Forgive me if this has been posted before but I've just found out that the brilliant American singer/songwriter Jesse Winchester died a few weeks ago.

If you've never heard of or heard Jesse then you're in for a treat. Same era and planet as The Band and those great early 70s singer/songwriter troubadours.

Jesse was a songwriter's songwriter, penning heartfelt tunes that resonated during that classic post 60s period.

Here's an obituary from the UK paper The Guardian.


Under different circumstances Jesse Winchester, who has died of cancer aged 69, could have joined the pantheon of 1970s singer-songwriters that included the likes of Jackson Browne and James Taylor. Instead, following his decision in 1967 to leave his native US for Canada to avoid being drafted to the Vietnam war, Winchester remained a slightly remote figure, though he became very much the songwriter's songwriter. While plying his trade north of the border he became known largely through cover versions of his songs by artists such as Tim Hardin, Joan Baez, Emmylou Harris, the Everly Brothers, Tom Rush and Jimmy Buffett.

It was also his exile from America that lent a note of poignancy to his best-known songs, many of which were bittersweet recollections of people and places in the American south, where Winchester had grown up. Yankee Lady, a song from his debut album that was disseminated through versions by Brewer & Shipley, Hardin and Matthews' Southern Comfort, contained the heartfelt couplet: "And now when I see myself as a stranger by my birth/The Yankee lady's memory reminds me of my worth".

Other songs, including Mississippi You're on my Mind, Biloxi, The Brand New Tennessee Waltz and Bowling Green – the latter an ode to a town in Kentucky – were all suffused with a longing for the land he had left behind. Winchester was eventually able to return to the US after President Jimmy Carter issued an amnesty to draft evaders in 1977, though he did not move back full time until 2002.

Winchester was born at the Barksdale Army Air Force base in Bossier City, Louisiana, to James, who was serving with the Army Air Corps, and his wife Frances. The family then moved to a farm in Mississippi and subsequently to Memphis. Jesse took inspiration from the blues, gospel and rockabilly music he heard on Memphis radio, and studied piano as well as playing organ in church.

He did well academically too, studying German at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and spending a year at the University of Munich, where his attentions were divided between studies and playing with a rock band. He graduated from Williams in 1966, but when he received his military draft notice the following year he moved to Montreal. "I was so offended by someone's coming up to me and presuming to tell me who I should kill and what my life was worth," he said in a 1977 interview with Rolling Stone magazine. Though he arrived in Canada with only a few hundred dollars and no contacts, he was soon playing regularly with local bands, including as guitarist with a French-Canadian dance group, Les Astronautes, and as singer and guitarist with an R&B outfit called the John Cold Water Group. He had now begun to write songs, and decided to strike out on his own as a singer-songwriter.

Winchester's prospects soared in 1970, when he was introduced to Robbie Robertson of The Band, who were now emerging as stars in their own right with the Music from Big Pink album after momentous years of collaboration with Bob Dylan. Robertson first encountered Winchester in the basement of a monastery in Ottawa, where the latter was recording a demo tape of his songs with the aid of a deserter from the US Army who owned an Ampex tape recorder.

"He sang me a few songs and I knew immediately he was the real thing," Robertson recalled. The upshot was that they travelled to Toronto, where Robertson produced Winchester's debut album, Jesse Winchester, the star quotient upped further by the presence of Todd Rundgren as recording engineer. Robertson also ensured that Winchester was signed by The Band's manager, Albert Grossman.

The album was critically hailed, though Winchester's inability to tour in the US hampered its chances of widespread success, and the disc wasn't available in the UK until the mid-1970s. A pattern of unassuming, low-key excellence continued with three albums – Third Down, 110 to Go (1972), Learn to Love It (1974) and Let the Rough Side Drag (1976).

From 1977 he was able to perform in the US, though this caused him pangs of conscience: "It doesn't seem fair to turn your back on your country and then come back when the coast is clear and make money," he said. He now recorded in America, too, cutting Nothing But a Breeze (1976) in Nashville and Talk Memphis (1981) in Memphis, with Al Green's producer Willie Mitchell.

In 2002 he married his second wife, Cindy Duffy, and – despite having become a Canadian citizen in 1973 – moved to Charlottesville, Virginia. He released Love Filling Station in 2009, but two years later was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus. Following surgery he was declared cancer-free, and was able to record a new album, A Reasonable Amount of Trouble, which is due for release in August.

In 2012 the tribute album Quiet About It featured a roster of artists including Elvis Costello, Jimmy Buffett, Lyle Lovett, Taylor and Rosanne Cash, all performing Winchester's songs. But earlier this year Winchester was found to have bladder cancer.

He is survived by Cindy, by his daughter Alice, sons James and Marcus Lee, his brother Cassius and sister Ellyn, and by three grandchildren.

• Jesse (James Ridout) Winchester, singer and songwriter, born 17 May 1944; died 11 April 2014

[www.theguardian.com]

Here's one of his greatest songs, Biloxi. Bet Bruce loves this one.







Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2014-04-25 23:03 by Silver Dagger.

I swear to god I thought he died like ten years ago or something. He always seemed to be some guy you read about, rarely, but never heard.