- Sam Hinton
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name=Sam Hinton
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birth_date=March 31 ,1917
birth_place=Tulsa, Oklahoma
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residence=Berkeley, California
nationality=United States
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occupation=folk musician, marine biologist, artist
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website=http://www.samhinton.org
footnotes=Sam Hinton (born 1917) is an American
folk singer andmarine biologist .He has had a quite diverse career. He is most famous for his music, especially his
harmonica playing, but has also taught at theUniversity of California, San Diego , published books and magazine articles onmarine biology , and worked as acalligrapher and artist.He has been described as "maybe the only man alive that knows more songs than
Utah Phillips ". [http://www.dickalba.demon.co.uk/happy/03-mar/0331h.htm]Sam (not Samuel; just plain Sam) Duffy Hinton was born March 31, 1917 in
Tulsa, Oklahoma . He was raised largely inCrockett, Texas , and after graduating high school he studiedzoology for two years at Texas A&M, helping to finance his education via singing appearances. Leaving college, he moved toWashington D.C. to stay with his parents, where he worked as a window decorator for a department store and didscientific illustration for theSmithsonian in the evenings. While in Washington he and his two sisters Ann and Nell formed a semi-professional singing group called "The Texas Trio," and performed locally. In 1937 the group visitedNew York City to win aMajor Bowes' Amateur Hour competition, at which time he was invited to join the travelling Bowes troupe as a single act. Hinton left school to tour the country with the troupe, finally settling inLos Angeles three years later, where he enrolled atUCLA to studymarine biology , and met his wife, Leslie. During his stay in Los Angeles, he landed a role in the musical comedy Meet the People alongside then-unknowns includingVirginia O'Brien ,Nanette Fabray , andDoodles Weaver . After graduating from UCLA in 1940, Hinton was appointed director of the Desert Museum in nearby Palm Springs, where he served from 1942 to 1944, moving on toSan Diego , California in 1944 as Editor of Illustration at the University of California Division of War Research (UCDWR), a University of California-wide wartime laboratory that was located atPoint Loma . In 1946 he was appointed Curator of the of the Thomas Wayland Vaughan Aquarium Museum atScripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego, and served there until 1964. In 1965, Hinton moved to the upper campus and became UCSD's Assistant Director, Relations with Schools, and in 1967 he became Associate Director. Despite his professional duties, he has continued performing throughout his life.In 1947 Hinton recorded the album "Buffalo Boy" and the "Barnyard Song" for the
Library of Congress . His first commercial recording, "Old Man Atom," followed on Columbia in 1950. Over the next several years he also made a number of singles for Decca's Children's Series, and in 1952 issued his first LP, "Folk Songs of California". After three more efforts for Decca — 1955's "Singing Across the Land", 1956's "A Family Tree of Folk Songs" and 1957's "The Real McCoy" — he moved to Folkways for 1961's "Whoever Shall Have Some Good Peanuts" and 1967's "The Wandering Folksong". None of Hinton's musical projects distracted him from his academic duties, however, and from 1948 onward he taught UCSD courses in biology and folklore; for the National Education Television network, he also hosted a 13-part series on folk music, and for several years even wrote a regular newspaper column, "The Ocean World," for the San Diego Union. Hinton additionally co-wrote two books on marine research, "Exploring Under the Sea" and "Common Seashore Animals of Southern California".In 1957, Sam Hinton founded the San Diego Folk Song Society. He made what many contend was his final public appearance at the May 11, 2002 San Diego Folk Heritage Festival, and the daylong event at the Children's School in
La Jolla was permanently renamed the Sam Hinton Folk Heritage Festival.Partial discography
*""
*"The Library of Congress Recordings ", recorded in 1947, released in 1999
*"The Wandering Folksong"Folkways Records FA2401 1966External links
* [http://www.samhinton.org/ Sam Hinton Website]
* [http://www.dickalba.demon.co.uk/happy/03_mar/0331h.htm List of works by Sam Hinton]
* [http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=RoyByrd2001 Collection of videos of Sam Hinton]References
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