The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier

One popular notion is that if Terry Callier's debut album had been released around the time it was made—it was cut in a single session on July 29, 1964, and the original liner notes are dated May 1965—the young Chicago troubadour would have become a folk sensation instead of a cult hero. It's hard to argue; at the time, nobody else was doing anything even close to Callier's freewheeling blend of folk, jazz, and soul, and the format of acoustic guitar with two standup bassists was equally unprecedented. Unfortunately, producer Sam Charters apparently went on walkabout with the tapes in his possession, and the record wasn't released until 1968. By that time, kindred spirits like Tim Hardin, Fred Neil, and Tim Buckley had already made their marks, and then the counterculture's attention turned elsewhere. But even the cruelest twist of fate can't change the fact that Callier showed himself as a visionary with The New Folk Sound…, reinventing traditional tunes as meditative, open-ended, folk-jazz journeys led by his warm, woodsmoke baritone and deft fingerpicking.