John Franklin "Ellington" Blair was an American violinist & guitarist, born November 8h 1943 Toledo, Ohio, died June 3rd 2006 in New York, NY, USA. Dr. John Blair (or Master John Blair) grew up in California and began taking violin lessons as a child, graduating with honors from Lincoln High School in San Diego in 1961. Blair became a heavy academic, holding degrees from Eastman and Curtis conservatories. He even founded a school (The Universal Natural System). He is best known as the inventor of the Vitar, an acoustic combination of violin and guitar. He featured on many jazz funk LPs in the early 1970s and released a few sought after psych-funk releases on Mercury, Columbia and CTI. During the 1980s he disapeared off of the map, never to return. He died of heart failure, homeless.