I have to be honest and say I was not always a fan of Jimmy Webb's music, too often finding the multi-layered sentimentality of his earlier output rather cloying. I could recognise the work of a craftsman, just wasn't very fond of the design.

I've now come to recognise his best known songs, Honey Come Back; By The Time I Get To Phoenix ; Wichita Lineman and Galveston, all big hits for Glen Campbell back in the mid-to-late 60's, for the pop classics that they are. Frank Sinatra went so ar as to call 'Phoenix' "The Greatest Torch Song Ever". In retrospect, I'm finding it had to disagree with Ol' Blue Eyes.

Jimmy also wrote the classic one-off pop melodrama Macarthur Park, a hit for Richard Harris in 1968, Didn't We, also popularised by Harris, and the dramatic Highwayman in 1977, a song gestated during an alcohol-fuelled dream, which later became the signature tune for The Highwaymen, four of country's finest, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson & Johnny Cash.