Dear John is a set of ten John Hartford songs sung and played as duets by Robert Ellis and Courtney Hartman. It was released on 8 December 2017 on the Refuge Foundation for the Arts (RFA-002 for the vinyl pressing, a run of 500 copies), with CD and download versions as well. Ellis is a Texas-based singer-songwriter; Hartman is a Colorado native who plays guitar and sings with the string band Della Mae.
The two had met at festivals and begun playing together after hours, and the first song they learned together was Hartford’s “Delta Queen Waltz,” which led them to plan a whole record of his songs. They recorded it at Niles City Sound in Fort Worth, Texas, straight to analog tape, playing live around a few shared microphones. The ten tracks include Hartford’s best-known song, “Gentle on My Mind,” alongside less familiar ones such as “Old Time River Man,” “Here I Am in Love Again,” “Howard Hughes Blues” and “Morning Bugle”; Ellis has said they leaned toward the lesser-known songs. The only credited musicians are Ellis and Hartman, both on guitar and vocals. Rolling Stone listed the record in a 2017 roundup of twelve country and Americana albums readers might have missed.
Tracklist
- 1 Old Time River Man alt version 3:45
- 2 Them Way Long Time Ago Times 2:48
- 3 Gentle on My Mind alt version 3:02
- 4 Right in the Middle of Falling for You 3:38
- 5 Here I Am in Love Again alt version 3:19
- 6 Howard Hughes Blues 2:51
- 7 Morning Bugle 3:01
- 8 Delta Queen Waltz 4:45
- 9 Up on the Hill Where They Do the Boogie 2:41
- 10 We Did Our Best 4:36
