Music: Unsung but not yet forgotten

PERCY MAYFIELD

Though the category of singer-songwriter almost invariably seems to exclude black artists, Mayfield (1920-84, no relation to Curtis) was a singer and a writer of genius. Favouring slow tempos and dark, introspective lyrics in noirish ballads that now sound like the perfect musical backdrop to James Ellroy's LA Quartet novels, the existential rhythm and blues of Mayfield's early 1950s recordings provides the missing link between Little Richard and Albert Camus. His "Please Send Me Someone To Love" became a soul standard, and he also wrote "Hit The Road Jack" for his friend Ray Charles. The CD collection Poet of the Blues is available on Ace Records.

FRED NEIL

Even if you haven't heard of Neil, you'll be familiar with "Everybody's Talkin'", which was recorded by Harry Nilsson for the movie Midnight Cowboy. It went on to become one of the most played pop songs ever. The regular flow of royalties has presumably allowed Neil to do absolutely nothing ever since, as he hasn't recorded for 30 years and remains secluded in his native southern Florida, where he's into dolphins. A terrific singer with a booming baritone voice and a feisty 12-string guitar technique, Neil was an elder statesman of the Greenwich Village folk scene in the early 1960s. Bob Dylan used to back him up on harmonica; he taught David Crosby to roll joints; and Tim Buckley stole his voice. A double CD, The Many Sides of Fred Neil, is available as an import from EMI Music Special Markets. It contains far more of Fred than you will ever wish to hear twice.

BERT JANSCH

Too well established as a traditionally inclined folkie to benefit really from the singer-songwriter boom of the early 1970s, Jansch has been an influence on Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Nick Drake and Led Zeppelin, yet can still be found slogging around the folk club circuit. A brilliant if idiosyncratic guitarist whose version of Davey Graham's tricky instrumental "Angie" was learnt by rote by generations of pickers, as a songwriter and singer Jansch has never had the acclaim he deserves. His beautifully poised ballads delivered in that sensitive voice with its generic West Country inflection (despite the fact he's from Glasgow) make Jansch the most contemporary- sounding survivor of the English folk revival. The early recordings for the Transatlantic label are full of forgotten treasures. On 24 September, Jansch appears in the Barbican's Topic Records 60th Anniversary Concert.

TIM BUCKLEY

Although at present he's more famous for being the absent father of Jeff Buckley, who drowned in 1997, Tim - who died from a drug overdose in 1975, aged 28 - remains perhaps the most interesting of all the singer-songwriters. He changed styles frequently in his short but prolific recording career, which veered from the folk-baroque of 1967's "Goodbye and Hello" to the S&M funk of 1972's "Greetings From LA", but in between came his best work. The albums Happy Sad, Blue Afternoon, and Lorca use jazz instrumentation and that gloomy, Fred Neil-derived voice to create deeply melancholic (and frankly rather smacked-out) laments. Next to Nick Drake, Buckley is the biggest cult influence on contemporary singer-songwriters and almost everything he recorded is in print. Once I Was, a collection of his live recordings for the BBC, has recently been re-released on Strange Fruit.

LAURA NYRO

Though her songs were covered by Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand and Aretha Franklin, Nyro was almost forgotten when she died of ovarian cancer in 1997, aged 49. Her own early albums were exquisitely tender affairs, with their confessional yet metrically adventurous lyrics given a funky bounce by a strong soul influence, as in the wonderful "Stoned Soul Picnic" from 1968. Perhaps her best album, and a true overlooked gem, is Gonna Take a Miracle, a set of mostly cover versions recorded with the vocal group Labelle (of "Lady Marmalade" fame) in 1971. Smile, a jazzy album of post-divorce songs from 1976, is also very good, and before her death she approved the double CD compilation Stoned Soul Picnic: the Best of Laura Nyro, available on Columbia.

TERRY REID

Impeccably obscure soft-rocker from St Ives, Cambridgeshire, who as a teenager saw out the last days of the beat boom with Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers before signing as a solo artist with producer Mickie Most for his first album in 1969. With a blue-eyed soul falsetto voice and a guitar style that mixed funk and boogie riffs with odd, off-centre chords and Brazilian samba patterns, Reid alternated swampy rock with anguished ballads. Lyrically, he was perhaps a bit thick, favouring big, clumpy metaphors rather than A-level Eng Lit angst, but this must surely count in his favour. The albums River, from 1973, and Seed of Memory, from 1976, still sound remarkable, and both feature the blistering slide guitar playing of Jackson Browne's sideman, David Lindley. The latter, produced by Graham Nash of Crosby Stills Nash and Young, and recorded in Hollywood, represented Reid's almost total Americanisation. He's still living in California and still playing.

