David Ackles

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Song Title Time Price Visit our audio page for more information Ackles’ 1968 debut was his most rock-ish, featuring backing by members of the band Rhinoceros, and had the closest thing to a hit he ever had, the first-person drifter narrative "The Road to Cairo." Also on the album: "When Love Is Gone," "Sonny Come Home," "Blue Ribbons," "What a Happy Day," "Down River," "Laissez Faire," "Lotus Man," "His Name Is Andrew" and "Be My Friend." Reader Reviews By the standards of any time during the last forty years, David Ackle's writing would stand pretty much alone. Laughing Lenny Cohen, in some ways, charts similar territory to Ackles. But the zones he sets his lyrics to must have seemed really perverse in the late sixties & early seventies when, as another reviewer astutely remarks, the nearest gifted equivalent was Jimmy Webb. Webb's star was on the rise though (through interpreters of his songs to be sure,pre-eminently Glen Campbell, as his own albumns received much the same end as Ackles). This is the disc I've most often returned to though. 'Down River', Road to Cairo, & the awesome,'His Name Is Andrew'. Hardly a rollicking affair & none of it bouncing back into mind like the Webb catalogue with the perfume of the bouyant side of the 60s. Ackles was tuned to the darker undercurrent. For subtle nuance of lyric to piano, and range of feeeling in the darker, and tender zones of relationship, I feel he hasn't a rival. Comparisons, I note in other reviews, with Laughing Lenny Cohen do injustice to Ackles, who is far less cumbersome.  Comment | Permalink |  (Report this) Back To Top