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Jesse Winchester – Jesse Winchester

Jesse Winchester was the debut album from Jesse Winchester, an American who had settled in Montreal to avoid the draft. Although it did not chart in the U.S., it reached #26 on the Canadian album charts, thanks partly to "Yankee Lady," a top 20 Canadian hit, but just one of several great tracks on the album. In subsequent years, Winchester did become a Canadian citizen and remained living in Canada even after Jimmy Carter's amnesty.

Colin Linden, in Bob Mersereau's The Top 100 Canadian Albums, named Jesse Winchester the sixth best Canadian roots album of all time and it was heralded by the critics:

AllMusic gives it 4.5 stars out of 5
Robert Christgau graded it an A-
Ed Ward gushed over the album in Rolling Stone magazine (6 August 1970), inventing the term "Americana" to describe it and saying it "hooked him," was the only album able to pull him out of his post-Kent State massacre depression, and that its "songs transcend all barriers with the exception of one: art."

I wish I had taken the opportunity to see Winchester play – I seem to recall Sherri and Dan having seen him at Hugh's Room – before he (and it) passed away in 2014.

Hometown:	Memphis, Montreal
Label:	Bearsville
Release Date:	1970
Producer:	Robbie Robertson
Style:	folk rock
Mar*Star 125:	38
Mar*Star 150:	80

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Jesse Winchester – Jesse Winchester

Track Listing

Personnel