I heard “Fast Car” and fell in love with her voice. I think you will love her as well. Telling Stories is my favorite Tracy song. I hope you enjoy it as well and become a fan.
Under Appreciated Singer/Songwriter
John David Souther is one of the best songwriters of all time. You might not have ever heard his name but i would almost guarantee you have heard his songs. As it turns out, even though he might not have the hits to show for it, he does his own songs better than anyone else. I hope you enjoy Silver Blue. Check out his solo catalog and the two albums produced by The Souther, Hillman, Furray Band, one of the most interesting supergroups of all time.
I first became familiar with Karla from Linda Ronstadt’s album Hasten Down The Wind which includes a couple of Karla’s songs, Lose Again and Someone To Lay Down Beside me being the stand outs. I was blown away but really fell in love with her when her self-titled solo album was released. She was on tour with Jackson Browne supporting that album and I saw two of those shows. Those performances showed me that she was a true triple threat: singer, songwriter, and performer. Check her out and you will not be disappointed.
If you were around in the early 70s chances are that you fell in love with a song called Stuck In the Middle with You by a Scottish duo called Stealers Wheel. Stealers Wheel consisted of Joe Eagan and Gerry Rafferty. Both Joe and Gerry produced solo albums after the breakup of Stealers Wheel but it was Gerry that emerged as the true talent. You’ve probably heard Baker Street but there is so much more to Gerry than just that song. I have provided one example for you to listen to but there is much more for you to discover in his catalog. Unfortunately we lost Gerry a little over a year ago. RIP Gerry!
Steve Earle is an amazing talent but more importantly he is an amazing human being. In addition to being a great singer/songwriter, he is a political activist that uses his music to champion causes such as abolition of capital punishment and the anti-war movement. The song I have for you here is The Revolution Starts Now which was written to support the John Kerry presidential campaign in 2004 and to express his anti-war views. The song means as much today as it did 8 years ago. Give a listen to more of his music if you like The Revolution Starts Now.
When your career starts with the formation of Traffic, one of the best groups from the late 60s and early 70s, you could easily spend the remainder of your career resting on your laurels. To Dave Mason’s credit he did not take this path, instead he produced some of my favorite music as a solo artist. He not only wrote and performed his own great songs as a solo artists but he was also a great interpreter of songs written by others. If you have never heard his version of Bob Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower, you are really missing a treat. The song I have for you today is Look at You Look At Me from his debut solo album called Alone Together.
As an aside you might be interested to know that a small percentage of the Alone Together albums were pressed with what was intended to be swirls of color. Unfortunately these albums came out in an unappealing shade of light brown that kind of reminds me of vomit. I am the “lucky” owner of one of these colored albums. Fortunately the music makes up for the color of the vinyl.
Cat Steven’s Tea For the Tillerman and Teaser and the Firecat released in 1970 and 1971 respectively were two of the best back to back albums produced by any singer/songwriter. The video above is a live performance of Wild World from the BBC. Give Cat a listen if you haven’t already. By the way he currently performs as Yusuf Islam after his conversion to Islam in 1977.
As a personal aside, a southern group called The Gentrys had a minor hit with Wild World in 1971 and they performed at my High School Prom that year.
Pete is the most current artist on my list of the 12 most under appreciated singer/songwriters. Strange Condition, the song I have for you here, is from his debut album musicforthemorningafter that was released in 2001. I really enjoy his music and hope you will give him a listen if you aren’t already a fan.
I am going to be busy the next couple of weeks so I have prepared a series of posts that highlight the twelve singer/songwriters that I think are most under appreciated. We will go in reverse order leading up to the individual that I think is the most under appreciated of all. By the way, I used the following criteria to select these 12 artists: length of career; consistency of song writing/performance quality; and popular awareness of their deep catalog (going beyond their hits).
I hope you enjoy these posts and find someone new whose music you can explore. I love them all so you won’t go wrong with any of them. Check back tomorrow for the first post in this series.
So….any opinions on the question I posed in the last post? Let’s provide some more background information in the form of a story and see if the answer becomes any clearer.
It’s 1973, the height of the singer/songwriter era, and you have just released your first album called Aquashow on the Polydor label. The headline for the Aquashow review in Rolling Stone magazine is: “He’s the Best Dylan Since 1968”. Here, let’s take a listen.
Great news? Nope….you are officially fucked because you have just been hit with the “Dylan comparison”.
