The unconventional prodigy

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, August 15th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: The story of a songwriter you may never have heard of — but whose music quietly captivated some of the biggest names in pop.

David Ackles never had a hit single, and his albums barely sold. Yet his songs drew praise from Elvis Costello, Elton John, Phil Collins, record executive Clive Davis … and WORLD’s music reviewer.

BROWN: Ackles recorded for Elektra and Columbia, building a small but fiercely loyal following—and a legend that outlasted his career.

Now, a new book by Mark Brend titled Down River: In Search of David Ackles … the book uncovers the story behind the mystery—and why his music still matters. Here’s WORLD’s Arsenio Orteza.

ARSENIO ORTEZA: “Buddy, can you spare a contract?” Thus read the caption under the photo of the piano-playing singer-songwriter David Ackles in the 1976 edition of The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock. That was practically the only publication that would mention him at all from that point until 1999, the year he died from cancer at 62.

Ackles' Encyclopedia of Rock entry was brief. It read: “First two albums, David Ackles (1968) and Subway to the Country (1970), established his style—poignant, nostalgic material laced with heavy drama.” There was more, but poignant, nostalgic, and heavy drama pretty well summed Ackles up. What the encyclopedia didn’t mention was how heavy Ackles’ drama could be.

MUSIC: [“Candy Man”]

This is “Candy Man,” a cut from Ackles’ second album, Subway to the Country. The song concerns a candy-shop owner who introduces pornography to children as a way of getting revenge on a society that he blames for the loss of his left hand. It sounds like the plot of an art-house film, and it’s not alone in Ackles’ body of work. In the song “His Name Is Andrew,” the title character undergoes an Ingmar Bergmanesque loss of faith. In “Aberfan,” Ackles recounts a real-life disaster that killed 116 children. And Ackles did have lighter moments. As The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock pointed out, he could be poignant and nostalgic. But all in all his music proved a tough sell. It’s not surprising, therefore, that his story has gone untold–until now.

In his new book, Down River: In Search of David Ackles, Mark Brend finally gives the musician his due.

MARK BREND: I think of him in a category that includes Tom Waits and Scott Walker and Leonard Cohen and, um, Van Dyke Parks maybe, these unusual figures who kind of ended up in the rock world, but musically they come from somewhere quite different.

Brend points out that, unlike his contemporaries, Ackles came from the world of musical theater. One can hear what he means especially well in a song called “Everybody Has a Story,” the opening cut of Ackles 1973 album Five and Dime.

MUSIC: [“Everybody Has a Story”]

Ackles’ theatrical roots ran deep. He was a child actor, appearing in six films about Rusty the dog. He also imbibed the world of live theater thanks to his mother, who directed serious church-theater productions for years. Throw in early exposure to the piano, a gimlet-eyed view of human nature, sardonic humor, and an understated Christian faith, and you have a combination that even in the experimental ’60s would’ve made Ackles an outlier.

But just how understated was Ackles’ faith? From an evangelical point of view, very. Only four songs on any of his four albums contained overt references to Christian sentiments. But from the point of view of Ackles’ denominational affiliations—mainline Presbyterian growing up, Episcopalian as an adult—and from the point of view of his show-don’t-tell theatrical background, his understatement makes sense. Brend interviewed and talked with Ackles toward the end of his life. So I asked him whether he detected other ways that Ackles’ faith manifested itself.

BREND: In his songs, I think you see a lot of compassion for people. So even when his characters in his songs are rather shabby people, he—or they get involved in all sorts of shady things, he has a compassion for them. And, as you know, in the music business there’s a lot of competitiveness and sometimes quite a lot of ego going around. And that didn’t seem to apply to him.

Ackles’ compassion for his characters also bore fruit in elegantly and perfectly constructed songs of quiet desperation and lost or unrequited love. And by “elegantly and perfectly constructed,” I mean lyrics and note values that seemed made for each other, exact rhymes instead of the near rhymes prevalent nowadays, all this in the service of bringing to life emotions that we’d prefer not to face. “Waiting for the Moving Van,” for instance, should move anyone who has ever had to keep a stiff upper lip while cutting bait with a family situation too broken to save.

MUSIC: [“Waiting for the Moving Van”]

So if Ackles is so great, why hasn’t he been posthumously discovered and celebrated the way that other overlooked singer-songwriters of his era have? The easy part of the answer is that Ackles has never had a major reissue campaign. There Is a River is a two-CD anthology that Rhino Records planned to release in 2007 but was cancelled due to a legal dispute.

The hard part of the answer is the subject of Down River’s epilogue. Brend argues that we seem to require our lost-genius narratives to have a tragic component before we find them compelling. Other than a car accident, a frustratingly unfinished musical about the early 20th-century evangelist Aimee McPherson, and the cancer that eventually got him, Ackles was tragedy free.

BREND: He wasn’t somebody who was clinging to past glories. And I think that’s—the idea that somebody can do their four albums then they just move on and do other things in life is perhaps not such an easily packageable narrative.

Brend doesn’t expect Rhino’s There Is a River box ever to be released. But he does hope that Ackles’ four albums will be reissued along with other previously unreleased material, much of which Brend says is “excellent.”

Meanwhile, copies of Ackles’ original LPs and now out-of-print CD reissues from the 1990s and early 2000s can still be found second hand. And, like Brend’s book Down River, they’re well worth searching out.

MUSIC: [“Midnight Carousel”]

I’m Arsenio Orteza.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.