Sonny Sharrock

Sonny Sharrock (1940-1994), born Warren Harding Sharrock in Ossining, New York, was an American guitarist and one of the few prominent guitarists in the first wave of free jazz in the 1960s. He had wanted to play tenor saxophone after hearing John Coltrane, but asthma stopped him, so he took up the guitar and built a style of heavy chords, feedback and distorted, horn-like lines. He died of a heart attack in Ossining. In the late 1960s Sharrock played with Pharoah Sanders (on Tauhid, 1967), with Byard Lancaster and for several years with Herbie Mann.