in the world
under the stage lights rather than sitting silently
behind a pane of glass. It makes you wonder what
is the instrument in your own life that you are
busy polishing for a museum when you really should
be passing it to someone who will keep playing
it. Keep digging, keep listening, and we'll catch
you on the next deep dive.