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George Higton has been making music for over thirty years, from filling in as a bouzouki player behind belly dancers when he was fourteen in downtown Toronto and hitting the road in the seventies, to leading diverse and dynamic bands and recording internationally. Growing up just doors away from the historic Concord Tavern on Bloor Street West, the very underage future musician would sneak in the back door and catch sets by Otis Redding, Rufus Thomas, The Supremes, The Hawks, Bobby Bland, and on and on. George soaked up these artists’ music through his pores, simply as part of his neighbourhood landscape.
Sonny Boy, George’s latest music release on Builtrite Records was recorded in classic combo style, inspired by the likes of Nina Simone, Chet Baker, Mose Alison and Tim Hardin. Hardin was a mentor when George was still in high school, when he got to know the taciturn sixties icon by attending his frequent gigs at the Riverboat in the old bohemian Yorkville district of Toronto. “I almost literally learned my craft at the feet of the master,” George now acknowledges about Hardin. “He’s remembered mostly as a folk singer but he was really a soul shouter. Ray Charles, also a big fan, often said Tim was the better singer. I’d study what he was doing at the piano and at the mic from only inches away and just absorb everything I could from him. He was remarkably easygoing about my obvious poaching of his technique.”
My Life with Einstein, released by legendary Celluloid Records, was the album that first brought attention to the music of George Higton. He was the first and only Canadian artist ever signed by the acclaimed international label, which also released albums at the same time by other such compelling artists as Afrika Bambaataa, Soft Cell, Bill Laswell and Herbie Hancock. My Life with Einstein was a bold, critically cited blend of avant-garde jazz, rock, and proto hip-hop. The Globe and Mail newspaper considered the album to be “in the Velvet Underground art rock tradition, containing vivid moments of poetic illumination.”
Writing has always been the key element in George’s life. Whether it is in lyric, prose, theatre or cinema, George is a writer as much as a musician. He’s a working screenwriter in both North America and Europe and holds a masters degree in Film & Video. George has worked as a producer and director in film and theatre. As well, he worked as an editor and journalist, writing for publications here and abroad. George was the founding publisher-editor of Shades, a groundbreaking Canadian alternative culture and music magazine considered to have set the template for many others that followed. Prior to starting Shades George was a staff writer at New York Rocker magazine.