Van the Man and the record collection that raised him

Van Morrison's musical education began at home, in a house on Hyndford Street in Belfast. His father, a shipyard electrician, owned one of the largest record collections in Northern Ireland, brought back from time spent in Detroit. The boy grew up on Jelly Roll Morton, Ray Charles, Lead Belly, Muddy Waters, Mahalia Jackson, Charlie Parker, Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams. The first record he bought himself was by the blues musician Sonny Terry.

As a teenager in the late 1950s he played guitar, harmonica, keyboards and saxophone in Irish showbands, covering the hits of the day. By the mid-1960s he was lead singer of the Belfast R&B band Them, with whom he wrote and recorded “Gloria,” a garage-band staple. His solo career opened under producer Bert Berns with “Brown Eyed Girl” in 1967.

After Berns died, Warner Bros. bought Morrison's contract and gave him three sessions to record Astral Weeks. It sold poorly at first and has since come to be regarded as a classic. Moondance in 1970 established him as a major artist, and he built on that through the decade with a string of acclaimed albums and live shows. Songs such as “And It Stoned Me,” “Crazy Love,” “Tupelo Honey” and “Wild Night” show the warmer side of that catalogue.

His music runs on two tracks: tight songs rooted in soul and early R&B, and long, spiritual explorations drawing on Celtic tradition, jazz and stream-of-consciousness lyrics. The blend is sometimes called Celtic soul. Over the decades more than forty of his albums have reached the UK Top 40, he has taken two Grammy Awards, and he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was knighted in 2016, and since turning 70 he has released more than an album a year on average.