Tim Buckley

Tim Buckley was one of the most daring, eclectic, and innovative singer-songwriters to emerge from the ’60s counterculture boom. Born in Washington, DC, in 1947 and mostly raised in Southern California, Buckley was blessed with a superhumanly agile tenor. He was fascinated by folk music early on and began writing his own songs in his teens. He was only 19 when his self-titled debut LP was released in 1966; its 1967 follow-up, Goodbye and Hello, put him on the map with its dizzying blend of psychedelia and folk-informed balladry. Over the next few years, Buckley had an astonishing run of trailblazing, drastically different albums, including the 1969 folk-jazz cult classic Happy Sad and the following year’s unprecedented, avant-garde Lorca. In the ’70s, he turned a bit more accessible, venturing into pop/rock and R&B, but his fluid vocal virtuosity always led the way. He had a fatal overdose in 1975, but reissues and archival live releases helped spread his legend wider in later decades, as did the ’90s work of his son Jeff Buckley.