BIO - Full Story

Born in Brooklyn in 1953 and raised in Sheepshead Bay, Richard's musical influence came from his late mother, Gisele, a French-born artist and non-professional singer. It is family lore that when Gisele arrived at La Guardia airport in 1947 to marry her American ex-soldier fiancé Sidney Younger, she knew only two words of English: Frank Sinatra.

After a brief unmusical fling with the trumpet in fourth grade, Richard's parents got him guitar lessons at eleven. "I was lucky to find a wonderful teacher when I was very young who got me started on what has been a life-long journey. I learned two chords in my first lesson and could play and sing 'Tom Dooley.' After that - and the Beatles - there was no stopping."

Campfire sessions with his Boy Scout troop were followed by junior high school bands that never got beyond living rooms and garages. He wrote his first song, "You Might Call Me a Bum," on his twelfth birthday and through a family friend got to play the song for famed vocal group The Tokens at their Brill Building office, shepherded one rainy afternoon by older brother Phil. By the time he resumed his songwriting ten years later, Richard was regularly appearing at New York clubs like The Back Fence, the Bitter End and Folk City.

Four years after a 1973 visit to Paris, London and Chad (the African nation where his step-sister lived), Richard returned to Europe for an eight-month stay, busking in Greece and Paris and performing at numerous folk clubs in Holland and Denmark. Back in New York he and his former band, Driving Wheel, placed second in the one-time-only Manhattan Music Playoffs.

In the early 1980s, Richard joined The Treble Boys, a pop-rock band that appeared on the CBGB cable television show and was profiled in both Mix magazine and Teen Beat! Their single "Julie-Anne," written by Richard and recorded with drummer Andy Newmark (Roxy Music, John Lennon's Double Fantasy), has recently been included on the CD compilation Yellow Pills:Refill on the Numero Group label. In 1990, Richard was promoting his independently released album, Blue Horses (hailed as "outstanding" by Billboard), with an appearance at SWSX Music Festival in Austin. "Handful of Girls" from Blue Horses was also included on the compilation American Rockabilly (Nervous Records). However, the reality of being unable to advance his recording career proved too frustrating and led Richard to turn his attentions to finishing a degree in journalism.

Richard's journalistic efforts were published in MOJO, Newsday, The New York Times and numerous music magazines. "I was writing mostly about music, but I didn't think I would ever pursue it as a career again," he says. A deep connection to the music and career of country-soul pioneer Arthur Alexander sparked five years of research and resulted in the full-length biography Get A Shot of Rhythm and Soul: The Arthur Alexander Story (University of Alabama Press, 2000). Legendary Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler called the book " brilliant..the richest and most informative social and cultural history of fabled Muscle Shoals." Richard has subsequently written the liner notes for two of Ace records' Arthur Alexander reissues. Additionally, Richard contributed two scripts to the wildly entertaining book, Justin Green's Musical Legends (Last Gasp).

Richard's memories of the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair are included in the new book, "Woodstock: Peace Music and Memories" (Krause). In 2009, Richard duplicated his "Woodstock Walk" of forty years earlier raised nearly $4,000 for the American Cancer Society.

The year Get A Shot of Rhythm and Soul was published, Richard and his wife, Barbara, welcomed their first daughter Michele (Sophie was born in 2002). Soon after, a new career was also born. The immediate thrill of playing at local playgroups and libraries led to his increasing musical work with children. "What's so great about working with kids is that the focus, rightly, is on them," Richard says. "What's important is not how perfectly you sing or how flashy you can play guitar, but being able to involve them, allowing them to experience the joys of music making -- from the encouragement of their natural creativity to social and personal growth."

Today, Richard is a music and movement teacher with the Church Street School for Music and Art, and a contracted performer with Hospital Audiences and The Queens Library System. Gimme Gimme, his debut children's release, was produced by Pete MacNamara and recorded in Queens, New York, his home for the past fifteen years. This upbeat collection of original songs and children's standards ("Row Row Row Your Boat," "The Fox") includes a couple of "grown-up" songs (Sister Rosetta Tharpe's "Up Above My Head," and Delaney Bramlett's "Never Ending Song Love"). For Gimme Gimme he is the proud recipient of an iParenting Media Award.

"I love working with children," says Richard, who combines his "stay-around-the- apartment-dad" duties with teaching and performing commitments and birthday party gigs.

"I like to think that I'm following in the tradition of people like Tom Glazer, Pete Seeger, Raffi, Ella Jenkins, Hugh Hanely, Bev Boss, and Hap Palmer in sharing my love for music and musical games with kids," he says. "I always keep in mind: they're always learning - and birthday cake trumps everything else!"