Shel Silverstein was a polymath who sang; wrote songs, plays, books and poems; and drew cartoons. He's best known outside of the music world as the author of numerous successful children's books, but country and rock fans are more likely to know the hits he wrote for Johnny Cash ("A Boy Named Sue") and Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show ("Cover of the Rolling Stone"). Countless other artists covered Silverstein's light-hearted, sometimes bawdy compositions; Bobby Bare memorably recorded entire albums of Silverstein songs in the '70s. Silverstein's own eccentric recordings were never commercially successful, but in the later years of life his career revolved much more around books than around music, to the point that when he died in 1999, he was equally revered as songwriter and author.