Under different circumstances Jesse Winchester, who has died of cancer aged 69, could have joined the pantheon of 1970s singer-songwriters that included the likes of Jackson Browne and James Taylor. Instead, following his decision in 1967 to leave his native US for Canada to avoid being drafted to the Vietnam war, Winchester remained a slightly remote figure, though he became very much the songwriter's songwriter. While plying his trade north of the border he became known largely through cover versions of his songs by artists such as Tim Hardin, Joan Baez, Emmylou Harris, the Everly Brothers, Tom Rush and Jimmy Buffett.
It was also his exile from America that lent a note of poignancy to his best-known songs, many of which were bittersweet recollections of people and places in the American south, where Winchester had grown up. Yankee Lady, a song from his debut album that was disseminated through versions by Brewer & Shipley, Hardin and Matthews' Southern Comfort, contained the heartfelt couplet: "And now when I see myself as a stranger by my birth/The Yankee lady's memory reminds me of my worth".
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