Last night I watched an excellent documentary on Harry Nilsson, the American singer-songwriter who hung around with The Beatles and Randy Newman and Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson, if that gives some any perspective on who admired him. He came from utter poverty, and had 'daddy issues' his whole life so once he started getting successful he got into alcohol and drug abuse and was Lennon's drinking buddy in Los Angeles when he was separated from Yoko. He kinda self-destructed and died young. But not before he wrote a ton of great songs, real Tin Pan Alley style classics although he's mostly known for "One" which Three Dog Night covered and "Everybody's Talking" from Midnight Cowboy which he sang but didn't write. He did a whole album of Randy Newman songs before Newman hit it big, and he did another album of vintage classics before that became something every singer does. He did several Beatles songs when they were new. He was not hung up on singing only his own material, in other words. He had a great ear for what made a song.
Anyway, I thought I had an album of his but I couldn't find it in my rack. So this morning I downloaded his two best albums and burned them to CD-R, and downloaded enough miscellaneous tracks for a third compilation of "best of the rest of." As I was filing these in my shelves I found the missing album, misfiled under Nit instead of Nil. I had created it in 2002, thirteen years ago.
The selection is good, but not as good as my new ones.
Home 