Part Four as I pick two songs from every year of my life based on the songs that were important to me at the time or have had a lasting impact on the me. The ground rules are in the first entry; here are parts two and three.

1973
“Solid Air” - John Martyn
I heard this album in a record store in a mall and ventured out in search of this disc. I found other albums by Martyn, who uniquely blended folk and jazz, but none had the magic I believed this one possessed. It would appear at times in import racks at astronomically high prices - I'm guessing six or seven dollars - and eventually I scored it used in the early 1980s. During the search for “Solid Air” conversations would start up about other artists from the era and the label, but I did not believe any of the others could be as good as Martyn. One of them was Nick Drake.

“Conference of the Birds” - Dave Holland
My role model on the bass. He plays nearly every form of  jazz imaginable and does it with a multitude of configurations including this track from a disc that is mostly improvised wildness. Sam Rivers and Anthony Braxton are the woodwind players; Barry Altschul is the drummer.

1974
“Down to You” - Joni Mitchell
“Late for the Sky” - Jackson Browne

More than any other albums, Joni's “Court and Spark” and Jackson's “Late for the Sky” were explanations of adulthood. Not sure what they were singing about - extreme amounts of disappointment actually - but the emotions felt more real than anything else I had ever heard.

1975
“Tangled Up in Blue” - Bob Dylan
The hardest task in assembling this set was picking one Dylan song. I had to play by my own rules: First song, first side of the album that affected me most. Bought “Blood on the Tracks” the week it was released and it did not leave my turntable for at least  a month. I love all of the stories in the songs, but this one’s the best - a drifter who can't quite shake a former lover winds up in the thick of an uprising and eventually realizes the importance of a common bond.

“Incident on 57th Street” - Bruce Springsteen
Second hardest task . . . I have heard him perform it only twice in concert and each time it brings chills. Most of that owes to the haunting quality of the song,  and my memories of spending a summer listening to “The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle” before Springsteen exploded with “Born to Run.”

1976
“One of These Days” - Mose Allison
One of those humble guys who is all about the music, in his case a blend of Jimmie Rodgers, Duke Ellington and Willie Dixon. He once told me in the early 1990s he'd play anything except “the plantation songs,” noting “that part of America doesn’t exist anymore.”  Percy Mayfield's widow grinned when we were chatting about Mose: “As long as Mose is performing, Percy is alive.” I loved the sentiment. I also named my wonderful dog Mose in his honor.

“I Wish I Was in New Orleans” - Tom Waits
“Small Change,” on which this appears, is the only album I have owned on CD, vinyl, cassette and 8-track. Saw him 18 times between 1976 and 1982; only four times since, the last being in Phoenix.

1977
“Don't Worry About the Government” - Taking Heads
From “Talking Heads 77,” the album that made me stop listening to anything without teeth. John Hiatt once said he heard “Like a Rolling Stone” for the first time in his mother's car while waiting for her. He figured he was such a different person after hearing it, that she might not recognize him. “Talking Heads 77,” left in my dorm room after a party, had that effect on me.

“A Remark You Made” - Weather Report
Musically there might not have been a better band on the planet at that time - Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, Jaco Pastorious and Alex Acuna - and while they had a hit with “Birdland,” it was this ballad that thrilled me over and over. In the late 1980s, Eric Clapton started playing it as an intro to “Layla.”