Rainer

Born on June 7, 1951, in East Germany, Rainer Jaromir Ptacek grew up in Chicago after his family fled the Communist country in 1953. Musically inclined from childhood, in the mid '60s Rainer swapped violin for guitar. (He once quipped, "None of the Beatles, it seemed, were interested in violin.") A decade later he'd become a fixture on the Tucson music scene, ultimately garnering an international reputation as a song stylist and slide virtuoso that had critics speaking of him, Ry Cooder and John Fahey in the same breath...