Kirsty McGee & The Hobopop Collective –The Deafening Sound of Stars

Kirsty McGee writes songs you seem to have heard before. You can often guess how the melody is going to land. She can be coolly formal, constructing songs that sound like forgotten pages from the Great American Songbook. This skill could become mechanical, but for the profound emotion Kirsty invests in these strangely familiar new-minted songs. 

She can be tender, passionate, gay and mordant by turn. You can tap your toe to the jaunty C&W opener, ‘Moving On’, and endorse its message of optimism, but don't be misled. Kirsty thrives on life’s ironies and paradoxes, but is motivated most by its possibilities. She is drawn to multitudinous America with its hopeful dreams and edgy burlesque, but are these just means of escape by a discontented provincial English lass? This transcendental urge aligns her spiritually, if not musically, to P.J. Harvey.

The Deafening Sound of Stars is an embarrassment of riches, with more lyrical depth than most. Try… “Someone said enchantment is a human right / Pretty soon you’re gonna get your fill” (‘Scorpion in a Mason Jar’). And what’s more she does it with jazz, or at least she has the good sense to surround herself with players who can do it with jazz. 

Each will have his or her favourites. Here are some of mine: ‘Copenhagen’, as bare and intimate as the scene it commemorates; ‘Second Tuesday’, a song bruised by grace; ‘Greedy Little Things’, which dismisses all those irksome annoyances of modern life with a shrug couched as a lullaby; ‘I Take You In My Arms’ is a wry acknowledgement of a failure of resistance whilst remaining undeceived (she will never reach a mass audience if she is this deflating about romance). The spare, economical production – with nicely judged embellishments like Nick Walters’ trumpet on the latter, or Clive Mellor’s harmonica on ‘Moving On’, or the collective ethereal tinkling of ‘The Deafening Sound of Stars’ (I suspect her musical saw is somewhere in the mix) – perfectly matches the intimacy of her aesthetic. 

The title track finally breaks open new channels of feeling and communication. This is the one where Kirsty's voyage of mind finds an answering trance-like response in the listener. That is, in any listener prepared to listen. Or is Kirsty being saved for a future time, when all creatures are this honest, sensitive and intelligent? 

kirstymcgee.com

HORSE MUSIC – CROSSCURRENTS BETWEEN JAZZ AND FOLK

‘When you know the script you enjoy the show’. The following is the script of a record recital given by MIKE BUTLER at Manchester Jazz Society on Thursday, 21 June, 2018, with the response of MJS members. Oddfellows potman Henry Moss joined the MJS and was made welcome. 

Whither jazz and folk? Henry, Mike and Don Lee in discussion

The title is a reference to something Louis Armstrong said when asked about the relationship between folk and jazz. He said, “All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.” This is very astute and so true that nothing more really needs to be said on the subject.

[Prolonged pause. A nervous laugh. This ploy to break the ice doesn’t go down as well as Mike hoped, and so he pushes on…]

My field of specialisation when I was an over-employed music writer was jazz, but since becoming an under-employed music writer I’ve been working on a book about folk. So I tend to sit up and take notice when the genres collide or overlap, and even if they’re separated by a wide gulf, the difference can be revealing. 

Going back to the swing years, the jazz singer who did most to promote British folk music was undoubtably Maxine Sullivan. And she really got around, covering England with ‘Barbara Allen’, Ireland with ‘Molly Malone’ and Scotland with ‘Loch Lomond’, and all without moving from 52nd Street, the famous ‘Swing Street’, in Manhattan. At one point she and the John Kirby group moved from the Onyx to The Famous Door, which was next door, and reputedly the smallest and smokiest dive on 52nd Street. The group, a sextet, almost crowded the place out by themselves. A reporter from The New Yorker visited The Famous Door, and observed “it’s practically impossible to be a devotee of hot music and fresh air at the same time”. The conditions make Maxine and the Kirby band’s achievement all the more extraordinary. Never was jazz more plaintive, gentle and enchanting: –

MAXINE SULLIVAN, ‘Just as the Tide Was A’ Flowing’

Note the swinging Sailor’s Hornpipe; the musicians quote the Wedding March to signify a happy union, a trick they repeat in ‘Barbara Allen’ in blithe disregard of the fact that ‘Barbara Allen’ is a tragic ballad which ends in the death of the separated lovers. So the musicians rapidly change tack and tag on the chords of Chopin’s Funeral March. It’s wonderful!    

