I"n the early 1970s the singer, songwriter and poet Rod McKuen was loved and loathed in equal measure. His sentimentality was too much for some but if it bothered him, he never revealed it publicly. He said, “I have a style which is uniquely mine. I like to think there is only one Rod McKuen.” Another stumbling block was his croaky voice, although it was ideally suited to his whispered poems and songs of lost love. “I have a range of two octaves,” he once told me, adding with a wink, “On a clear night you can hear John Denver.” He was born in 1933 in a Salvation Army hostel in Oakland, California and raised by his mother and an abusive, drunken stepfather. He left home as soon as he felt able to support himself and he dug ditches, felled trees and worked as a ranch hand. He kept a diary of his experiences which would fuel some of his poetry. As a late night radio DJ in Oakland he read poems in between the records. In 1953 he was conscripted to Korea, prompting his pacifist song, “Soldiers Who Want To Be Heroes”. (“Soldiers who want to be heroes, Number practically zero, But there are millions, Who want to be civilians.”) He recorded this himself, while another song relating to those days, “Doesn’t Anybody Know My Name”, was recorded by Vince Hill in 1968." http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/rod-mckuen-poet-songwriter-and-distinctively-voiced-singer-who-was-nominated-for-an-oscar-and-worked-with-jacques-brel-and-frank-sinatra-10014815.html