Tim Hardin - Tim Hardin 1 (1966)

Tim Hardin was an American singer-songwriter.

Tim Hardin was born in in Oregon, and at the age of 18 joined the marines. He was briefly in Vietnam, which is where it is said he discovered heroin. He moved to New York City after his discharge in 1961, and started to focus on his music career, becoming part of the fabled Greenwich Village folk scene. His style of folk-blues at this time was distinctive and really quite good, and recordings from this period were later released as This Is Tim Hardin - they rank high against the recordings of other solo folk performers of the era.
By 1965 he was signed to Verve Records. His debut album came out in 1966, by which time folk-rock had taken off and folk singers like Hardin were writing their own material, maturing into singer-songwriters. Tim Hardin 1 is a short album (under half an hour), but it contains 12 fantastic Hardin originals set to a mellow folk-rock sound, with some of the songs having a blues flavour. The guitar, piano, bass and drums format is sweetened in places by vibraphone from jazz musician Gary Burton, and there is also some harmonica from John Sebastian. A few of the songs had strings added after initial production, no doubt to try and make for a more commerical pop sound, which apparently Hardin wasn't happy about.
Though the album wasn't a massive commercial success at the time, it did lead to him getting noticed as a songwriter, and all sorts of acts would soon be recording his material (in particular "Reason To Believe", which has been covered by a great number of different artists).

|> Tim Hardin 2 (1967)
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