My book – the working title is Found Out Musical Tunes – touches on folk music, social history, recording technology and record collecting, and the point of focus is the prolific folk producer and engineer Bill Leader. My next selection, which might count as ‘horse music’, was recorded by Bill in a pub, The Nag’s Head, in Southery in the Fens, on August 6th 1962, a Bank Holiday Monday. It’s a paean to a magnificent team of horses, who are mentioned by name as Captain, Short, Boxer and Ball. Not much happens – the horses are watered and put to bed – but I find the performance exhilarating. It somehow convinces that all is for the best in the world and virtue is its own reward. The pay-off line, ‘straight way is the best’, fills the heart with an inexplicable joy. The hero of the song, the waggoner, is a good bloke, and clearly the singer is too, with his rousing voice. This is ‘Four Horses’ by Hockey Feltwell.    

HOCKEY FELTWELL, ‘Four Horses’

Hockey came in late because he’d been out driving a lorry all day. Hockey Feltwell’s dad was the waggoner, and it was his dad who taught him the song. Hockey himself got his start on tractors and graduated to heavy vehicles rather than heavy horses. In its own way, ‘Four Horses’ is as Arcadian as ‘Just as the Tide Was A’ Flowing’. It summons a time when there was a direct connection between people and the land, and when the world was based on horses. Has such a time existed? Was folk song in its classical form ever the popular music of the industrial proletariat? These are hard and searching questions. One of my interviewees, Reg Hall, an authority on Irish and English folk and a great jazz enthusiast, put it to me like this: “We’ve got all sorts of prejudiced views that everybody was singing ‘A Sailor Cut Down in His Prime’… but, you know, were they?” For that matter, did mill-workers in Wigan cavort to an early form of jug band music? Here is the evidence that they did… 

OLDHAM TINKERS, ‘John Willie’s Ragtime Band’

Apparently kazoo bands flourished in Lancashire in the early years of the twentieth century, peaking in the 1930s, which happened to coincide with the Depression. Kazoos were the poor man’s musical instrument, and they came out in force every year at Oldham’s annual carnival. The song, ‘John Willie’s Ragtime Band’, was recorded in 1916 by George Formby Snr. It’s unlikely the Lancashire musicians were aware of Cannon’s Jug Stompers or the Memphis Jug Band, but clearly ‘John Willie’s Ragtime Band’ is an answer to ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’, Irving Berlin’s great hit from 1911. The Oldham Tinkers version was recorded in 1974. The singer, John Howarth, is always at The Oddfellows in Middleton on Monday nights. Is John Howarth still at The Oddfellows on Mondays, Henry? [Mike has to wake Henry up and repeats the question. Henry breaks into an encomium about the Oldham Tinkers and enjoins the members of MJS to visit Oddfellows. Peter Caswell says he knew ‘John Willie’s Ragtime Band’ in infancy because his mother used to sing it, testifying to its pre-war popularity in Lancashire.]

The Lancashire jug bands went unrecorded, as far as I’m aware, but we have examples of jug bands from the States, because the recording industry was so much more advanced over there. Did Oldham kazoos sound anything like Memphis kazoos, I wonder? 

CANNON’S JUG STOMPERS, ‘Walk Right In’

That’s Cannon’s Jug Stompers, with Gus Cannon on vocal, banjo and jug, recorded in Memphis, in 1929. Does anyone remember the teatime music programme hosted by Wally Whyton which had ‘Walk Right In’ as its theme? [No-one remembers but Don informs that ‘Walk Right In’ was a hit for The Rooftop Singers in the sixties.] Oh well perhaps I dreamt it. 

I’ll let the next tracks run together. The link is fairly obvious, but I’ll say that the artists are Maxine Sullivan, Fletcher Henderson and John MacDonald.  

MAXINE SULLIVAN, ‘Loch Lomond’

FLETCHER HENDERSON, ‘What Do You Hear From the Mob in Scotland?’ 

JOHN MacDONALD, ‘The Ball O’ Kerriemeer’ 

Right. After Maxine’s ‘Loch Lomond’, backed by John Kirby and His Orchestra, we had Fletcher Henderson and His Orchestra jumping onto the Highland bandwagon to ask ‘What Do You Hear From the Mob in Scotland?’ (Henderson operated out of Chicago rather than New York.) 

John MacDonald, recorded in 1974 in his caravan home in Morayshire, answers Fletcher's question. The mob are having a high old time.

