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The music of the late Tim Buckley is about to take flight again on Wings – The Complete Singles 1966-1974 from Omnivore Recordings.  Due for release on November 18, Wings presents the A- and B-sides of all ten singles issued from his nine albums, plus one previously unreleased track originally slated for an unissued 45.  In short, this 21-track anthology promises to provide a powerful introduction to the genre-bending, envelope-pushing artist.

Hailing from bucolic Orange County, California by way of Washington, DC and New York, the teenaged Tim Buckley had to drive north on the newly-finished 405 freeway to be “where the action is” on the Sunset Strip. It was at The Trip that Buckley’s band, The Bohemians (consisting of singer/guitarist Buckley, bassist Jim Fielder, drummer Larry Beckett and guitarist Brian Hartzler), encountered Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. The Mothers were playing the Trip, and the Bohemians had a connection. The Mothers’ drummer Jimmy Carl Black, who played on 1966’s Freak Out!, was a friend of Fielder’s, having worked with him at an Anaheim music store. (Fielder would have a brief, tumultuous stint in The Mothers between the releases of Freak Out! and its follow-up, Absolutely Free.  He then went on to become a founding member of Blood, Sweat and Tears.) Black took a liking to The Bohemians and introduced them to The Mothers’ then-manager, Herb Cohen. It was Tim Buckley alone, however, who captivated Cohen. He took the young singer under his wing, both personally and professionally. As he had negotiated Zappa’s debut on Verve Records, he engineered a deal for Buckley at Jac Holzman’s Elektra Records.  The rest is, as they say, history.  Buckley stayed true to his own muse until his tragic death in 1975 at the age of 28.  (Sadly, his singer-songwriter son Jeff would only live until 30 years old, passing away in 1997.)

At Elektra, and subsequently at Zappa and Cohen’s Straight and DiscReet labels, Buckley worked with an A-list of producers including Holzman, Paul Rothchild, Jerry Yester and Jerry Goldstein.  A stylistically wide-ranging artist, he moved from pure folk to rock, psychedelia, jazz, funk and soul – all rendered through his own idiosyncratic sensibility.  Wings features such Buckley favorites as “Morning Glory,” “Once I Was,” and Fred Neil’s “Dolphins.”  It’s sequenced chronologically from Buckley’s 1966 debut up to his 1974 album Look at the Fool, and includes both sides of the unissued single “Once Upon a Time” b/w “Lady, Give Me Your Key.”  The latter makes its first appearance anywhere on this compilation.

The booklet features a new interview with Larry Beckett as well as photographs and ephemera.  Michael Graves has newly remastered all tracks. Wings arrives on CD from Omnivore on November 18, and you can peruse the track listing below as well as place pre-orders!

Tim Buckley, Wings: The Complete Singles 1966-1974 (Omnivore, 2016) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada Links TBD)

1. Wings
2. Grief in My Soul
3. Aren’t You the Girl
4. Strange Street Affair Under Blue
5. Once Upon a Time
6. Lady, Give Me Your Key
7. Morning Glory
8. Knight Errant
9. Once I Was
10. Pleasant Street
11. Carnival Song
12. Happy Time
13. So Lonely
14. Move with Me
15. Nighthawkin’
16. Quicksand
17. Stone in Love
18. Dolphins
19. Honey Man
20. Wanda Lu
21. Who Could Deny You?