Michael Chapman

In the fertile U.K. folk-rock scene of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, there were the heavy-duty songwriters (Ralph McTell, Roy Harper) and the acoustic guitar heroes (Bert Jansch, Wizz Jones), but Michael Chapman's work fell into both camps. Chapman was both a first-rate fingerpicker and a knockout songsmith capable of jaw-dropping tunes like the 1970 epic "Aviator," from his cult-classic album Fully Qualified Survivor. Chapman made his entry into the London folk scene around 1967, releasing his debut album two years later. While his early records are of comparable quality to what his aforementioned contemporaries were doing at the time, Chapman hasn't entered the annals of history with as high a profile as his peers, which seems unfair. His mid-period work found him moving through various styles, including blues, a more rock-oriented approach, and a greater emphasis on acoustic instrumentals, but Chapman never stopped working, and a small-but-hardy cult following persisted on both sides of the Atlantic, to the degree that Fully Qualified Survivor finally got its first U.S. release in 2011.