Background and career
Benjamin Charles Harper (born October 28, 1969) is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Harper plays an eclectic mix of blues, folk, soul, reggae, and rock music, and he is known for his guitar-playing skills, vocals, live performances, and activism. He has released 12 studio albums, mostly through Virgin Records, and has toured internationally. Harper is a three-time Grammy Award winner and seven-time nominee, with awards for Best Pop Instrumental Performance and Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album in 2004 and Best Blues Album in 2013. At the 40th Blues Music Awards ceremony, Harper's joint composition with Charlie Musselwhite, "No Mercy in This Land", was named Song of the Year.
Harper was born in Pomona, California. His late father, Leonard Harper, was of African-American ancestry, and his mother, Ellen Harper Verdries (née Chase), is Jewish. His maternal great-grandmother was a Russian-Lithuanian Jew. His parents divorced when he was five years old, and he grew up with his mother's family. Harper has two younger brothers, Joel and Peter Harper. Harper began playing guitar as a child. His maternal grandparents' music store, the Folk Music Center and Museum (Claremont, CA), laid a foundation of folk and blues for the artist, complemented by regular patrons Leonard Cohen, Taj Mahal, John Darnielle, and David Lindley, and quotes of William Shakespeare and Robert Frost made often by his grandfather. In 1978, at the age of 9, Harper attended Bob Marley's performance in Burbank, California, where Marley was joined by former bandmate Peter Tosh for the encore. It was, according to Harper, an important influence.
At the age of twelve, Harper played his first gig. During the 1980s, in his teen years, Harper began to play the slide guitar, mimicking the style of Robert Johnson. Harper refined his style, taking up the Weissenborn slide guitar. Harper was offered an invitation by Taj Mahal to tour with the artist. They recorded Taj Mahal's album Follow the Drinking Gourd, released in November 1990, and toured Hawaii. In 1992, Harper recorded the LP Pleasure and Pain with folk multi-instrumentalist Tom Freund. After this limited-edition record, Harper secured a lifetime record deal with Virgin Records. In 1993, he toured venues in California and France with his band, Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals, and performed with Taj Mahal at Austin City Limits. In 1994, Harper released his debut album, Welcome to the Cruel World and toured the US and Canada with the Innocent Criminals. In November of the same year, he performed two solo shows in Spain. He released his second album, Fight For Your Mind, in 1995, with Juan Nelson on bass, which became a college radio favorite and included several songs that Harper has played live throughout his career. The same year, the band expanded their reach to Europe and performed in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Canada, and a handful of US dates. His music received a great deal of airplay and critical acclaim in Europe and was widely played in Australia (first on Triple J radio). In 1999, at the Santa Barbara Bowl, Harper met Jack Johnson and sent a demo tape of Johnson's songs to his producer, J. P. Plunier, who then produced Johnson's first album, Brushfire Fairytales, in December 2000. Jack Johnson became the opening act in late February 2001 for the last 23 cities of Ben Harper's "Innocent Criminals" tour of the United States.
In 2002, Harper was one of the featured singers covering Motown hits by Marvin Gaye in the documentary, Standing in the Shadows of Motown (a history of The Funk Brothers). Harper was featured on the album True Love by Toots and the Maytals, which won the Grammy Award in 2004 for Best Reggae Album, and showcased many notable musicians including Willie Nelson, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Trey Anastasio, Gwen Stefani / No Doubt, Bonnie Raitt, Manu Chao, The Roots, Ryan Adams, Keith Richards, Toots Hibbert, Paul Douglas, Jackie Jackson, Ken Boothe, and The Skatalites. In 2003, Harper was French Rolling Stone magazine's Artist of the Year (Artiste De L'Année), and his Australian tour that year for Diamonds on the Inside was highly successful with record sales. On April 3, 2004, Harper and Jack Johnson performed with Toots and the Maytals on Saturday Night Live (season 29, episode 16), a show hosted by Donald Trump.
