Great Singer/Songwriters

[PoBoy321]

That Joni Mitchell thread got me to thinking. Who are your favorite singer/songwriters of all time? I'll trow a couple out here, but I'm much more interested in what other people have to say.

<ul type="square"> Joni Mitchell Bob Dylan Harry Chapin Cat Stevens Nick Drake Elliot Smith Dar Williams Patty Larkin [/list]

[JonPKibble]

Gordon Lightfoot

[marsvolta619]

Uh... Neil Diamond, the greatest singer/songwriter of ours if not any generation. Der

[SheetWise]

Stevie Wonder, Neil Young, Paul Simon, Don McLean, Gordon Lightfoot, ...

[rohjoh]

Clapton

[JaBlue]

Nat King Cole and Ray Charles are in there

[tomahawk]

A lot of great names here, but I think I'd put Bob Dylan and Neil Young in a league of their own, although my personal favorite here is Elliot Smith (I think he'd be up there in a decade if he had lived)

[rusellmj]

[ QUOTE ]
Stevie Wonder, Neil Young

[/ QUOTE ]

[MightyMouse]

WOWOWOWOW 8 posts in no one said James Taylor!!!!

His music is timeless.

[MonkeeMan]

Jim Morrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Chuck Berry, Smokey Robinson, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Bob Marley, Lowell George, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

[JMP300z]

All great pics.

Add Conor Oberst...like his sound or not, his songwriting (both lyrics and melodies) ability is unbelievable.

-JP

[imported_anacardo]

[ QUOTE ]
All great pics.

Add Conor Oberst...like his sound or not, his songwriting (both lyrics and melodies) ability is unbelievable.

-JP

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh, you mean ripping off "Ode to Joy" for a god-awful track?

Oberst = hack.

The Stephen Thomas Erlewine review of Bright Eyes' latest double release, on allmusic.com, is one of the greatest pwnings ever delivered in the history of music journalism. Check 'er out.

[brassnuts]

Paul Simon
Jim Croce
Gordon Lightfoot
James Taylor

[jakethebake]

Do they have to be great at both singing and songwriting to qualify? Because that eliminates most of thos already listed.

I'll say Billy Joel.

[pryor15]

willie nelson
jeff tweedy
beck
richard buckner
phil ochs

[lem45216]

[ QUOTE ]
I'll say Billy Joel.

[/ QUOTE ]

[imported_The Vibesman]

There's Dylan and Springsteen and everyone else. A couple of names not mentioned are Steve Earle and John Mellencamp, both admirable for their abilities to re-invent their music.

[whiskeytown]

Steve Earle mentored under Townes Van Zandt, who I would say is the greatest songwriter of our generation, and a pretty decent singer before alcoholism made him sound as tired as the characters in his songs.

Steve Earle once said TVZ was the greatest songwriter in the world, and he would stand on top of Bob Dylan's coffeetable in his cowboy boots and say so - Townes told him in reply that he had met Bob and seen the bodyguards, and that it was a shitty idea and he wouldn't get anywhere near Bob's coffeetable. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

I can think of no greater compliment back to Townes then Bob Dylan covering Townes live in concert - there was a file on Bob's website of a live performance of Townes' greatest hit - Pancho and Lefty (http://www.bobdylan.com/audio/live/bd/pancho_061104.ram)

Townes Van Zandt was the greatest songwriter that ever was, IMHO, and this coming from a songwriter myself who has studied the greats...he was also the part of the inspiration for my drinking, and my quitting -

incredible artist, but terrible demons - his death was the biggest [censored] waste ever - broke his hip, went to the hospital, started getting the DT's something terrible, but the Doc's wouldn't let him drink, so his ex-wife had him discharged and brought him home - previously a doctor had all but told Jeanenne that he was an incurable alcoholic, and if he tried to quit drinking, his body was so wore out he'd probably die - but the doc's at that hospital wouldn't let him have anything - and he had a blood clot that they were somewhat aware of, but they had to get Townes out of there. He got home, relaxed a bit - had a nice meal, talked to his son, and then his spirit departed that world when the clot reached his heart - Essentially, he died of a broken [censored] leg.

if the doc's would have simply accepted the fact he was an incurable alcoholic and let him regain his senses/equilbrium while staying at the hospital, he might have survived for a bit longer - but by that time he was getting pretty far gone...one needs to look no further then one of his last songs - Sanitarium Blues (http://www.townesvanzandt.com/multimedia/sanbluesafcfd.ram) - and the video for A song for - (11 meg clip - 53 sec.) (http://www.townesvanzandt.com/multimedia/video/asongfor.mpg) - though by the time of Sanitarium Blues, he pretty much was just rerecording his old tunes - he actually read this track and after he died some musicians thru a backing track to it -

terrible [censored] waste. Never got the true fame that he deserved till he died, though almost everyone knows "Pancho and Lefty" or "If I needed You"

==================

A song for - by Townes Van Zandt -

Ribbons of love
please keep me true sane
until I reach home on the morrow
never never to wander again
I'm weak and I'm weary of sorrow

