David Bennett Cohen's extensive musical path stretched from the bright lights of Broadway stages into the heart of the blues. His introduction to classical piano came at age seven, followed two years later by self-taught efforts on guitar. During his teenage years the first encounter with boogie-woogie piano ignited an enduring passion for the blues, yet his earliest commercial breakthrough arrived with the psychedelic movement when he joined Country Joe and the Fish as its founding keyboardist. Subsequent sideman work placed him alongside the Blues Project, Mick Taylor, Tim Hardin, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Winter, Huey Lewis, Michael Bloomfield, and Bob Weir, while his own solo outings found him sharing stages with Bonnie Raitt, Richard Thompson, Jerry Garcia, Leo Kottke, Rufus Thomas, and additional artists. On Broadway he performed keyboards and guitar in the touring company of the hit production Rent, and throughout the 1990s he accompanied former Johnny Copeland sideman Bobby Kyle. Cohen also wrote the two-volume instructional set David Bennett Cohen Teaches Blues Piano, Volumes I and II, each issued with companion CDs; for Homespun Tapes he created the audio series Blues/Rock Piano and Ragtime Piano plus the three-volume video series Blues Piano, and the Kicking Mule label released a pair of his guitar instruction LPs.
