I'm sure many are familiar with Nick. I'm sure many more are not.
My story of discovery of this artist, dates back a while. I noticed references to him enough times that I was curious but the web was not around my house yet (1992), or I just didn't Google him for what ever reason. Can you believe...1992 ...to me does not sound like it was the dark ages, but I now "googled" web popularity in 1992, I see the web was unleashed on the world in 1991, so it is reasonable that I did not or could not google Nick Drake!
Vin Scelsa was playing a track from a new Album by Lucinda Williams (Sweet Old World), "Which Will". He followed it with Nick's version of the same song. Vin at that time was doing radio on Sunday nights. Monday morning, it was off to J&R (those around in that era, and who were downtown in NY know the drill). There was a fairly new release of a single CD sampler, promoting a Nick Drake Box Set.
To this date all of the tracks get played regularly. I figured this generous CD had to have ALL the good tracks. Nick only released 3 albums before his death. It took about another 10 years before I got the full box set. They picked 14 tracks for the sampler, but could have picked any of his 31 tracks from any album.
Nick's biggest exposure was on a popular Volkswagen commercial that featured "Pink Moon", a song and album that is a good starting point for anyone looking to explore. This one album is an album to be played in it's entirety. It's mostly acoustic (he has a very good unique finger pick), soft vocal, sometimes horns and a bit of light jazz. If the name sticks in your head a bit, you will see references to him still to this date, nearly 45 years after the release of Pink Moon. The songs have held up remarkably well. The legend say's Nick's death was contributed to his depression from his lack of commercial success. Just one of his albums (post his death) has sold 5x's the sales of his three albums combined during his life. I've been to a tribute concert at St Ann's in Brooklyn Heights, and have at least two tribute CDs.
A quick look, and I found this primer on Nick. If it sounds like it might fit in with your tastes... Most of us have the time! Read his Wiki. If nothing else, it's like a lecture in a course on Popular Music in the late 60's/early 70's. If there is any interest, I can put up a mix playlist of originals and covers on Cloudplay.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/11/how-the-internet-and-volkswagen-made-a-dead-folksinger-into-a-star/383145/Larry