Novelty, you say? Maxine Sullivan transcends the novelty tag in a way that Fletcher Henderson doesn’t attempt. Maxine is among the most enchanting women of jazz, and is in many ways the antithesis of Billie Holiday. It depends on whether you want your singers fragrant or ravaged, or go for songs of innocence or songs of experience. [Peter Caswell reminds that Mazxine Sullivan was the guest of honour when Oldham hosted the International Duke Ellington Conference in 1978, and praises her undimmed graciousness and beauty.] But there’s little doubt that Scotland, England and Ireland are sites of fantasy to Maxine, whereas jazz artists from Django Reinhardt on created a distinct identity by recasting their own native traditions in the jazz idiom. This could be the subject of a talk in itself, but here is pianist Tete Montoliu with two Catalonian folk songs, ‘El Testament d’Amelia’ and ‘Cançó de Lladre’, playing from the depths of his Catalonian soul: – 

TETE MONTOLIU, ‘El Testament d’Amelia/‘Cançó de Lladre’

[The piece earns a spontaneous round of applause. Lorraine comments, “That's beautiful.”] 

I played Tete Montoliu, but I could have played Kudsi Erguner from Turkey or Reem Kelani from Palestine or Jan Garbarek from Norway or Monty Alexander from Jamaica or Ivo Papasov from Bulgaria or Gilad Atzmon from Israel. It seems that every patch of earth has its own distinctive flavour, made be manifest in jazz or single malt whisky. In that way, jazz music is folk music too. 

Here is Bob Davenport, from a private recording made at Walthamstow Folk Club in 2005, singing straight from the depths of his Geordie soul. It's the most stentorian version of 'Lover Man' ever. 

BOB DAVENPORT, ‘Lover Woman’ 

Bob follows the song with this explanation: “The reason I sang that last song was I had all the 78s of Billie Holiday and she sang at the Albert Hall in 1954, and I went along to hear her sing. That was quite a thing. In fact I nearly got up to sing with her. She said, will anybody from the audience come down and join me and... I’d organised them to come and hear this unique occasion, Billie Holiday, and so they were all there. ‘You know this song, go on Bob.’ But I was at the back and you had to climb over this... [indistinct]. And I wouldn't sing in public. Anyway, another guy came up and took my place.”    

Bob and Billie. Now that would be interesting. It shouldn’t surprise that Bob Davenport loves Billie Holiday, or that Norma Waterson is devoted to Ella Fitzgerald. It would be daft and presumptuous to think that folk and jazz musicians live in a hermetically sealed world of folk and jazz. There’s no law to prevent jazz singer Ottilee Patterson making an album of Irish songs (Ottilie’s Irish Night) and folk singer June Tabor making an album of jazz standards (Some Other Time). There might, however, be explanations why both are such stinkers. Perhaps we can hazard some general principles:

1. Style defines category not repertoire. This is why Peter Pears can sing ‘The Foggy, Foggy Dew’ till his face is blue but he’ll never be a folk singer. And… 
2. Every form of music has a regulation voice. This applies as much to your favourite music, be it jazz or folk or blues, as it does to your least favourite music, be it hip-hop, death metal or grime (I don’t know what grime is either). I suppose this leads towards the psychology of subjective taste, which might be an interesting area of study. Anyway it explains one’s instinctive reaction to horrible music in public spaces, and most music in public spaces is horrible, as I don’t need to tell you. 

Before we turn to pieces that transcend the labels, it might be worthwhile to consider the different uses and methods of jazz and folk. Jazz is continually exploring new directions. Jazz musicians spin variation after variation on simple themes. Could you call on John Coltrane? Or they might pare a melody to its essence, like Miles Davis. Here is ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ by Miles Davis and John Coltrane, recorded at the Newport Festival on July 4, 1958, with Miles, Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb. Note the contrast between Miles’ spareness and Coltrane’s effusiveness. This is a striking example of what jazz does best.  

MILES DAVIS, ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’

‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ belong to the world’s joint stock of great songs. In other words, it’s a standard, and anyone can have a go. ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’, or ‘Bye Bye Skipper’, as sung by Mike Waterson, demonstrates what folk can do best, which is about bridging generations and reshaping an old song with such integrity that it becomes your own… Actually that applies to jazz as much as folk, but you couldn’t mistake Mike Waterson for Miles Davis, even in the dark.

