Santo & Johnny

Best remembered for their instrumental guitar classic "Sleepwalk," brothers Santo and Johnny Farina were born and raised in Brooklyn. Inspired by the country music he heard on the radio, Santo adopted the steel guitar as a teen, and at age 14 he formed an instrumental trio, soon after writing his first original songs. In time he began teaching his younger sibling Johnny to play standard electric guitar, and they started performing as a duo. Santo & Johnny debuted in 1959 with "Sleepwalk" for the tiny Brooklyn label Trinity Records, a hauntingly atmospheric instrumental they'd composed with the aid of their mother. The single became a major local favorite and was then licensed to the Canadian-American imprint, where it topped the Billboard pop charts in August of that year.