Jake Holmes

This New York folk singer/songwriter emerged in the mid-'60s with two monumental recordings for the Tower label: The Above Ground Sound of Jake Holmes and A Letter to Catherine December. Both albums are treasured artifacts for their similarities to folksingers Fred Neil and Tim Buckley. Not to mention that Jake Holmes in fact penned "Dazed and Confused," which was lifted from his songbook one night in New York's West Village by Jimmy Page — appearing a year or so later as one of Led Zeppelin's own. It is recommended that anyone intrigued by the strangest of career paths check out Jake Holmes' biography — and then his later recordings as solid evidence of the peculiar track that he followed. Into the '70s he produced a string of sugary MOR albums that to hardcore folk fans completely undermined his extraordinary genius. How Are You is certainly an album which might display extraordinary songcrafting talents along the lines of Randy Newman or even Townes Van Zandt, though in retrospect, it is the victim of over-production that renders the songs in overblown arrangements. A million miles from the raw, improvisational folk that made his previous two albums so distinctive.