Insights: Fred Neil, The Greatest Singer-Songwriter You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

It will soon be 60 years since Fred Neil released one of the greatest blues albums ever. The August, 1965 record was called Bleecker and MacDougal and featured an unforgettable baritone voice and the brilliant, original and compelling songs of a man who did everything he could to prevent himself from becoming famous. It almost worked. Most people have forgotten his name, if they ever knew it.

Fred was born in 1937 and raised in Treasure Island near St. Petersburg, Florida where he grew to love the sea life: sailing on the ocean, sighting the exotic birds, the dolphins and the whales.  His father was a jukebox salesman and record supplier to the whole Eastern seaboard circuit. Growing up, Fred travelled with his father and listened to just about every record made in the 1940s and 1950s. He was a walking encyclopedia of musical lore.

His debut album was one of the first folk/blues recordings to feature electric guitar. In addition to his deep soulful voice, Fred was a superb guitarist. The standout tracks were “Blues On The Ceiling”, “Other Side To This Life”, “A Little Bit of Rain” and “The Water Is Wide”.  They were slow, simmering tunes that lured the listener into a world of thoughtful observation on life’s difficulties. Here was a man who felt things deeply. Not that he was keen to share his experience with everyone, but perhaps songwriting was the only way he had with dealing with big city life. 

He gained a steady audience in the folk and blues clubs of Greenwich Village (near the corner of Bleecker Street and MacDougal Street) and proved to be a prolific songwriter, though a reluctant performer. He was highly regarded among his peers for his musicianship and his generosity in appreciating their work. He was the first to encourage Bob Dylan, the first to employ John Sebastian, and the first to recognize the considerable talents of Tim Hardin.

Fred’s songwriting legacy is found among the songs of Tim Buckley, and also in the unorthodox guitar tunings of Joni Mitchell. David Crosby and Stephen Stills so adored the work of Fred Neil that they wanted to call their new supergroup “Son of Neil”. They settled instead for calling themselves Crosby, Stills and Nash.

His big success came with a song that talked openly about his feelings regarding the music business. That song was “Everybody’s Talking” and the lyrics tell the tale of a man looking for a way out of success.

The song was chosen as the theme of the 1969 movie Midnight Cowboy. Fred was asked to speed up his own version of “Everybody’s Talkin” for the movie soundtrack. He told the producers to go to hell so they found another singer- Harry Nilsson, who recorded it at the producers’ preferred tempo, transforming it from a blues song to something poppish and lilting. It became Nilsson’s biggest selling record, as well as the seventh most played song on radio ever. It’s also been recorded by more than one hundred artists.

Fred collected the substantial royalties and just as the song lyrics predicted, he high-tailed it back to Coconut Grove, Florida.  The only thing he really cared about was saving the dolphins and whales. He founded The Dolphin Research Project, perhaps as a consequence of writing his second most famous song “The Dolphins”, which Tim Buckley covered.

“Fred’s an endangered species. Like his dolphins, he’s just trying to keep from getting caught and made to perform at Sea World.” ~ Jerry Jeff Walker

Fred was both wary of the music biz and all the corporate shenanigans that took place to deprive writers of lawful revenue, and he was a man of considerable ingenuity and thrift. It’s said that he wrote dozens of songs under dozens of pseudonyms, all carefully calculated to obfuscate his presence and downplay his Fred Neil persona. He wanted a quiet life in Coconut Grove and got it. He virtually disappeared from public view after 1971. His closest friends were instructed to deny his very existence, his address, his occupation and his availability. In the whole of his life he granted only one interview.

Fred’s last official public appearance took place in April of 1977 with the Rolling Coconut Revue, a coalition of musicians and environmentalists who decided to take their crusade for whale and dolphin awareness all the way to Tokyo. He died of natural causes in 2001, a virtual recluse in Florida, as he battled skin cancer.

Fred Neil is a legend among performers and among songwriters, though seldom known by the public at large. His musical influence is subtle, but important for its subtlety. It’s not too much to say that he virtually invented the art of white bluesmen writing new blues material and making it sound authentic, believable and relevant.

Overlooked, underrated and doing his damndest to keep it that way: such was the mysterious life of Fred Neil.