DAN HICKS

Unlike most of his breed, Californian Hicks didn't specialise in baring his soul, tending instead towards inconsequential comic vignettes about blokes in bars and choo-choo trains. Too light and witty for the San Francisco flower power era that spawned him (he was a member of one of the first psychedelic bands, the truly dreadful Charlatans), Hicks was retro before it was fashionable. The four Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks albums from 1970- 73 look to Western Swing, Django Reinhardt and Depression-era comic strips for inspiration and remain pleasingly odd. He's still going and Ace Records recently released an album of early demos, Early Muses.

SANDY DENNY

Spellbinding singer and leading light of the British folk-rock scene who died from a brain haemorrhage in 1978, aged 31. Despite defining the sound of female folk and soft-rock vocals for a decade as a member of Fairport Convention in their most impressive period, as well as in brief spells with the Strawbs and Fotheringay, Denny's skill as a songwriter has somehow been forgotten. "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" (recorded with the Fairports) is her most remembered song, and Island Records released a four-album retrospective under that title in 1986, re-released as a three CD set by Hannibal in 1992. More than overdue for reappraisal.

TIM HARDIN

Like Fred Neil and Laura Nyro, Hardin (1941-1980) gained success through others recording his songs, with Bobby Darin having a big hit with "If I Was a Carpenter" in 1966, and Rod Stewart covering "Reason to Believe" on Every Picture Tells a Story. Just as well, really, because Hardin's own versions sounded so depressed that they make Nick Drake seem positively cheery. Like Tim Buckley, his best songs, such as the beautiful "Misty Roses", could be as close to jazz as folk, and they still sound almost impossibly good if you don't mind grooving to someone else's clinical depression. He died from a drug overdose.

BRUCE COCKBURN

A Canadian who, unlike Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, never pretended to be American. Perhaps as a result, Cockburn has been garlanded with praise in Canada (earning 20 gold or platinum discs over 30 years), but made little impact elsewhere. Despite suffering the double career blow of being a born-again Christian (although happily it doesn't always show), and gaining the approbation of Tony Blair, who tipped him as "one to watch", Cockburn is a singer-songwriter's singer-songwriter, with a brilliant guitar technique, a leaning towards jazzy chord structures, and an admirable social conscience. His latest album, Breakfast In New Orleans, has just been released on Rykodisc, and he tours Britain in October.

TERRY CALLIER

A black folkie from the Greenwich Village coffee-shop era whose debut album for Prestige in 1965 and later recordings for Chess became unlikely grooves for the London Acid Jazz scene from the early 1990s onwards. Success, however, nearly came too late for Callier. He'd already packed in music to work as a computer programmer and bring up his daughter in his native Chicago by the time DJ Gilles Peterson signed him to British Polygram's hip Talkin' Loud label. The first fruit of the new contract, last year's TimePeace album, was a big cult hit and the follow-up, LifeTime, which features an appearance by Nick Drake fan Beth Orton, is released tomorrow. A genuine talent who sounds as if he's been in suspended animation since 1970, Callier has a warm voice and a winning, all-too-human persona. He tours Britain next month.

GRAHAM PARKER

With Elvis Costello now hobnobbing with Burt Bacharach and Sir Paul McCartney, it's hard to believe that back in the pub rock days of the late 1970s, Elvis was run a close second by ex-petrol pump attendant (remember them?) Parker. Howlin' Wind, his debut album of 1976, was a marvellous affair full of passionate, angry songs and it still sounds great today. With backing band The Rumour - a hotshot collection of musos led by ex-eponymous bandleader Brinsley Schwartz on guitar - Parker was a brilliant live act too. But despite having Bruce Springsteen as a fan (and a guest on the 1980 Up-Escalator album), Parker's rather tenuous popular appeal declined once the post-punk boom was over. He's still recording, and still sounds angry.