Susan Tedeschi - Early Life

Early Life

Susan Tedeschi was born on November 9, 1970, in Boston, Massachusetts, to a family of Italian ancestry, (Tedeschi means Germans in Italian) and was raised in Norwell, Massachusetts. She is the daughter of Dick Tedeschi, granddaughter of Nick Tedeschi and great-granddaughter of Angelo Tedeschi, of the supermarket and convenience store family well known in Massachusetts. Tedeschi has always been musically inclined, and made her debut public performance as a six-year old understudy in a Broadway musical. Also, she sang for family members and listened to her father's record collection of old vinyl recordings, like Mississippi John Hurt and Lightning Hopkins. Raised as a Catholic, she found little inspiration in the church choir, and so attended predominantly African-American Baptist churches, feeling the music was "less repressed and more like a celebration of God." She has played in bands since the age of 13. At the age of 18, she formed her first all-original group, The Smokin' Section, in the nearby town of Scituate, Massachusetts.

After graduating Norwell High School, Tedeschi attended the Berklee College of Music where she sang in a Gospel choir. She performed show tunes on the Spirit of Boston and received her Bachelor of Music degree in musical composition and performance at age 20. During that time, she began sitting in on blues jams at local venues and immersed herself in the Boston music scene.