Born George Ivan Morrison in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on August 31, 1945, Van Morrison grew up in a working-class household where music arrived from considerably farther afield than the streets outside his front door. His father, George Morrison, worked at the Belfast shipyard and amassed an impressive collection of American records, exposing his son to blues, jazz, gospel and country music at a time when such recordings were not necessarily easy to find in Northern Ireland. Artists including Muddy Waters, Lead Belly, Mahalia Jackson, Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers became part of Morrison's early musical education.

Young Van did considerably more than listen. He learned guitar, harmonica and saxophone and began performing while still a teenager. By his early teens he was already playing professionally, eventually working with several Irish showbands. It was an education that no conservatory could quite duplicate: long journeys, demanding audiences, different musical styles and the immediate discovery that if you were not entertaining the people in front of you, they were perfectly capable of finding somebody who would.

In 1964, Morrison became the frontman of the Belfast rhythm-and-blues group Them. The band developed a following at Belfast's Maritime Hotel and soon attracted wider attention. Their recordings included “Baby, Please Don't Go,” “Here Comes the Night” and one of Morrison's most enduring compositions, “Gloria.”

“Gloria” was wonderfully uncomplicated rock and roll: direct, repetitive, memorable and sufficiently easy for thousands of aspiring garage bands to believe they could play it. Many of them probably could, eventually. The song became a rock standard and was subsequently interpreted by numerous performers, including Patti Smith and The Doors.

Morrison left Them in 1966, and producer Bert Berns persuaded him to travel to New York to begin recording as a solo performer. Those sessions produced the song that would follow Morrison around for the rest of his career: “Brown Eyed Girl.”

Released in 1967, “Brown Eyed Girl” became a Top 10 hit in the United States and eventually one of the most familiar songs of its era. Its bright melody, irresistible “sha-la-la” refrain and nostalgic lyrics made it an enduring favorite on radio stations, at parties and anywhere else somebody decided that everyone within earshot needed to sing along.

There was, however, considerable irony in its success. Morrison's relationship with the business arrangements surrounding those early recordings was unhappy, and he later complained about the money he received from the song. Thus one of the world's most cheerful-sounding recordings emerged from circumstances that did not leave its creator feeling especially cheerful.

If “Brown Eyed Girl” suggested Morrison might settle comfortably into a career producing catchy pop singles, his next major project demonstrated just how badly anyone making that assumption had misunderstood him.

Released in 1968, Astral Weeks was unlike almost anything on contemporary radio. Morrison combined folk, jazz, blues, soul, Celtic influences, impressionistic poetry and largely spontaneous performances into an album that seemed to occupy its own musical territory. The musicians included accomplished jazz players, and the sessions were completed remarkably quickly.

Commercially, Astral Weeks was initially modest. Critically, its reputation grew and grew. Over the decades it became widely regarded as one of the landmark albums of popular music. Rather than being tied neatly to 1968, it seemed almost detached from fashion altogether.

Then came Moondance in 1970.

Where Astral Weeks could feel mysterious, introspective and occasionally otherworldly, Moondance was warmer and more immediately accessible. Songs including “Moondance,” “Into the Mystic,” “Caravan” and “Come Running” helped establish Morrison as a major solo artist. Jazz, R&B, folk, soul and pop comfortably shared the same record without anyone apparently feeling the need to draw boundary lines between them.

That refusal to remain within musical boundaries became one of the defining characteristics of Morrison's career. Blues might wander into jazz, jazz could meet Celtic folk music, gospel might appear beside R&B, and a song that began conventionally could gradually become something approaching musical meditation.

Morrison continued his prolific run during the early 1970s with albums including His Band and the Street Choir, Tupelo Honey, Saint Dominic's Preview and Hard Nose the Highway. Songs such as “Domino,” “Wild Night,” “Tupelo Honey” and “Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)” became important additions to a rapidly expanding catalog.

His concerts also developed a formidable reputation. Morrison could be electrifying when everything aligned, taking familiar songs into extended improvisations and following the music wherever it happened to lead. His performances could incorporate repeated phrases, sudden changes, saxophone passages and vocals that moved somewhere between singing, chanting and improvisation.

Predictability was rarely part of the package.

By the middle of the 1970s, Morrison had achieved enough success to have followed the traditional rock-star route of making increasingly commercial records and enjoying the machinery of celebrity. Instead, he periodically withdrew, changed direction and pursued whatever musical territory interested him.

