Plain and Fancy: Tim Hardin - Nine (1973 us, elegant folk bluesy classic rock, with Peter Frampton)

Saturday, March 1, 2025

Tim Hardin - Nine (1973 us, elegant folk bluesy classic rock, with Peter Frampton)

In the days before music evolved into a mass ritual designed for immense concert halls and football stadiums, it was a more personal experience lived out in clubs. Whether it was the Lovin' Spoonful at the Night Owl in New York, Tom Rush at the Club 47 in Cambridge or the Byrds at Ciro's in LA, one factor remained constant: the audience always had a clear shot at the artist, and whoever presumed to take that stage had better be able to communicate ...

One of the best communicators to come out of that era was Tim Hardin. His quarter was the mid-60's Village in New York, a fondly mythologized place in time that produced the likes of Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Eric Andersen, David Blue and Richie Havens. One oft-repeated slice of the mythology placed Tim as the only acknowledged threat to Dylan's supremacy in that viciously competitive inner circle, but the difference between the two was really so vast as to render any comparison worthless. Dylan was a great idea man for a generation that was willing to use its imagination. Bob Dylan spoke to the mind of that generation; Tim Hardin spoke to its heart.

The warm recognition that accompanies any encounter with several of the songs he's written-"Reason To Believe", "Misty Roses", "If I Were A Carpenter" and "Don't Make Promises"- is really only an introduction to an extensively absorbing artistry. His songs made common experiences as fresh as the feelings that inspired them, which explains why his material has been covered by performers as diverse as Johnny Cash and Rod Stewart.

Tim Hardin, however is more than just a songwriter He is also a singer, and a singer's singer at that. He has a marvelous voice that suggests sandpaper and honey, and he sings with an emotional conviction that holds together his musical skirmishes with blues, jazz and gospel. He's generally credited as the first to have promoted a serious marriage of electricity and folk music, but calling Tim a folksinger is like calling Paul McCartney a bass player. What he does is such a personalized hybrid of music that the only adequate description is the man's name.

Nine is the first album Hardin recorded after he voluntarily exiled himself to Britain in 1973, and its cast of supporting characters includes such familiar names as Peter Frampton and Andy Bown. More than anything, this is an album by Tim Hardin, singer. Oh sure, the majority of his singing is still devoted to his own songs. Six of the ten here are from his pen; two, "Never Too Far" and "While You're On Your Way," will be familiar to longtime Hardin devotees, and the newer "Look Our Love Over" is stamped with the same magic that caused hungry translators to flock to so many of his earlier works. The four songs that are not his, and the continually shifting musical perspective that distinguishes the album as a whole, serve to display the full range of his voice as an interpretive instrument. Each individual cut makes different demands of that instrument and, as you'll discover when you play the album, he comes through with more vitality than most of the singers who surfaced yesterday. Tim Hardin is still one of the best communicators we've got.

by Ben Edmonds, January 1976