Mike Wilhelm

Blues, Musical Artist

1942 –

10

Who is Mike Wilhelm?

Mike Wilhelm is a guitarist, singer and songwriter from California, United States of America. He was born in Los Angeles in 1942 and first learned to play blues guitar in his teens, from legendary Tennessee bluesman Walter "Brownie" McGhee. He served for a short time in the U.S. Navy before starting his professional music career as an opening act for The Chambers Brothers.

He was a founding member of the influential Bay Area band The Charlatans, who were the first psychedelic rock band in San Francisco. During the 1960s, when the photographer Herb Green asked Jerry Garcia who his favorite guitarist was, Garcia responded "Mike Wilhelm" without hesitation. Although they were hugely influential on the San Francisco counter-culture scene during the late 1960s, The Charlatans never managed to break into the national Billboard charts and only released one album, The Charlatans, before breaking up at the end of 1969.

A version of Buffy St. Marie's "Codine", recorded by The Charlatans in 1966, was used in the movie Boys Don't Cry during Hilary Swank's sex change scene. The song's guitar solo, one of Wilhelm's favorites, was deleted from the movie soundtrack and the Charlatans had to sue the director of the film in order to receive royalties.

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Born
1942
Los Angeles
Nationality
  • United States of America
Profession

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

Citation

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