Customer Reviews

This Is Tim Hardin

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I first listened to Tim Hardin let's say, a long time ago. I think it was after reading The Bob Dylan bio "No direction Home" by Robert Shelton. Well, I found this album on vinyl in very good shape. I think it's fantastic! It did'nt leave my turntable for months. The sound of alot of the songs is like listening to an old blues man. It is different in a lot of ways from Later Tim Hardin records.There is no heavy strings. It's mostly just Tim and his guitar. This is from the early 60's, and his vocals are filled with a hunger and soul. He also has a strong blues guitar style throughout. This Cd has been a "Desert Island" album of mine for years. Buy it! It will become a favorite.

This is the best album Hardin ever recorded. It was an early recording with only Hardin and his guitar in a vacant room. He was sober and his picking style is classic folk. If you want to listen to Hardin before he fell into the abyss, this is him at his best.

This was my first encounter with the great Tim Hardin. I first bought this album on vinyl...mono to be exact, from a cutout bin for 99 cents sometime around 1972 or 73. I don't remember what attracted me to this album, I had never heard of Tim Hardin even though I had heard some of his songs...the Bobby Darin hits, "If I Were a Carpenter" and "The Lady Came From Baltimore" and the Rod Stewart cover of "Reason to Believe". It would be several years before I connected the writer of those songs to the one man band on "This is Tim Hardin". I started playing this album and I remember thinking that I had never heard anything close to this before. At that time I really had no idea of serious blues beyond groups like John Mayhall, Cream, Yardbirds, The Stones,...that kind of blues. This album blew me away as well as everyone I played it for. "This is Tim Hardin" remained at the front of my record collection for years. Eventually I discovered a Tim Hardin anthology album and learned more about his tragic life and heard the true versions of "Reason to Believe" and "If I Were a Carpenter" along with classics like "Black Sheep Boy", "It'll Never Happen Again", and "Don't Make Promises". The songs on this CD are different than those later songs, they are more haunting, gutsy, raw, and real. It sounds like it was recorded in a bar, late at night after everyone has gone home. It takes a few listens to even realize that there is no band, no rhythm section, no backup singers...nothing but Tim on the guitar and his foot on the stage floor for rhythm and lyrics that will stay with you for the rest of your life. You will never hear "House of the Rising Sun" the same way again.

It took me several tries to get this CD from Amazon. It finally came from one of their secondary sellers I believe. No matter I finally got it and it is well worth the wait. Believe it or not I miss the scratches and pops from the old vinyl record I lived with for so many years. They just seem to fit the mood of this recording.