He was born Robert Joseph Bare in Lawrence County, Ohio, and began his career in Springfield, Ohio. In 1953 he moved to Los Angeles, where he recorded briefly for Capitol and Challenge in the mid-1950s and signed as a writer with Opal Music.

John Denver was one of the top five best-selling artists of all time with 14 gold and eight platinum albums in the United States and was popular around the world. John Denver was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1996…

Creed Taylor matched two of his most famous artists, Wes Montgomery and Jimmy Smith, on this session (Montgomery's last for Verve), and the results are incendiary – a near-ideal meeting of yin and yang. Smith comes at your throat with his big attacks and blues runs while Montgomery responds with rounder, smoother octaves and single notes that still convey much heat. They are an amazing pair, complementing each other, driving each other, using their bop and blues taproots to fuse together a sound…

Today’s brace of badness comes from one of those records that is always turning up in lists of terrible LP sleeves but very few people have actually bothered to listen to, Sour Cream and Other Delights by The Frivolous Five…

Wes Montgomery's last album for Verve (other than an exciting collaboration with Jimmy Smith) is a so-so orchestral date featuring arrangements by Don Sebesky. The material (which includes "Sunny" and "California Dreaming") is strictly pop fluff of the era and the great guitarist has little opportunity to do much other than state the melody in his trademark octaves…

Further Adventures of Jimmy and Wes picks up where Dynamic Duo left off, digging a little further into the one-time-only Wes Montgomery/Jimmy Smith sessions and coming up with more fine music – mellower in general than Dynamic Duo but first-class nonetheless…

Paced by the title track, one of Donovan's best singles, 1966's Sunshine Superman heralded the coming psychedelic age with a new world/old world bent: several ambitious psychedelic productions and a raft of wistful folk songs…