In October 2004, Harper participated in the Vote for Change concert tour organized to benefit Moveon.org and encourage people in the swing states to vote during the 2004 U.S. presidential election. In the same month, Harper contributed a live recording of the song "Oppression" to For The Lady, a benefit album for jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner and Burmese pro-democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi. In 2006, Harper released the double album Both Sides of the Gun which debuted at number 7 on the Billboard 200. Though uncredited, he appears briefly in the 2006 David Lynch film Inland Empire, alongside his wife Laura Dern. Harper is part of the No Nukes group, which is against the expansion of nuclear power. In 2007, the group recorded a music video of a version of the Buffalo Springfield song "For What It's Worth". Harper's collaboration "Boa Sorte/Good Luck" with Brazilian singer Vanessa da Mata peaked at No. 1 in Brazil and Portugal. In Brazil it also won a highly coveted Prêmio Multishow for "Best Song" in 2008. Also in 2008, Harper participated in the benefit album Songs for Tibet.
On August 27, 2010, it was reported that Harper had formed a band called Fistful of Mercy with Dhani Harrison and Joseph Arthur. Fistful of Mercy released their debut record, As I Call You Down, on October 5, 2010. On May 17, 2011, Harper's official site posted that his next album was released, entitled Give Till It's Gone. The album is a continuation of recording with Relentless7. On October 1, 2012, an album from Harper with Charlie Musselwhite was announced titled Get Up! on Stax Records / Concord Music Group. The official release date for the album was January 29, 2013. Get Up! was recorded in Los Angeles and produced by Harper. It is Harper's 12th studio album and first recording since 2011's Give Till It's Gone (Virgin). In December 2012, it was announced that Harper had co-produced lead vocalist Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks first solo rock album Mother. It was released on May 7, 2013. In early 2015, it was announced that Harper and the Innocent Criminals would perform at the Boston Calling Music Festival in May 2015. Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals performed at Rock Werchter Festival 2015 on June 28, 2015. On February 12, 2016, Harper released (as a YouTube video) the single "Call It What It Is", the first track taken from his studio album Call It What It Is, released on April 8, 2016. On April 8, 2019, Harper performed as a guest artist on the seventeenth season of American Idol during the second night of the "Top 20 Duets" episode. Harper sang with contestant Alejandro Aranda, playing "There Will Be a Light". At the 40th Blues Music Awards ceremony, Harper's joint composition with Charlie Musselwhite, "No Mercy In This Land", was named as 'Song of the Year'. On March 20, 2019, Mavis Staples announced the album We Get By, featuring eleven tracks written and produced by Harper. The title track, which features Harper on vocals and in the music video, was released on May 15, 2019. In 2020, Harper released Winter Is for Lovers, an album recorded with solo Monteleone lap steel songs. "It started out as an exploration of steel guitar," Harper told Acoustic Guitar magazine in a 2020 interview, "Winter Is for Lovers is written as one piece of music; let's define that in the way that the old classical guitarists would have, on a single guitar (the Monteleone lap steel)." On June 9, 2021, Harper's longtime bassist, collaborator, and Innocent Criminals member, Juan Nelson, died at the age 62. Harper paid tribute to him, stating on Twitter: "Beloved husband, father, musical genius, BHIC band member of 27 years, and the finest man I've ever known. It's near impossible for me to put words to this pain and loss. Rest in Glory our beloved Reverend Juan." No cause of death has been confirmed. On July 22, 2022, Harper released the album Bloodline Maintenance. The album was dedicated to the memory of Juan Nelson. On June 2, 2023, Harper released his seventeenth album, Wide Open Light. This is Harper's first album to feature mainly stripped-back acoustic songs with only one track featuring drums. On April 1, 2024, ex-Innocent Criminals guitarist, Michael Ward died at the age of 57 due to complications from diabetes. On May 1, 2025, Harper released new single, "Before The Rain Dried," in tribute to Ward.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
