While iconic singer-songwriter Jimmy Webb wrote some of the biggest hits of all time, he wasn’t usually the one who sang them: “Wichita Lineman,” “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and “Galveston” were all performed by Glenn Campbell, “Up, Up and Away” was a major success for the 5th Dimension, and “MacArthur Park” was sung by Richard Harris, then Donna Summer (just to name a few).
Over the years, however, Webb wrote plenty of other amazing songs that didn’t end up getting recorded by other artists, for a variety of reasons, and now he’s putting the best of them on a new album, Yours For the Taking: The Found Songs of Jimmy Webb, scheduled for release on Oct. 23. Luckily, though, fans don’t have to wait until the fall to hear the first single: “Winter Clothes,” originally pitched to Frank Sinatra, is out today, Aug. 14.
As Webb told Billboard, the new album includes songs that have been “pretty much overlooked or unrecorded, neglected in a way, music that my wife [album executive producer Laura Savini Webb] and some of the younger people around me really inspired me to go back and finish.”
“And my children say, ‘Y’know, dad, you wrote this. This is great. This could’ve been a hit,'” Webb continued.
“So the basis of this album is rebirth, recycling that youthful energy and not letting (the songs) just molder away in the attic but to go back and flip those pancakes again and see what we can come up with. It’s very invigorating. Very inspiring…Just ’cause I’m 80 doesn’t mean I’ve lost that fire, y’know? I may be 80 on the outside, but I’m always 18 on the inside.”
Like many of the other recently revived tunes, “Winter Clothes” — which features a guest appearance from Graham Nash — was supposed to be performed by a big star (in this case, Sinatra).
“Mr. Sinatra thought he might record it, but he thought I needed to work on it,” Webb explained. “When Mr. Sinatra says, ‘Y’know, kid, this is pretty good, but I think it needs some work,’ you listen to him. He was telling me some really important stuff. I never really took that song back to him, but I never gave up on the idea. I thought it was a pretty good song, so when we decided to do this (album), it felt like it was time to bring it back out.”
Sinatra’s loss has turned into a win for Webb fans, with commenters on an official Instagram post about “Winter Clothes” already praising the track: “I just listened…and wept. A wonderful song, and a beautiful vocal,” wrote one person, with another calling it “an incredible testament to lifelong creativity.”
Another song on the album, “Farther Than Eyes Can See,” was offered to Barbra Streisand (more than once).
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“I submitted it to her for 20 years, four times,” Webb said. “I would disguise it, I would put it in different (musical) costumes and run it by her again and think that by now she’ll have forgotten that she heard this before, and this time she’s gonna love it. She never loved it.”
As far as Webb is concerned, the material on Yours For the Taking: The Found Songs of Jimmy Webb should have been released long ago.
“Some of them I would go, ‘I don’t know why the world is blind to this, but right now they’re invisible. The evil witch of the North has obscured it with some sort of cloaking device or something,'” Webb admitted. “I know some of these songs were hits because I was writing hits. What I have here is quite a lot of songs that I thought were hits, but other people…didn’t hear what I heard. I know I sound very strong about this, but I am 80 years old and I do know what makes a hit, what the ingredients are…although in the context of today, I have no idea what a hit is. I can’t begin to tell you. But in those days I knew.”
Webb is planning on taking the new songs (and his old favorites, of course) out on the road this November.
“People say to me, ‘Why are you still doing this?’ and I have to say because I love it,” Webb explained. “I love the feeling of singing one of my own songs. I think — I hope this isn’t just my ego, but I do think that I have something to offer in my performances. I don’t really know what my demographic is…but it’s great that they’re still there and I’m still here. I just try to raise the level of encouragement and enjoyment of life we find at this age.”
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