Danny Kalb

For the producer / engineer / musician associated with Beck and Ben Harper, please use Danny Kalb.
Danny Kalb, born on September 19, 1942 in Brooklyn, NYC, USA, was a guitarist and an original member of The Blues Project, formed in 1965. He has also worked as session musician, performing with such folk singers as Judy Collins, Phil Ochs, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan. Kalb and the blues ethnomusicologist Samuel B. Charters formed The New Strangers. He joined Dave Van Ronk's The Ragtime Jug Stompers in 1963. Inspired by the African-American bluesmen Son House, Skip James and Mississippi John Hurt, Kalb experimented with acoustic and electronic music. In 1965 The Blues Project performed an eleven-minute rendition of Muddy Waters's "Two Trains Running" in electronic form, with Waters in the audience.
Personality clashes, drugs and the lifestyle of the 1960s took their toll on The Blues Project, Steve Katz and Al Kooper left to form Blood, Sweat And Tears. In 1968 Danny Kalb released "Crosscurrents" with Stefan Grossman. Kalb was fairly quiet for the next twenty years, but joined Al Kooper for a Blues Project reunion, recorded at in 1996. He recently performed solo acoustic gigs, played acoustic and electric music with the Danny Kalb Trio (opens in a new tab), including on acoustic bass and on drums, and occasionally performed with Stefan Grossman and Steve Katz and with his brother.
At the age of 76, Danny Kalb was still active as guitarist on the vintage early Gibson J-200 with which he began his career in the 1960s, and besides that he also produces, mix and master music for other artists.
He died November 19, 2022.