Danny O'Keefe

Born and raised in Spokane, Washington, singer/songwriter Danny O'Keefe first gained widespread attention through his 1972 Top Ten single "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues." His performing career began on the Minnesota coffeehouse circuit during the mid-'60s. Buffalo Springfield manager Charles Greene arranged a telephone audition with Atlantic Records executive Ahmet Ertegun, leading O'Keefe to sign with the company's Cotillion subsidiary and release his self-titled debut album in 1971. The follow-up effort, O'Keefe, appeared the next year and contained his only charting hit, "Good Time Charlie," which Elvis Presley and numerous other artists later recorded. Although Breezy Stories, issued in 1973, did not build on that momentum, the album introduced two enduring O'Keefe compositions: "Magdalena," later interpreted by Leo Sayer, and "Angel Spread Your Wings," covered by Judy Collins. After issuing So Long Harry Truman in 1975, he moved to Warner Bros. for the 1977 release American Roulette.

During this period O'Keefe organized benefit concerts supporting environmental initiatives; those activities eventually led, twenty years afterward, to the creation of the Songbird Foundation, an organization focused on safeguarding songbirds threatened by intensive coffee cultivation in Latin America. He established the independent Coldwater label in 1984, which that same year put out The Day to Day. Early 2000 saw the arrival of Runnin' from the Devil, his first studio album in more than a decade. A joint project with Bill Braun, Don't Ask, followed in 2003. O'Keefe returned five years later with In Time, then delivered Light Leaves the West in 2015 under the production of Gary Shelton.