I like so many different kinds of music... but I'd say my two all-time favorites are very much alike-- the late Jim Croce, and Jimmy Buffett... both were a coupla sandwiches short of a picnic, and wrote songs that really cracked me up, and both could write a real pretty ballad...
Best of all, both of 'em wrote songs in a key that I could sing in, and with simple enough chord progressions that this half-assed picker (wonder if that will be picked up by the cuss filter?) can figure out some kind of accompaniment...
I'm in my early 50s, and my nephew/roommate is in his later 20s, but I've turned him into as big a Jim Croce fan, some 30 years after Jimmy's death, as I am... he wasn't even alive when the guy died, LOL...
The real secret to Croce's success, though, was his guitarist, Maury Muehlheisen (that's a tough name, I hope I got it right)... I truly would go down to the crossroads and sell my soul to the devil to be able to play like he did... of course, Maury died in the same plane crash that took Jimmy...
As for Jimmy Buffett, my dream is to sit down with him and a nice bottle of anejo and get tanked... I mean, just knee-crawlin', commode-huggin' drunk... maybe even wake up on the steps of a whorehouse...
If you're not a Buffett fan, you have no clue what I'm talkin' about there, but if you're a parrothead, you know... the guy puts on the best concerts anywhere, he jokes around with you between songs and just generally seems to have fun...
Other musicians I like a lot:
The Eagles-- where rock & roll goes when it grows up... "H*ll Freezes Over" might be my single favorite album...
Bruce Springsteen-- an icon of my generation, and his last album "Rising" was perhaps his best ever...
Dan Fogelburg-- by far the best pure musician of this bunch... perhaps the best songwriter, too... his album "The Innocent Age" would be on my top 10 all-time albums...
Bonnie Raitt-- she's 50, and she's fine, and she has great taste in songs, and she's bluesy... and most of all, she just might be the best slide guitar player on the face of the earth right now...
Loggins & Messina-- I'm showing my age again... Kenny Loggins actually went on to become a bigger star after he went out on his own, and his album "Celebrate Me Home" is quite beautiful, but when he was pairing up with the jazz-oriented Jimmy Messina, they had a band that just rocked, and they'd go off on instrumental jams that were almost operatic, coming in different "movements"... who doesn't love the raw energy of "Your Mama Don't Dance"??
Bob Seger-- his voice is one of a kind, and he likes that old time rock & roll... "Turn The Page" and "Against the Wind" are twp of my all-time favorite songs... back when Michael Irvin retired, one of the Metroplex TV stations, I think it was channel 8, put together the greatest tribute clip using "Against the Wind"... I had it saved on my hard drive on my old PC, but somehow or another the file got corrupted over the years... that clip gave me goose bumps the first time I saw it...
I'm about to buy my first CD in a while, I wanna get Clapton's newest, "Me and Mr. Johnson"... I'm a bit of a fan of the old Delta blues, and I've always liked Clapton's guitar style, so I'm intrigued to see how he does covering the old Robert Johnson songs... I think it might work... has anybody heard it??
