Bleecker and McDougal

Though its title refers to the epicenter of the early Sixties Greenwich Village folk scene, Bleecker & MacDougal is hardly a run-of-the-mill coffeehouse record. With his dark-hued, sonorous voice and advanced songwriting skills, Neil was something quite apart from the hordes of hootenanny-goers in the Village. “Blues On the Ceiling” and “The Other Side of This Life” expressed the harrowing inner life of a tormented soul beyond what Joan Baez, or even Bob Dylan, had shown up to that point. And while it may have been the acoustic rave-ups like “Bleecker & MacDougal” and “Gone Again” that made Neil the toast of his peers, it was the languid style he showcased on “Little Bit of Rain” and “The Water if Wide” that would become his trademark. Forerunners to Neil’s haunting masterpiece “The Dolphins,” these narcotic blues would inspire everyone from Neil contemporaries Tim Hardin and Tim Buckley, to later exponents of inner-space rock’n’roll like Spacemen 3 and the Verve.