Spirituality became increasingly prominent in his songwriting. Albums including Into the Music, Common One, Beautiful Vision, Inarticulate Speech of the Heart and No Guru, No Method, No Teacher reflected his continuing fascination with transcendence, memory, faith, poetry and the relationship between everyday life and something considerably harder to define.

In 1988, Morrison collaborated with the traditional Irish group The Chieftains on Irish Heartbeat. The project brought Irish traditional music directly into conversation with the blues, soul and Celtic influences that had always existed within Morrison's work. Rather than sounding like an artist suddenly discovering his roots, it sounded more like someone returning to a musical conversation that had begun during his Belfast childhood.

Another of Morrison's best-known compositions arrived on the 1989 album Avalon Sunset. “Have I Told You Lately” became an enduring romantic ballad and was later recorded by numerous performers, most famously Rod Stewart. Morrison's own collaboration with The Chieftains on the song earned a Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals.

Recognition accumulated steadily.

Morrison was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. Characteristically, he did not attend the induction ceremony. Robbie Robertson of The Band handled the presentation, while Morrison demonstrated that even becoming a member of rock music's most famous hall of fame did not necessarily mean he had to turn up for it.

He received the BRIT Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music in 1994 and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003. In 2015, that organization presented him with its prestigious Johnny Mercer Award, reserved for previously inducted songwriters whose body of work represents an exceptional standard of songwriting.

Morrison has also won two Grammy Awards from seven nominations. In addition to the award connected with “Have I Told You Lately,” he shared a Grammy with blues legend John Lee Hooker for their collaboration “Don't Look Back.”

His relationship with Hooker was particularly appropriate. Morrison had grown up listening to American blues musicians, only to become an established performer who later recorded alongside one of the very artists whose music had helped shape him.

In 2016, Morrison received a knighthood for services to the music industry and tourism in Northern Ireland, officially becoming Sir George Ivan Morrison. For an artist who had already spent decades being called “Van the Man,” the additional title probably presented the public with more options than anyone actually needed.

His longevity is remarkable, but his productivity may be even more impressive. While many artists from the 1960s gradually shifted toward nostalgia tours and greatest-hits performances, Morrison continued writing and recording new material at a pace that would exhaust musicians half his age. His catalog has grown to encompass dozens of studio albums and an enormous range of collaborations, live recordings and stylistic experiments.

That restless output is important to understanding Morrison. He has never behaved like a performer whose career consists simply of preserving several famous recordings from his youth. “Brown Eyed Girl,” “Moondance” and “Have I Told You Lately” may be enormously popular, but they represent only a small part of an extensive musical journey.

His voice is equally distinctive. Morrison can croon, growl, whisper, shout and stretch a single phrase through repeated variations until the words themselves almost cease to matter. At his best, the voice becomes another improvising instrument within the band.

Critics have often used the term “Celtic soul” to describe Morrison's mixture of Irish musical sensibility with American blues, jazz, gospel and R&B. The phrase is useful, but even that does not completely contain him. His recordings can move from three-minute pop songs to extended meditations, from straightforward rhythm and blues to music filled with literary and spiritual references.

Perhaps that is why Morrison has remained difficult to categorize after so many decades.

He emerged during the British and Irish rhythm-and-blues explosion of the 1960s, produced one of the era's most durable pop singles, created albums embraced by generations of critics, explored Irish traditional music, worked with blues legends, recorded jazz standards, wrote romantic ballads and continued producing new music long after most of his contemporaries had settled comfortably into their legacy years.

He has also maintained a famously complicated relationship with fame itself. Morrison has generally appeared far more interested in making music than in performing the rituals expected of celebrities. Interviews, publicity and ceremonial appearances have never seemed to excite him nearly as much as another recording session.

That attitude may occasionally have puzzled journalists and promoters, but it has also contributed to the extraordinary independence of his career.

More than half a century after “Brown Eyed Girl” first reached American radio, Van Morrison remains associated with a body of work that crosses generations and musical categories. The teenager who absorbed his father's collection of American records in Belfast eventually became one of the musicians whose own records would influence countless performers who followed him.

And somewhere today, “Brown Eyed Girl” is almost certainly playing.

Someone has just shouted “sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-de-da.”

And everybody else in the room has joined in.