John Parker Compton

JOHN PARKER COMPTON (aka JOHN COMPTON)
Website: https://www.featherrecords.com

Singer, songwriter, and guitarist John Parker Compton co-founded the acoustic band Appaloosa with violinist Robin Batteau in the late '60s. Compton got his start singing in a Cambridge church choir before he and Batteau began playing the coffeehouse circuit together.

As the 1972 press release for Compton's solo album, To Luna, tells it, John Compton showed up at producer Al Kooper's Columbia Records office in late 1968, hoping to show Kooper his songs. Uninterested, Kooper told the kid (Compton was 18) to come back some other time. But a little while later, Kooper came in on Compton and Batteau performing for the office secretaries. Won over, Kooper recorded their demo, and within a year the newly signed musicians had an album out, the self-titled debut from their group Appaloosa. Also including bassist David Reiser and cellist Eugene Rosov, Appaloosa was joined in the studios by members of Blood, Sweat & Tears, and by Kooper himself.

19-year-old John Compton and his band APPALOOSA performed at Fillmore East Dec.26-28, 1969 along with the Allman Brothers, and Blood, Sweat, and Tears. Appaloosa soon gave way to a duo project of Compton & Batteau and they recorded an LP for Columbia.