Songwriting legend Jimmy Webb performs songs from his 40 year career at 7PM, Friday, December 17th at the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton

Frank Sinatra declared Jimmy Webb’s  “By The Time I Get To Phoenix” “the greatest torch song ever written.” Billy Joel credits Jimmy as a major influence. “When I was starting out as a songwriter,” says Joel, “I looked to Jimmy Webb as one of the most innovative and musically proficient songwriters of our generation.”

Composer Jimmy Webb’s songs transcend their critical and commercial acclaim to achieve the level of true classics – a permanent part of the American musical landscape, the soundtrack of an era that spans the last 40 years. Webb is the only artist to ever receive Grammy awards for music, lyrics, and orchestration.  He is a member of the National Academy of Popular Music Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, the Nashville Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, and, according to BMI, his “By The Time I Get To Phoenix,” has been the third most performed song in the last fifty years (with “Up, Up and Away” on the same list in the top thirty.) Webb’s, “Wichita Lineman” has been listed in MOJO Magazine’s worldwide survey of the best singles of all time.  With a discography that reads like a “Who’s Who” in the music world, Webb has influenced and affected some of the finest musical talents of our time.

Though still best known for the instant classics he provided for such artists as Glen Campbell (“By The Time I Get To Phoenix,” “Wichita Lineman,” “Galveston,” “Where’s The Playground, Susie”), Richard Harris (“MacArthur Park,” “Didn’t We”), the Fifth Dimension (“Up, Up and Away,” “This Is Your Life”), Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Kris Kristofferson ("The Highwayman”) and so on, Jimmy Webb’s songs continue to grace a multitude of major recording artists’ albums, from Tony Bennett and Rosemary Clooney, to Urge Overkill, Reba McEntire, and Shawn Colvin. Jimmy’s latest album, Just Across The River, includes cameos by Billy Joel, Willie Nelson, Vince Gill, Lucinda Williams, Jackson Browne, Glen Campbell, Mark Knopfler, Linda Ronstadt,  and others.

Webb tours only occasionally and this will be a rare and intimate chance to see a legend at the keys with his own vast songbook as a sort of set-list of dreams.

Tickets for Jimmy Webb at the Iron Horse Music Hall on Friday, December 17 at 7pm are $25 at Northampton Box Office, 76 Main Street, 413-586-8686 and online at IHEG.com.