MIKE WATERSON, ‘Bye Bye Skipper’ 

There was a moment when jazz, rock n’ roll and folk were united, before things diversified and got segregated. Skiffle was that moment, and it contained both jazz and folk, and, in embryo, rock. The Beatles started as a skiffle group. It sprang entire from the trad jazz scene, and ‘Rock Island Line’, the song which kicked the whole thing off, languished for a year on a Chris Barber 10” LP ((New Orleans Joys), before some bright spark at Decca backed it with its skiffling companion, ‘John Henry’, and released it as a single in 1955.  

Here is some prime skiffle from 1956. It’s an old union song, actually a parody of a hymn – ‘Round and Round the Picket Line’ by Hylda Sims and the City Ramblers. When it’s done I’ll tell you two or three interesting things about Hylda Sims. 

HYLDA SIMS & THE CITY RAMBLERS, ‘Round and Round the Picket Line’

Right. Did you know that Hylda’s dad, Tom Sims, sold herbal remedies in Petticoat Lane market and co-founded the Communist Party of Great Britain? He seems to have been written out of history (at least he doesn’t have an entry on spartacus-educational.com). Or that Hylda and the City Ramblers starred in a 1958 Russian film in Magicolor, the Soviet version of Technicolor, with a title that translates as A Girl With Guitar? Or that Hylda is a published poet and novelist and still performs? Hylda is a marvellous woman. 

So to close the first set, from the skiffle era, I’d like to offer an example of perfectly integrated folk and jazz, or so it seems to me. It comes from one of the Radio Ballads, a unique hybrid in itself, created by Ewan MacColl and Charles Parker and Peggy Seeger, being a mixture of recorded interview and original song with a documentary purpose. This comes from the second Radio Ballad, Song of a Road, broadcast by the BBC Home Service on November 5th, 1959, about the road building programme that was visibly changing the nation. The piece is identified by the first words spoken, ‘We Are the Consulting Engineers’, and the first singer is Jimmy MacGregor, followed by Ewan MacColl, who carries the rest of the piece. The clarinetist is Bruce Turner and the trombonist is Bobby Mickleburgh. 

EWAN MACCOLL, ‘We Are the Consulting Engineers’ 

The jazz in ‘We Are the Consulting Engineers’ is of the sprightly trad variety. Further transformations took place when modern jazz gained a foothold in the folk community, as we shall see in the second half. 

*

When I tell you that Miles recorded ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ in 1958 and Ewan MacColl recorded ‘We Are the Consulting Engineers’ in 1959, you can see how far Britain lagged behind the U.S.A. in jazz tastes. Davey Graham did more than most to bring the folk division up to speed in terms of the advances in jazz. Graham revolutionised guitar playing in the UK. Up to this point the British guitarist had been a simple strumming skiffler (I’m simplifying somewhat but let it pass). Davey Graham had Thelonious Monk tunes in his repertoire. He travelled around Europe and Africa and brought back exotic tunings. DADGAD is his discovery. He was wont to sprinkle traditional Irish songs with raga-like passages. There are pages and pages of web content devoted to his influence on Jimmy Page, most of which isn’t worth reading. Davey Graham went farther out than anybody, musically, geographically and, sadly, chemically. At Alexis Korner’s instigation, Bill recorded the guitarist one day in 1960. The setting was domestic. In fact it was in his mum’s kitchen. At the time Mrs Leader lived below her son in a garden flat at North Villas, Camden Town. This is the tune Bill recorded...

DAVEY GRAHAM, ‘Anji’

‘Anji’, a simple enough tune, spread like wildfire. It was on every guitarist’s fingertips. Bill talks of going to Glasgow to record an anti-Polaris demonstration. Lots of young people had foregathered in a Glasgow square, waiting for the demo to begin, and there were many dozens or perhaps a hundred young men with guitars. Bill says, “as you walked around the square, you would float into one person’s interpretation of ‘Anji’, and as you walked past you would move into another one.” It was like something by John Cage, Bill says. Everybody played ‘Anji’. Never mind ‘Blowing in the Wind’ or ‘The H-Bomb’s Thunder’ – ‘Anji’, a guitar instrumental, was the true sound of protest in the early sixties.

So, to honour the ubiquity of ‘Anji’, even if the spelling is variable (sometimes it’s A.N.J.I. and sometimes A.N.G.I.E.), here’s a second ‘Anji’. This comes from Bert Jansch’s debut album in 1965 and Bill recorded it in his bedroom at North Villas. So two floors apart from Davey Graham. “He was quite keen to do it,” Bill remembers. “He’d just put his foot through his own guitar so he had to borrow one, and had to be careful he didn’t put his foot through that. He sat on the bed, and I stuck up the one and only mike that I had and plugged it into the one and only tape machine that I had… and he just sang.” Or played.

