Van Morrison

Ireland has traditionally been home to poets, bards, and singers of epic dimension, and Belfast native Van Morrison upholds and extends that heritage in champion fashion with his bluesy, soulful voice. In 1967, the impossibly catchy "Brown Eyed Girl" gave Van his first solo hit; he later took a walking-bass stroll through nighttime in his swinging, hipster-y "Moondance," long a classic rock radio staple. And on "Have I Told You Lately?," possibly Morrison's greatest love song, all the swagger evaporates, swept away in a cotton candy cloud of intimacy and affection. In Next Steps we hear Van with a set of Irish brothers and a giant of prog.

In Van's second recording of "Irish heartbeat," he infuses the song with the homesick sentimentality of one who's spent his whole life on the road, pleading, "Oh won't you stay/stay a while with your own ones," as Irish folk heroes the Chieftains cushion his vocal with their traditional arrangement. And Van's unlikely pairing with former Pink Floyd lead vocalist Roger Waters yields a version of The Wall's "Comfortably Numb" that maintains the original's space-rock heritage while roughing it up with an R&B patina. In Deep Cuts Van touches all the bases – blues, country, jazz, and more.

Much like his contemporaries the Rolling Stones, Van Morrison cut his teeth on the blues, so it's only natural that Them – like dozens of artists before and since, including AC/DC and Aerosmith – would take a whack at Big Joe Williams' "Baby Please Don't Go." As it happened, the single's B-side, a tune called "Gloria" (here featured as Track #9 in the first tier), set Morrison up with his first taste of international fame, as it quickly went on to become the ultimate garage band anthem.

Who could have known, back in the Summer of Love, that a diminutive man from Northern Ireland, with a passion for soul and a song full of hand claps, would turn out to be one of rock's champion poets and most indelibly authentic voices? George Ivan Morrison, known to the world as Van, grew up listening to Jelly Roll Morton, Leadbelly, and Ray Charles, unlike most of his Belfast buddies; and that rich gumbo of jazz, R&B, and folk imprinted itself on a soul as wide and deep as the Atlantic. From the swagger of "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)" to the vulnerability of "Crazy Love," from the spirituality of "Whenever God Shines His Light" to the sentimentality of "Irish Heartbeat," Morrison has proven himself, time and again, to be a most important and influential artist.