Jackson C. Frank – Blues Run the Game
I realise it's the only record on this list that mentions the blues. There are artists such as Mississippi John Hurt and Howlin' Wolf and John Lee Hooker who maybe I admire more but this album has been with me for a very long time. He has this incredibly sad story: when he was a child he was involved in a chemical explosion, he was hospitalised and it was there that he found a guitar and learned to play. Then he went to England, found a wife and had a child who got sick and died. He travelled back to the States and recorded this album with Art Garfunkel. When recording his vocals he had to hide behind a sheet or something because his sense of self worth was so dubious that he couldn't have anybody see him while he was singing. The record was only a minor success and I think in later life he got a serious disease. It's such a tragic story, things just keep on getting worse and worse. The title song and the whole premise of it, that you can take a boat and travel anywhere in the world but the blues is going to end up running the game in the end, like it's going to track him down no matter where he escapes to. It's such an immensely sad premise of a song.