Shel Silverstein - writer, musician and cartoonist

Shel was born to a Jewish family in Chicago, Illinois, in 1930.  He had an extraordinary talent for writing and for drawing cartoons.   He went to University, in Illinois and then into the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and the Roosevelt University.  In the early 1950s he was drafted into the army and he served in Japan and Korea.  He honed his drawing talents during his army service, in one of the army magazines.  After leaving the military, he became a cartoonist for Playboy magazine and began to achieve a measure of fame.   He became friends with Hugh Hefner and lived at times at the Playboy Mansion.
He wrote poems for children and then began to write music, producing an enormous body of songs, mostly country, which have been recorded by numerous artists including Dr Hook, Bobby Bare and many others. Many of the songs have louche a or double meaning lyrics, yet he was also capable of writing sweet and sentimental books for children.   He wrote one of Johnny Cash’s best known songs, A Boy Named Sue.  He wrote most of the songs on Dr Hook’s early albums, before they turned from novelty and country influenced music to pop.   Shel never married and was something of a ladies' man...but he had 2 children, a daughter who died as a child (Shoshanna) and a son Matthew.  He died in Florida, in 1999. 
He is a very prolific writer, and his songs have been deservedly famous, such songs as “Sylvia’s Mother”, “Cover of the Rolling Stone”, “Ballad of Lucy Jordan”, “the Mermaid,” and many more- too numerous to mention.   He interests me because he is such a strange man, in some ways confident and witty, but almost childlike in his love of music and “magic”.  
He often gave writing credits to people who were just around when he penned a song, and felt that it was petty to argue about “who wrote what”.  He recorded some of his own songs, but his voice was not exactly pretty and mostly, his songs were performed by others. Some of his funniest songs are the ones he recorded himself, such as “A Front Row Seat to Hear Old Johnny Sing” (about Johnny Cash) or “Stacy Brown Got Two” (about a very lucky man) and “I got Stoned and I missed it” (a cautionary tale about taking drugs).  He wrote songs for "The Old Dogs" a supergroup formed by Waylon Jennings, Bobby Bare, Mel Tillis and Jerry Reed, when they were older.. who performed comic songs about the funny side of getting older...