Tim Hardin brought a sensitive and introspective approach to singing that drew equally from blues, jazz, and folk traditions. His output during the final years of the 1960s was substantial, yet he never reached widespread popularity or matched the creative peak attained by the era’s finest songwriters. In the mid-1960s, Erik Jacobsen, later known for producing the Lovin’ Spoonful, set up Hardin’s earliest studio sessions; at that stage Hardin registered as a competent but unexceptional white blues vocalist working the same East Coast folk circuit as many contemporaries. With the arrival of his 1966 debut album, however, he had begun composing confessional folk-rock material marked by notable elegance and feeling. String overdubs added without his approval slightly weakened the record’s overall effect. On his follow-up and strongest album he struck an effective equilibrium between guitar-centered acoustic settings and restrained orchestral touches. Much of the wider attention his songs received came through interpretations by other performers. Rod Stewart recorded “Reason to Believe,” Nico included “Eulogy to Lenny Bruce” on her debut LP, Scott Walker sang “Lady Came From Baltimore,” and “Green Rocky Road” has been attributed jointly to Fred Neil and Hardin. Bobby Darin’s 1966 Top Ten treatment of “If I Were a Carpenter” proved the most prominent example. A heroin dependency that dated from the start of his career intensified in the late 1960s, eroding both his commercial outlook and the consistency of his releases, although he still performed at Woodstock. Mounting health and substance issues, together with a lack of fresh songs, left him without any completed albums after 1973, and he died from an overdose in 1980.
