Tom Rush has been performing since the early 1960s and has had a profound impact on the American music scene. He helped shape the folk revival in the early '60s and the renaissance of the '80s and '90s.

Rolling Stone magazine called Rush America's "song-finder" after the singer released his 1968 album, "The Circle Game." The album contained songs written by Joni Mitchell, James Taylor and Jackson Browne at a time when the three were still unknown by the general public.

"I've been accused of kicking off the singer-songwriter movement with that album," Rush said in an interview from his home in Vermont.

"People really took notice that I'd introduced three incredible songwriters - all at once.

"I was just looking for good songs. I was way overdue at delivering a new album and I needed some songs, and here come these three writers with stuff that I just love.

"And that's really the way I approached it," he added. "I'm not really in the business of discovering people. I'm in the business perhaps of finding really good songs."

Rush began performing in 1961 while studying at Harvard University, where he majored in English literature. Many of his early recordings are versions of Lowland Scots and Appalachian folk songs.

He also was interested in early blues music and performed with many of the best-known country-blues artists of the time. But it was Rush's love of the new style of art-folk in the mid-'60s for which he is most recognized.

He recalled meeting Joni Mitchell at a folk music club in Detroit. She played him four songs and later sent him a tape of six songs.

"The last one was 'Circle Game,' which she said was new, and probably terrible," he recalled. "It ended up being the title song of my album."

That album, merging Rush's rich baritone and sensitive-yet-unsentimental delivery, made his reputation. He was crowned the master interpreter of the modern folk-derived art song.

Rush is also known for entertaining audiences with banter between his songs. He talks about where he first heard a song or what he likes about it.

"At the bottom of it all, I'm a storyteller," he said. "Sometimes they're stories set to music and sometimes not."

Rush's latest studio album, "What I Know," was released in 2009. The collection includes a few originals and other songs that sometimes surprise. An example is Doby Gray's classic pop hit "Drift Away" - which in Rush's hands becomes a very different song.

"It's a powerful song if you strip it down and take away all the horns and dancing girls and hook machines," he said. "It's not just the arrangement that makes it a hit."

Rush's voice on the song is amazing for how much it sounds like it did a half century ago.

"I don't know how to account for it," he said, "but my voice has probably actually gotten better over time instead of going the other way, so I'm lucky."