Santo & Johnny

The father of Santo and Johnny Farina was serving in the US army in the 1950s when, over a crackling forces radio broadcast, he first heard the lulling, swaying melodies of a steel guitar. He wrote home raving about the beautiful, weeping sound and suggested that his young sons learn the instrument. And so they did.

With the offer of their mother's home-cooked Italian food, they managed to tempt a Hawaiian musician from their Brooklyn neighbourhood into teaching them the basics of the lap steel, and they were soon playing at church dances and local taverns. After gigs the pair would stay up late jamming and recording material on a cheap cassette player, and would then take their tapes to the Brill Building (the home of the music industry in New York) in search of a record deal. In 1959 they got their break when an executive at the small label Trinity took a liking to an instrumental track they'd written called 'Sleep Walk', and they soon had a big hit on their hands. Built on Santo's dreamy, melting lap steel melodies and Johnny's shuffling, doo-wop guitar rhythm, the single topped the US charts and became a piece of ambient pop music that would remain prominent throughout the years, being used in films such as Stephen King's 'Sleepwalker', sci-fi drama '12 Monkeys' and the Richie Valens biopic 'La Bamba'. It even inspired Peter Green to write the Fleetwood Mac classic 'Albatross', had fans in George Harrison and John Lennon and was covered by The Shadows, The Pretenders and Les Paul. They had smaller follow-up hits with 'Teardrop' and 'Twistin Bells' in 1960, but albums 'Encore', 'Hawaii' and 'Come On In' didn't make a dent in the charts. They found popularity in Italy thanks to their covers of James Bond themes and show tunes but made the decision to split in 1976.