London to Dublin
Australia to Perth
I gazed at your sky
I tasted your earth
sung out my heart
for what it was worth
never again shall I ramble

There's nowhere left
in this world where to go
my arms, my legs they're a-tremblin'
thoughts both clouded and blue as the sky
not even worth the rememberin'

Now as I stumble
and reel to my bed
all that I've done
all that I've said
means nothin' to me
I'd soon as be dead
all of this world be forgotten

No words of comfort
no words of advice
nothin' to offer a stranger
gone the love, gone the spite
it just doesn't matter no longer

My sky's getting far
the ground's gettin' close
my self goin' crazy
the way that it does
I'll lie on my pillow
and sleep if I must
Too late to wish I'd been stronger
too late to wish I'd been stronger

[imported_The Vibesman]

This is cool, I'll have to check this guy out. I've heard a few of his tunes covered, but not familiar with his own work. Tell me, is he really countryish? I'll give it a shot one way or the other, just want to know. I like Steve Earle, some old Hank Williams, and some country blues musicians, but I usually have a hard time with the genre.

Definitely gonna check him out though, that's a nice write-up.

[samjjones]

You clearly know what you are talking about here, so I will not even waste time trying to refute this.

[ChipWrecked]

[ QUOTE ]
You clearly know what you are talking about here, so I will not even waste time trying to refute this.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll go with that. And I love most of the above. I have met several American Indians since I moved to California and Gordon Lightfoot is huge with them.

I'll throw in J. J. Cale as a great alky talent who has been covered often, most visibly by Eric Clapton.

[Dominic]

Aimee Mann
James Taylor
Michael Penn
PJ Harvey

[imported_The Vibesman]

As an aside, this may be one of the only genres in music that is dominated by women currently.

[jakethebake]

Bill Carter has to be on this list too.

[emil3000]

Jeff Buckley.

[whiskeytown]

Townes is much more folkish - with a bit of country and some talking blues -

his songs have been country hits (Poncho and Lefty for Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard/ If I Needed You for Emmylou Harris) - but he never charted, as far as I know...

There is a career retrospective out right now called Legend (there is a whole mega legal bru ha ha over publishing - Townes left [censored] a mess to fight out between his former manager and his ex-wife. Jeanene owns some of the albums, but Harold owns hundreds of live performances and has been releasing about one a month and diluting the legacy, as it were - there's a ton of repackaged and rehashed stuff - add to that the confusion near the end as Townes ended up spending the last 17 years of his career (after 1980) rerecording a lot of his old songs as alcoholism took hold and sorta stunted his writing a bit.

Concidently - his ex-wife isn't really his ex per se - they were divorced but were together from time to time - apparently Jeanene felt a need to divorce and put the assets into her name to insulate them from his behavior. - this way if he [censored] up and killed someone while drunk his kids would still have the royalities - basically she absolved herself of all legal responsibility from him because of his condition, but they still loved each other till the day he died.

Tell ya what - go to amazon.com and check out the samples on this album -

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000C6VSL/qid=1128358274/sr=2-3/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_3/002-6964834-7349645?v=glance&amp;s=music

there are some funny things on there - like recordings redone as duets (which is sacrilege, as far as I'm concerned) - but a lot of good stuff on there. The core of it is about 38 songs that were on an anthology release that I bought when I first started listening and fell in love with Townes - songs like waiting around to die and Kathleen are awesome.

In a couple cases, there's two recordings on the same CD - the original TVZ version and a bastardized re-recording with some duet partner re-recorded after he died, most likely - damned Eggers bastardizing the legacy again, but what can ya do - 90% of it is from the original recordings. -

RB

[whiskeytown]

anyone who's a serious singer/songwriter plays hit and miss with music trends - one year they're popular as hell (Sarah McLaughlin, Melissa Ethridge, Duncan Sheik, Matthew Sweet) - next year they're yesterday's news...

Kathleen Edwards's new CD has impressed me -

RB

[MrTrik]

John Hiatt a great singer/songwriter.

Paul Westerberg - pure genious.

[shadow29]

Trying to get the ones previously not mentioned:

David Lowery
Adam Duritz
Ben Folds
Chris Bell
Elvis Costello
Leonard Cohen
Marc Cohn
Rickie Lee Jones
Ron Sexsmith
Van Morrison

[TheBlueMonster]

Ryan Cabrera.



Just kidding. I hope his hair catches on fire.

[nothumb]

http://www.titel-forum.de/bilder/crossover/waits1.jpg

I am apalled nobody has mentioned him yet.

NT

[chesspain]

Lennon/McCartney

[jakethebake]

Jerry Jeff Walker
Jimmy Buffet
Arlo Guthrie

[battschr]

Townes Van Zandt
Bob Dylan

[MightyMouse]

[ QUOTE ]
Do they have to be great at both singing and songwriting to qualify? Because that eliminates most of thos already listed.

I'll say Billy Joel.

[/ QUOTE ]


NIT!!!!!!!!

[The Dude]

[ QUOTE ]
I'll say Billy Joel.

[/ QUOTE ]
Good man. I'll be the third to cast my vote this way.