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Those Bright Baby Blues~Jackson Browne cover

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Those Bright Baby Blues~Jackson Browne cover
Clyde Jackson Browne (born October 9, 1948) is an American rock music singer, songwriter, guitarist, and pianist, whose introspective lyrics made him the poster boy of the Southern California confessional singer-songwriter movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Browne was born in Heidelberg, Germany, where his father, an American serviceman, was stationed. Jackson's mother, Beatrice Amanda Dahl, was a Minnesota native of Norwegian ancestry.
Browne moved to the Highland Park district of Los Angeles, California at an early age and began singing folk music in local venues. In 1966, he joined the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.He had attended Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, California. A precociously gifted songwriter, Browne signed a pub
lishing contract with Nina Music, and his songs were performed by Joan Baez, Tom Rush, The Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, the Byrds and Steve Noonan, among others. After moving to Greenwich Village, New York, Browne was briefly in Tim Buckley's back-up band. He also worked on Nico's Chelsea Girl, both by
playing guitar and penning the classic song "These Days". After leaving New York City, Browne formed a folk band with Ned Doheney and Jack Wilce. In 1971, Browne signed with Asylum Records and released Jackson Browne (1972), which included the piano-driven "Doctor My Eyes", a Top 10 hit in the US
singles chart. "Rock Me On The Water", from the same album, also gained considerable radio airplay, while "Jamaica Say You Will" and "Song For Adam" helped establish Browne's reputation as a versatile and original writer with a deep thinking, sometimes downbeat, but always romantic flair. His next
album, For Everyman (1973) — while considered of high quality — was less successful than his debut album, although it still sold a million copies. The upbeat "Take It Easy," co-written with The Eagles' Glenn Frey, had already been a big hit for that group, while "These Days" captured the essence
of Browne's youthful, morose angst, and the title track was the first of Browne's studies of personal exploration, soul-searching, and despair set against the backdrop of a decaying society. Late for the Sky (1974) consolidated Browne's following, with some fans drawn in purely by the record's int
riguing, Magritte-inspired cover. Highlights included the searching, heartbreaking title song, the elegiac "For a Dancer" and the apocalyptic "Before the Deluge". The arrangements featured the evocative violin and guitar of David Lindley, Jai Winding's outstanding piano, and the stellar harmonies of
Doug Haywood. The title track was also featured in Martin Scorsese's film Taxi Driver. Around this time, Browne began his fractious but lifelong professional relationship with the brilliant but less successful singer/songwriter Warren Zevon, mentoring Zevon's first two Asylum albums through the stu
dio as a producer after browbeating Asylum head David Geffen into giving Zevon a recording contract. Browne's disaffected, wondering character struck out even more starkly in his next album, The Pretender, which is arguably his darkest. It was released in 1976, after the suicide of his wife, Phylli
s. The album features stronger production by Jon Landau and a mixture of styles, ranging from the Mariachi-inspired peppiness of "Linda Paloma" to the country-driven "Your Bright Baby Blues" to the near-hopeless sadness and surrender of "Sleep's Dark and Silent Gate". Title track "The Pretender" is
Browne's magnum opus, a vivid account of romanticism losing the battle with the realities of day-to-day life. "Here Come Those Tears Again" was cowritten by Nancy Farnsworth, the mother of Browne's first wife Phyllis Major, following Phyllis' untimely death. By then, Browne's work had gained a repu
tation for its compelling melodies, clear, honest, and insightful lyrics, and a flair for composition rarely seen in the world of rock and roll. He was often referred to as "a thinking man's rock star." Browne began recording his next LP while on tour, and Running on Empty (1977) became his biggest
commercial success. Breaking the usual conventions for a live album, Browne used all new material and combined live concert performances with recordings made on buses, in hotel rooms, and back stage, creating the audio equivalent of a road movie. Running on Empty contains many renowned songs, such
as the propulsive title track, "Running on Empty", "The Road" (written and recorded in 1972 by Danny O'Keefe), "Rosie", and "The Load-Out/Stay" (Browne's affectionate and knowing send-off to his concert audiences and roadies). Shortly after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in March 1979, Brow
ne joined with several musician-friends to found the anti-nuclear organization, Musicians United for Safe Energy. His next album Hold Out (1980) was commercially successful — his only number 1 record on the U.S. pop albums chart. The following year he released the single "Somebody's Baby" from th
e Fast Times at Ridgemont High soundtrack, which became his biggest hit, peaking at #7 on the Billboard Hot 100. The 1983 Lawyers in Love followed, signaling a discernable change from the personal to the political in his lyrics. Political protest came to the fore in Browne's music in the 1986 album
, Lives in the Balance, an explicit condemnation of Reaganism and U.S. policy in Central America. Flavored with new instrumental textures, it was a huge success with Browne fans, though not with mainstream audiences. The title track, "Lives in the Balance", with its Andean pan pipes — and lines li
ke, "There's a shadow on the faces / Of the men who fan the flames / Of the wars that are fought in places / Where we can't even say the names" — was a cri de coeur against U.S.-backed wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. The song was used at several points in the award-winning 1987 PBS
documentary, The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis, by journalist Bill Moyers, and was part of the soundtrack of Stone's War, a 1986 Miami Vice episode focusing on American involvement in Central America. During the 1980s, Browne frequently performed at benefit concerts for causes he be
lieved in, including Farm Aid; Amnesty International (making several appearances on the 1986 A Conspiracy of Hope Tour); post-Somoza, revolutionary Nicaragua; and the Christic Institute. The album, World in Motion, released in 1989, was even more politically-oriented and polarizing. In 1995 he perf
ormed in The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True a musical performance of the popular story at Lincoln Center to benefit the Children's Defense Fund. The performance was originally broadcast on Turner Network Television (TNT), and issued on CD and video in 1996. Also during this period, Brown
e's romantic relationship with the actress Daryl Hannah ended amidst rumors in the tabloids that he had physically assaulted her. Neither party has issued any official statement regarding the alleged incident, and no charges were ever filed. Four years after his previous album, Browne returned with
I'm Alive, a critically acclaimed album with a more personal perspective that had no hits but still sold respectably — indeed, the ninth track from the album, Sky Blue and Black, was used during the pilot episode of the situation comedy Friends. He also sang a duet with Jann Arden, "Unloved", on
her 1995 album Living Under June. Browne's Looking East (1996) was released soon after, but was not as successful commercially. The Naked Ride Home was released in 2002. Browne was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. In his induction speech, Bruce Springsteen noted that while the
Eagles got to the Hall first, "You [Browne] wrote the songs they wished they had written". The previous year, three of Browne's albums — For Everyman, Late for the Sky, and The Pretender — had been selected by Rolling Stone magazine as among its choices for the 500 best albums of all time. Brow
ne appeared in several super rallies for presidential candidate Ralph Nader in 2000, singing "I Am A Patriot" and other songs. He participated in the Vote for Change tour in October 2004, playing a series of concerts in American swing states. These concerts were organized by MoveOn.org to mobilize p
eople to vote for John Kerry in the presidential election. Browne appeared with Bonnie Raitt and Keb' Mo', and once with Bruce Springsteen. In late 2006, Browne performed with Michael Stanley and J. D. Souther at a fundraiser for Democratic candidates in Ohio