John Mayer and His Musical Influences

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John Mayer is one of my favorite musical artists of all time. My dad has been playing his music in the car since before I can remember. Mayer first became popular in 2002 with his album Room for Squares that sold over 3 million copies. In 2002 I was seven years old and listened to anything my dad played in the car. Back then my favorite song was “Why Georgia,” and is still one of my favorites ten years later. John Mayer was born October 16, 1977 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He picked up his first guitar at the age of thirteen after seeing Michael J. Fox play in Back to the Future. He took lessons from a local shop owner and had an increasing love of blues music after a neighbor gave him a Stevie Ray Vaughan cassette tape. At sixteen he started playing at local blues bars and started a band called Villanova Junction (names after the Jimi Hendrix song). He attended university at Berklee School of Music in Boston and started recording in 1998. Growing up Mayer’s inspirations were artists such as Stevie Ray Vaughan, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, and Eric Clapton. Stevie Ray Vaughan was born in 1954. He first started playing the guitar at the age of seven. At seventeen he dropped out of high school, much to his parent’s dismay, and left his hometown of Dallas, Texas for Austin. During his time there he joined groups such as Krackerjack, the Nightcrawlers, and the Cobras. In 1977 he started the band Triple Threat, and later changed the name to Double Trouble. But, Vaughan didn’t really become famous until David Bowie heard him perform and ask him to play for his upcoming album Let’s Dance. Vaughan was influenced by many different types of musicians: blues artists like Albert King, Otis Rush, and Muddy Waters; rock guitarists like Jimi Hendrix and Lonnie Mack; and jazz artists like Kenny Burrell. Albert King was born in 1923 in Indianola, Mississippi. He is

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