Best remembered for the instrumental guitar classic "Sleepwalk," brothers Santo and Johnny Farina grew up in Brooklyn. As a teenager Santo took up the steel guitar after exposure to country music on the radio, and by fourteen he had assembled an instrumental trio while beginning to compose his own material. He later instructed his younger brother Johnny on standard electric guitar, leading the pair to perform together as a duo. In 1959 they made their first appearance on record with the hauntingly atmospheric instrumental "Sleepwalk," issued on the small Brooklyn imprint Trinity Records and written with assistance from their mother. The track gained strong local traction before Canadian-American acquired the rights, sending it to the top of the Billboard pop charts that August.
The duo followed with their self-titled debut LP and scored another hit via the single "Teardrops," yet their domestic audience soon dwindled. They nevertheless delivered five additional albums on Canadian-American, including 1960's Encore and 1963's Offshore, until the label folded in 1965. In 1967 they moved to Imperial for The Brilliant Guitar Sounds of Santo & Johnny; three further releases appeared before that company also shut down in 1968. Although their appeal remained greater overseas, Santo & Johnny kept recording through the next decade, most often for obscure Italian labels, until the act dissolved in 1976 and Santo carried on alone.