BERT JANSCH, ‘Angie’

Notice the terrible sound quality. 

The technical term is dropout and it happens when the tape moves away from the head causing a momentary wobble in the audio. “It’s my worst recording,” says Bill, “and it’s probably been more played than any other.” Poor quality tape is responsible, but it was all Bill could get hold of. The recording was made on spec, and Bill eventually sold it to Transatlantic for £100. Bill kept thirty and gave Bert seventy. The record has never been out of print since 1965, and the 50th anniversary of its release in 2015 was marked by a super deluxe edition, which must have been a challenge to the sound engineering department. t

Did anyone recognise the quote? [Bob, Frank, Eddie and everybody else did: shouts of ‘Work Song’ and ‘Nat Adderley’.] From quotes like this, the choice of repertoire and various references on Pentangle and related LPs by Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, you can build up a picture of their listening habits at the time: English traditional singers, the Staple Singers, Charles Mingus – lots of Charles Mingus – Coltrane, Booker T and the M.G.s, Elizabethan madrigals, Moondog, the blind New York street performer, and this, which Jansch quotes on the instrumental ‘Smokey River’, also from his debut album. Shout when you recognise it. 

JIMMY GIUFFRE, ‘Train and the River’

[Mike the treasurer, instantly, “‘Train and the River’!”] The second selection of the night from the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, ‘The Train and the River’ is characterised by its graceful weave of jazz, blues and folk. It demonstrates how the most creative players in the U.S. were on the same route as advanced English folkies, albeit travelling from the opposite direction. Great musicians have never scrupled to borrow tunes. Ian Dury was nervous upon meeting Charlie Haden, Ornette Coleman’s bassist. He apologised for lifting the riff of ‘Sex & Drugs & Rock ’n’ Roll’ from a phrase in Haden’s solo on ‘Ramblin’’ from the Coleman album, Change of the Century. Charlie told Ian not to worry: he’d nicked it himself from ‘Old Joe Clark’, an old-time hillbilly tune. 

There are lots of Mingus tropes on our next selection. You can tick them off as they come up. ‘Waltz’ is from the first, eponymous Pentangle LP, from 1966. Pentangle were Jacqui McShee on vocals (not heard here), Bert Jansch and John Renbourn on guitars, and, crucially, the experienced jazz rhythm team of Danny Thompson on bass and Terry Cox on drums, who were in the house band at Ronnie Scott's for a spell. You might describe this as warmed over Mingus, but, as we know, if you change the context, you also change the meaning, and in the context of British folk this was electrifying (if ‘electrifying’ is the right word)... 

  

  PENTANGLE, ‘Waltz’ 

If I may inject a personal note I first noticed Tony Coe, Henry Lowther, Lol Coxhill, Chris MacGregor and Dudu Pukwana as names on folk, or folk-rock records? I knew ‘The Theme from The Pink Panther’, of course, but I didn’t know it was Tony Coe until much later, whereas he gets a credit for his tenor sax obligato on ‘Solid Air’, which is so crucial to the atmosphere of the song. Folk-rock and, let’s not forget prog-rock, which also had a subterranean jazz element, primed me for the real thing. I’m glad though that I came across Danny Richmond in the conventional way, as the drummer with Charles Mingus, rather than a sideman on Bert Jansch’s Moonshine, an album from 1972. I recommend the version of ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ from Moonshine, which boasts the unexpected conjunction of Danny Richmond and Mary Hopkin. And so it was that on the day I got three O levels at school I celebrated by joining Middlesbrough Central Library’s record library and the first record I took out was Tijuana Moods by Charles Mingus. It was a revelation. And what is Tijuana Moods but a grand synthesis of blues, bop and swing with something else: something we can only call folk music, albeit of the Mexican variety.

[For a change nobody asked, but the line-up is Charles Mingus, bass; Jimmy Knepper, trombone; Curtis Porter (Shafi Hadi), alto saxophone; Clarence Shaw, trumpet; Bill Triglia, piano; Danny Richmond, drums; Frankie Dunlop, percussion; also Isabel Morel, castinets and voice.] 

