Tim Hardin Essentials

Singer/songwriter Tim Hardin wrote songs with remarkable empathy, grace and honesty, in a voice as real as anything Bob Dylan ever put to tape. He was singing mournful songs of heroin addiction and being a disgraced kid in the mid-'60s, and by the '70s at least half a dozen of his folk-pop classics were already becoming standards. Hardin never had much commercial success, but artists like Rod Stewart, Johnny Cash, Bobby Darin and countless others had hits with versions of his songs that often masked the deeper sadnesses. After nearly a dozen albums, Hardin died of drug overdose in 1980.