Okay, let's be honest here.

If you were to list the 100 greatest country artist's of all time, Dan Fogelberg's name would not be on the list. Heck, if you named a thousand country artist's you wouldn't find his name.

You see, Dan Fogelberg was not a country artist. He was a pop artist, a hugely successful pop artist. I remember in the 1970's not only playing Dan's music on the radio (we were a mix of country and pop back in the old days at that station) but loving his work. How to describe it? Well, perhaps quiet and penetrating, the kind of song that told a great story and made you think. A storyteller.

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Wait. Wait just a minute.

Isn't that what the great country song's do? Tell a great story and make you think, move you emotionally?

Dan Fogelberg did that. Is this day of country music, some of which I would say is barely country, Dan sounds a whole lot more 'country' than a lot of the current stuff. Now, if you love the country music of, say, Randy Travis or Don Williams or maybe Jamey Johnson well...

You might just like Dan Fogelberg. Nope, not country, but not far from it.

On a personal level I really admired Dan's songwriting and his seemingly simple, beautiful yet powerful delivery of a 'story'. Dan passed away on December 16, 2007 from pancreatic cancer at the much, much too young age of 56

Want an example of what I've talked about here? It's a single Dan released in 1981, a loving tribute to his dad called 'Leader Of The Band'. Give it a listen and see if you don't agree that it's, well, not that far from country.

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