Hardin

Tim Hardin  - Sketch by Dale Burkhardt

Is it really twelve years since I blogged about Tim Hardin? I guess it must be because the evidence is here. In 2010 I shared his recording of "Reason to Believe" but tonight it's the turn of his other most famous song - "If I  Were A Carpenter". This was released in 1966:-

If I were a carpenter

And you were a lady,

Would you marry me anyway?

Would you have my baby?

If a tinker were my trade

Would you still find me,

Carryin' the pots I made,

Followin' behind me.

Save my love through loneliness,

Save my love for sorrow,

I'm given you my onliness,

Come give your tomorrow.

If I worked my hands in wood,

Would you still love me?

Answer me babe, "Yes I would,

I'll put you above me."

If I were a miller

At a mill wheel grinding,

Would you miss your color box,

And your soft shoe shining?

If I were a carpenter

And you were a lady,

Would you marry me anyway?

Would you have my baby?

Would you marry anyway?

Would you have my baby?

Tim Hardin had only just turned thirty nine when he died in Los Angeles  in December, 1980. A son of Eugene, Oregon it is believed that his ultimately fatal addiction to heroin began when he was serving with the US military in South East Asia in the sixties. Hardin played Woodstock in 1969 but just two years later he was performing to a sparse audience in The Floral Hall, Hornsea, East Yorkshire. He would have been twenty nine at the time and I was seventeen.