Biography
Born as Benson Lee Kaukonen in September 1945 in Topeka, Kansas, guitarist and vocalist Peter Kaukonen is the younger sibling of Jorma Kaukonen from Jefferson Airplane. Early on he performed blues and folk material, then launched a bluegrass ensemble during his 1964 studies at the University of Stockholm in Sweden. After relocating to California he joined Petrus, whose album for A&M Records remained unreleased when the band dissolved, prompting his move to San Francisco. Strong connections to Jefferson Airplane led him to appear on the spin-off projects Blows Against The Empire and Sunfighter, and he later cut material for the band’s Grunt imprint. Black Kangaroo, the band he assembled in 1971, started with Mario Cipollina on bass and Bill Gibson on drums—both of whom would later join Huey Lewis And The News—yet the album Peter Kaukonen: Black Kangaroo instead featured bassist Larry Knight, born Larry Weissberg, and drummer Joey Covington, formerly of Hot Tuna and Jefferson Airplane. That lone release delivered a hard-edged sound shaped by Jimi Hendrix and Johnny Winter; Kaukonen briefly collaborated with the latter after the group disbanded in 1972. Although offered the bass chair in Jefferson Starship, he chose a solo path and tracked the all-instrumental Traveller from 1980 to 1984. The set never received an official release, so Kaukonen sold cassette copies at his concerts. Black Kangaroo was reactivated twice more: in 1977 with Stable Brown on bass and a drummer known only as Stavros, and again near the decade’s end with Keith Ferguson on bass and Jimmy Gillen on drums, until Ferguson’s departure caused its final collapse. He subsequently assisted in the formation of the Fabulous Thunderbirds.