As a singer Joe Cocker was one of the purest, most natural talents of the past fifty-plus years. At his best he often so fully occupied the performance that he was truly somewhere else, a place where he was unavailable for anything else. By all accounts Joe Cocker was a humble and sweet-natured man with little ego to either drive him forward, nor to shield him from what was to come. He entered the American musical scene in an overcrowded rocket made of glass, at a time perfectly primed for his talents, yet tangled with vices that would scar him forever and often lay him low. He alternately disappeared below the waves and skipped beautifully above them for the remainder of his life, never entirely losing that mammoth natural gift of a voice, the fire that he could muster for a performance. Aided greatly by his wife and others, Mr. Cocker had some often good, though never trouble free years in the latter part of his life. That voice and those performances will continue to outshine the bad forever.