Jimmy Webb Turns 80 With 'Found Songs' Album of Unreleased Demos and New Collaborations
Songwriter Jimmy Webb announced a new album of previously unheard material to mark his 80th birthday, with the first track released on Aug. 14, the day before the milestone. Yours For the Taking: The Found Songs of Jimmy Webb is due out Oct. 16 on Sun Records, with a European release following on Oct. 23, according to retailer Rough Trade.
The album spans 13 tracks, each rooted in a song Webb wrote and pitched to another artist decades ago but that never made it to a recording session. Webb's wife, Laura Savini Webb, served as executive producer, and longtime collaborator Fred Mollin produced the sessions, recorded in Nashville, New York and Los Angeles (Billboard).
The first taste of the project is the original demo of "Winter Clothes," a song from the early 1970s that Webb wrote with Frank Sinatra in mind and pitched directly to him. On the album, the demo sits alongside a newly recorded version featuring Graham Nash of Crosby, Stills & Nash.
Several tracks follow the same pattern — original demo paired with a fresh recording. "If I Ever Get to Talk to You Again," written after Webb saw Joni Mitchell perform at the Troubadour in Los Angeles in the early 1970s, appears in demo form and as a new version with Beth Nielsen Chapman. The title track was once pitched to Linda Ronstadt, who declined to record it both for herself and for Webb's 1993 album Suspending Disbelief, which she co-produced with George Massenburg. Another song, "Farther Than Eyes Can See," was submitted to Barbra Streisand on multiple occasions over 20 years but never recorded by her.
Webb, a three-time Grammy winner and the Songwriters Hall of Fame's third-youngest inductee ever, wrote some of the most enduring American pop songs of the late 1960s. "MacArthur Park," "Wichita Lineman," "Galveston" and "Up, Up and Away" all reached the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 — the chart that tracks the most popular singles in the US. "Wichita Lineman," dating to 1968, remains one of his most widely recognised works (Billboard).
Sun Records is marking the birthday by collecting video messages from fans ahead of the album's release, according to posts on the label's social media channels. Separately, PBS is set to record Webb's upcoming concert in Stillwater, Oklahoma, which features guest performances by Vince Gill and Lyle Lovett, for broadcast (The Oklahoman).
For a songwriter whose catalogue has been carried by some of the biggest voices in popular music, Yours For the Taking turns the spotlight back on the songs that slipped through — the pitches that went unanswered, the demos that stayed on the shelf. The album gives them their first formal release, with collaborators who clearly know what they are inheriting.
