James Vincent

Born James Vincent Dondelinger in Chicago, Illinois, in 1943, the guitarist grew up on the city’s South Side amid the thriving scene of contemporary urban blues. He began playing guitar while still young and absorbed influences that stretched well beyond the blues into jazz, fusion and salsa, modeling his approach after such stylists as B.B. King, Johnny Smith and Chet Atkins. By the mid-1960s he was performing regularly in neighborhood clubs, which led to his recruitment by the popular local group the Exceptions. In 1968, alongside those club dates, he established himself as a session player, laying down backing tracks for numerous artists on the Chess Records roster while simultaneously honing his own songwriting and compositional skills.

An invitation in 1969 to join the rock band H.P. Lovecraft prompted a move to San Francisco, where he also collaborated with Jerry Garcia and became deeply impressed by the fusion direction of John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra. A solo recording contract soon followed, yet he continued contributing to other artists’ projects, work that included sessions with Rufus, Azteca, Santana, Etta James and Gregg Allman; the pace was so demanding that he declined an offer to join Earth, Wind & Fire.

Vincent’s resistance to stylistic confinement is evident across his discography. The 1971 album Culmination reflected the straightforward energy of early rock, whereas mid-seventies releases explored funky R&B-infused fusion. By 1978’s Waiting For The Rain the music incorporated lyrics shaped by his recent religious conversion, merging secular and sacred elements to strong critical and commercial response. Entering the 1980s, his songs addressed Christian themes more directly while retaining a firm jazz-and-blues foundation that set them apart from prevailing pop-rock worship music.

In the mid-1980s he stepped away from performing to work as a lumberjack in northern California. After a twelve-year hiatus—and a seventeen-year interval between albums—he returned with Second Wind, an instrumental jazz-rock fusion statement that largely forgoes vocals. Despite, or perhaps because of, these interruptions, his body of work continues to engage listeners through its early directness and its later refinements.