But wait, you aren’t alone. Another young singer/songwriter name Bruce Springsteen has also recently been hit with the same comparison in the April 26, 1973 issue of Rolling Stone in an article titled “Bruce Springsteen: It’s Sign Up a Genius Month”. To quote the first paragraph of the article:
“It’s more than a decade since John Hammond Sr. of Columbia Records signed Bob Dylan to a recording contract. Since then, Hammond has signed a number of other successes and, by his own admission, a number of “stiffs”. Now he has signed Bruce Springsteen, 23, of Asbury Park, New Jersey, and Hammond says. “He’s much further along, much more developed than Bobby was when he came to me.”
As it turns out, despite all of the critical acclaim, neither your first album nor Bruce’s first album has significant commercial success. Strike one
Move ahead to your and Bruce’s second albums (Lost Generation and The Wild, the Innocent, and E Street Shuffle). For this album you decide to jump to RCA, perhaps with the hope that they will promote you better. Bruce sticks with Columbia. To quote Paul Nelson’s Rolling Stone review for Lost Generation,
“Elliott Murphy’s first album, Aquashow (Polder), released 18 months ago, showed exceptional promise and intelligence, prompting many, myself included, to ready a place in the higher echelons of rock & roll for the talented Long Islander. Now after a lengthy season of hard times – new label, new manager, new producer – Murphy returns to stand, deliver, and collect. On Lost Generation, a brilliant but extraordinarily difficult LP, the artist is hurt, angry and confused by the shifting role of the hero in modern times and the growing division between intoxicating myth and sobering reality in his personal and public lives.”
Wow, commercial success seems to be a certainty, but once again, your hopes are dashed. Bruce’s fate with The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle is similar. Strike two
You and Bruce both recognize that your careers are behind with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. It is time to swing for the fences or go home. For brevity we will skip the story of Bruce’s third record here especially since everyone already knows it. Bruce did swing for the fence and produced Born To Run, an absolutely stunning album. Rolling Stone ranked Born to run as the 18th best album of all time, it was a huge commercial success, and Bruce’s was launched into superstardom.
You also took your best shot with your third album, Night Lights, but its receptions by critics and listeners was mixed. Dave Marsh’s review of Night Lights in Rolling Stone touched on what he considered to be a key difference between you and Bruce,
“In 1973 and 1974 it seemed to many of us in New York that it was a tossup whether Bruce Springsteen, the native poet of the mean streets, or Elliott Murphy, the slumming suburbanite with the ironic eye, would be come a national hero first. Well we all know how that turned out, and while Murphy must be almost as sick of being compared to Springsteen as to Bob Dylan and Lou Reed, their careers have such interesting parallels that it is almost unavoidable.
The crucial difference is that Springsteen’s genius was first perceived as lyrical and turned out to be musical, while it was Murphy’s music that was originally found compelling even though his literary qualities have come to dominate.”
The only positive in Marsh’s review had to do with the first song in the album named Diamonds by the Yard. Marsh noted: “Diamonds by the Yard is such a complete success as a spooky post-Velvet Underground mood piece that it would be a mistake to write off Murphy’s career. “ This ended up being a very insightful comment since Diamonds by the Yard became a cult hit…in France, as the album bombed in the US like your first two. It was indeed too early write off your career as you later decided to move to France where you have had a “successful” European career ever since. Just A Story From America indeed.
Before we leave this story let’s once again revisit the question that was posted in the previous post. I think that some of the answers are highlighted in the background details provided above. Elliott’s music did indeed focus on literary themes as highlighted by Dave Marsh and it was indeed difficult as highlighted by Paul Nelson, too much so, in both cases, for the typical American listener. As in many cases, a genius is not appreciated in his own time or in his own homeland. Jerry Lewis….anyone?
As an epilogue, it is worth noting that Elliott produced Just a Story From America, which many consider to be his masterpiece, as his forth album after switching to Columbia. It was too late to resurrect his US career but it is indeed a wonderful album.
If this post has made you interested enough to explore Elliott’s music as captured in his first four albums, I have good news and bad news for you. The bad news is that all of these albums are out of print and unavailable at any reasonable price. A quick scan of Amazon indicates that your best option might be a greatest hits CD named Diamonds by the Yard. Only one used CD is listed as being available for this album and it is priced at $99.99! Now the good news. Elliott Murphy has a wonderful website that lists his complete discography, well over thirty albums at this point, and provides in depth detail on each album. More importantly it allows you to listen to the songs for free. Enjoy! As always, let me know what you think.
Get up when they put you down
And like a boxer you just spin around
Your kind of guy was so very few
I thought they’d never get the best of you
Just a story of America
Elliott Murphy – Just a Story From America
thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard 