It's very difficult choosing only ten albums, especially when I usually love all the releases by the individual acts that are my favourites, and it is just as hard to pick ten favourite singers or bands but this selection here is what I have decided on.

"Blue" is the 1971 album by Canadian-born singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell and I think is her finest work. Songs include "All I Want," "The Last Time I Saw Richard," "A Case of You" and "This Flight Tonight." I can't exactly explain why I love Joni's songs and singing so much but I suppose it's a combination of her voice, her unique style that has been much imitated and her subject matter. I once read that Roy Harper, who you will find in this list, also would put Blue among his favourite records and I am not surprised.

I love Van Morrison's work and have seen him live on many occasions long ago before he became an artist I could no longer afford to see. I can remember when for three pounds sterling you could go to an entire weekend's festival and see loads of world class acts but now you can pay 25 pounds or more just to see one gig by some singers and bands. Van comes into that category so I haven't seen him in concert for many a year - I simply can't afford it.

Of his albums there are so many to choose from but "Astral Weeks" is the one I would select if I could only pick one. Astral Weeks was released in 1968 on Warner Bros. Records and besides the title track "Cyprus Avenue" and "Madame George" are personal favourite songs. When I was much younger I even went through a phase of drinking "cherry wine" just because I heard Van singing about it on here.

Neil Young comes top of all my favourite singers and bands and is probably my greatest influence as a singer-songwriter myself.I remember in my late teens when friends used to discuss bands it would often get asked who is your favourite guitarist? Is it Clapton or Jimmy Page or Hendrix? I would say, "t's none of them. It's Neil Young"

I have found it exceedingly difficult to choose just one of his albums and my final choice is on a recoding that many of his fans might not agree with me on. "Greendale" I find I have played over and over and over again and the last songs "Sun Green" and "Be the Rain," for me have so much of a message in them and represent Neil as the protest singer who cares about the environment at his best.

Greendale is the name of the album and a movie, both released in 2003, and is an ambitious one-off project that breaks with the mould. Greendale is 10-song rock opera set in a fictional California seaside town and its narrative is and characters could easily be part of a drama series. For me the whole tale explains why the heroine Sun Green becomes motivated to become a protester and an eco-warrior and I quote the song:

"Sun Green started makin' waves on the day that Grandpa died speakin' out against anything unjust or packed with lies. She chained herself to a statue of an eagle In the lobby of Power Co. and started yelling through a megaphone,'There's corruption on the highest floor.'"

Leonard Cohen was a favourite of mine from when I first hear him on the late great John Peel's Top Gear back in the late 60s. I saw Leonard at the Isle of Wight festival and he is one of the only acts that I can still remember seeing and could tell you what song he opened with. Again a very hard choice to choose one album but I will make the one he began his recording career with: "Songs of Leonard Cohen", which was released in 1967 on Columbia.For me every song of Cohen's is a lyrical masterpiece and he is my favourite poet.

"Mythical Kings and Iguanas" was the second solo LP by Dory Previn, released in early 1971 and I played this over and over. Then my sister Hazel fell in love with it too and did likewise and my LP ended up very crackly from all the wear and tear. For me the title track is just so spot on as it talks about how the singer spent her time trying to take "astral walks" and in "search of mythical kings" but "never learned to touch for real or feel the things iguanas feel down down down where they play."

I have three ultimate top singer-songwriter heros. Neil Young and Leonard Cohen are two of them and the other is Dylan. "Street Legal" was Bob Dylan's 18th studio album, released in 1978 by Columbia Records, and I have chosen because I ended up playing it over and over and over again at a very difficult time in my own personal life. It was as if I could feel the desperation Dylan had put into his lyrics.

