We continue our look back at the music of 50 years ago……
Most songwriters would have killed to write two songs that became part of the folk-rock pantheon. For the ever tortured Tim Hardin, it was just another stop along a train leading to self-destruction.
After a stint in the Marines he moved to LA in 1965 and met a young actress named Susan Yardley who was starring in a tv show called “The Young Marrieds”. She and Hardin would begin a relationship that would encourage his muse to flourish.
He wrote the songs “If I Were A Carpenter”, a huge hit for Bobby Darin and “Reason To Believe” which many have recorded and was a hit for Rod Stewart. Hardin never capitalized on his good fortune. Due to paralyzing stage fright he hardly ever toured to support his records.
He was supposed to be the first act at Woodstock but was so high and afraid to go on in front of the massive crowd, Richie Havens had to fill in. Hardin would eventually hit the Woodstock stage but his performances were not part of the movie or soundtrack.
Here are his versions of his classics….
Live at Woodstock…..
By 1971 a heroin habit had made him unreliable in the studio so for the recording of the the LP “Bird On A Wire”, his producer Ed Freeman, had all of the musical tracks recorded ahead of time and when Hardin did show up, he would sing over those tracks.
The albums music is top-notch featuring a number of big-name jazz cats including Joe Zawinul and Alphonse Mouzon from Weather Report. Zawinul arranged a couple of the covers on the LP including a funky version of John Lee Hooker’s “Hoboin” and Hoagy Carmichael’s “Georgia On My Mind”. Warren Bernhardt’s piano is featured on the LP and Tony Levin plays bass on a few tracks. The album was Hardin’s first to feature other people’s songs including the title track (Leonard Cohen) and the folk traditonal “Moonshiner”.
My favorite Hardin composition on the LP is a bluesy, jazzy tune called “Soft Summer Breeze”. Hardin’s singing on the LP is powerful yet shaky although he called the LP “good, clean superiority”, whatever that means. It did not do well.
Hardin battled addiction most of his adult life and recorded a few more LPs over the years with little commercial success. He died of a heroin overdose in his LA apartment on December 29th 1980 at 39 years old.
What money he made from his songs was mostly stolen by his managers over the years and the rest probably went into his arm. A doomed and tortured soul is an old story in the music world. Add Tim Hardin’s name to the list.
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