There was something very mystical about the album with tracks like "Changing of the Guards" and the bluesy "New Pony" in which his horse's name is Lucifer. There was also something very down to earth and simple about the hit single "Baby, Please Stop Crying," and then there was the voice of a soul searching against all odds for a solution to his woes in songs like "Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)" with its lines like:

"Señor, señor, let's disconnect these cables, Overturn these tables. This place don't make sense to me no more. Can you tell me what we're waiting for, senor?"

and the final track - "Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat)" - where Dylan sings:

"There's a new day at dawn and I've finally arrived. If I'm there in the morning, baby, you'll know I've survived. I can't believe it, I can't believe I'm alive, But without you it just doesn't seem right. Oh, where are you tonight?"

It was heralding Dylan's Christian period, and I could understand that!

Bridget St John's "Ask Me No Questions" is next on the list, which by the way is in no particular order, and was released on John Peel's Dandelion label in 1969. It was also produced by Peel and features some backing guitar by John Martyn. For me Bridget was my dream woman and represented everything I was looking for. Her voice was so soothing, so sensual and so distinctive. Her songs were everything the '60s were supposed to be about and they radiated love and peace.

The title track with its birdsong is one of the most beautiful songs I know of. "To B Without A Hitch" was a single on the same label and I loved the way Bridget sang, "Water does no more than get you soaking but people act as if they're going to drown..."

I have seen Bridget in concert several times many years ago but she disappeared from music for many years having moved to America and given her career as a singer-songwriter up. I remember asking Robin Williamson, when I was working for him at the tail end of the '80s if he knew what had happened to her and he told me that and he was right about it. Amazingly, just last year I met up with Bridget's daughter Kristy on Facebook and we have become friends.

Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love" (EMI) was released in 1985 and for me is without a doubt her best album of an incredible amount of work. I first fell in love with Kate when I saw her on Top of the Pops doing "Wuthering Heights." I don't often use the word genius but Kate is one!

Roy Harper is a good friend of Kate's and she has guested on vocals on recordings of his but "Flat Baroque and Berserk" his the fourth album is not one on which she appears. Again, it has been a very hard choice to make but I have picked this album because it contains two of my ultimate favourite songs - "I Hate The White Man" and "Tom Tiddler's Ground."

Roy sings, "And there's a love nest in Tom Tiddler's ground long before Eden was lost and found." So true - nature gets on with what it was supposed to be doing and did this long before people came up with their silly ideas that became world religions and belief systems!

I have seen Roy countless times and met him briefly. He is an act that hasn't become overpriced and I can still afford to see. Roy has been an inspiration to me in many ways - I first learned by watching him the great value of between song banter. It is great for getting your audience connecting with you, making it an interactive experience and adds a lot of time to a set.

Finally, "Don't Stand Me Down" was the third and currently final studio album by Dexys Midnight Runners (or Dexys as they are now to be known), and was released in September 1985. Many other fans of Kevin Rowland would agree with me that it is his classic work although it didn't do very well at the time it first came out, probably because there were no singles released. For some reason I also love Kevin's solo album of covers - "My Beauty" - which was also not well received by the critics but is one of my most played CDs.

Kevin was not happy with the original release because he had been talked into allowing "stereo enhancing" on it and so he sabotaged its release by not agreeing to a single. The more recent "Director's Cut," as advertised here on Amazon, with Kevin and band members Helen O'Hara and Billy Adams wearing Ivy-league fashions, is how he wanted it to sound!

"This Is What She's Like" is a stand-out song in conversational style with Kevin trying to explain to Billy. "Reminisce (Part 2)" is another favourite and Kevin sings the refrain from the soul classic "I`ll Say Forever My Love."

I suppose my link with Kevin is that we both listened to a lot of early R&B and Tamla. It was a "Celtic soul brother" connection! I also like the way he makes frequent reference to the past, which in my opinion really was better and a safer world.

Well, that's a selection of some of my all time favourite albums by some of the singer-songwriters I admire the most. I hope you will discover some music here that you too can enjoy, and if any of the artists you are unfamiliar with then I hope you will find out more about their work.