CHARLES MINGUS, ‘Los Mariachos’

Sometimes there are extra-musical reasons for jazz and folk crossover. (I can’t bring myself to say the horrible ‘f’ word; crossover is bad enough.) What, for example, if you’re the best Irish traditional singer in the world and the best jazz guitarist in the world happens to move in four doors down from your house in Rossendale? Naturally you get along famously. Making music together is the obvious next move. Such was the case with Donal Maguire, the great Irish traditional singer in question, and Mike Walker, a jazz guitarist of local and international renown. Donal Maguire’s album, Gilded Chains and Sordid Affluence, from 2001, resulted from the collaboration. ‘Little Bridget Flynn’ is the lead track. The saxophonist here is Iain Dixon.

DONAL MAGUIRE, ‘Little Bridget Flynn’ 

And what happened when Stuart McCallum, the cool, calm, urbane guitarist, a mainstay of Mancunian jazz, met Rioghnach Connolly, a lass from Armagh in Northern Ireland, steeped in traditional Irish song, who has made Manchester her base? Answer: they formed a group called The Breath and signed to Peter Gabriel’s Real World label. The second album is imminent. I was given the task of writing the press release, so I’m well placed to give you the story behind our next song, ‘Let It Calm You Down’… 

The scene is Matt and Phred’s, a club, as all we know, noted for its noisy and inattentive audience. The long hours and tiny fees absolve performers of any obligation except to please themselves, which is the first rule of the artist anyway. And so Stuart and Rioghnach, together with John Ellis, Luke Flowers and Sam Vicary – collectively known The Breath – were taking the opportunity to try out new things. Rioghnach, alas, has been in a foul temper all night, and is slightly the worse for drink. Stuart starts to play something loosely based on a solo arrangement he once made of the standard ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’. The band follow. At this point Ellis Davies, Rioghnach’s boon companion from her bar-room band Honeyfeet, walks in, and settles at the back within Rioghnach’s direct line of vision. She discerns him through a red mist. The rest of the audience disappear and only Ellis remains. She sings directly to him; in Rioghnach’s words, Ellis is “my soul mate in the crowd, the only bastard that can calm me”. She plucks the words from the air, and this is what happens, quite spontaneously…

THE BREATH, ‘Let It Calm You Down’

If you remember, the last words of the film Chinatown are, ‘Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown’. Chinatown is not a place, but a condition of life where the individual is helpless in the face of all-encompassing evil. So even Rioghnach’s most gorgeous love song must have its little barbs.  

Next… Quite serendipitously, I found a jazz take on ‘Brigg Fair’ among my jazz CDs at home. It’s by the Avalon Trio, who are Pete Churchill on piano, Tony Woods on saxophone and Rob Millett on percussion. As the name suggests, they’re attempting to summon the old elegiac pastoral spirit of England…

AVALON TRIO, ‘Brigg Fair’ 

I’ll fade it there [after one and a half minutes], because it changes into something else, and there’s still a bit of ground to cover, and those tablas are really horrible. 

[Mike the treasurer testily says, “You chose it. Why put it on?”] 

It leads to something I wanted to say about ‘Brigg Fair’, which was among the songs Joseph Taylor sang into Percy Grainger’s new-fangled phonograph machine in 1906 in Lincolnshire. In Brigg, actually. Grainger alerted his chum Frederic Delius who wrote it up as a full orchestral work. He called it ‘An English Rhapsody’. In 1908 Grainger invited Joseph Taylor to London to an early performance of ‘An English Rhapsody’. Sadly, the legend that the singer got to his feet and sang along to ‘his tune’ turns out not to be true. But Grainger took Taylor to the Gramophone Company, where he made some records which were released commercially on 78. He was marketed on the label as a ‘Genuine peasant folk-singer’. Someone (Lea Nicholson) once told me that this marked the beginning of the commodification of folk music. That’s a very hard line, in my opinion.

I haven’t got Joseph Taylor singing ‘Brigg Fair’, but here he is singing ‘Creeping Jane’, recorded by Percy Grainger on the same occasion in 1906. It hasn’t got anything to do with jazz but it is about a racehorse, so I can justify its inclusion by the horse theme. It’s also inherently interesting to listen to something so old.   

JOSEPH TAYLOR, ‘Creeping Jane’ 

To close, I’d like to finish where I began, in the company of Maxine Sullivan. ‘If I Had a Ribbon Bow’, one of the more unusual songs of 1940, caused an altercation between Eva and myself because we both want it played at our funerals. We’ll have to arrange to go together… [Eddie says “Don’t push your luck.”] 

MAXINE SULLIVAN, ‘If I Had a Ribbon Bow’

I could mention that ‘If I Had a Ribbon Bow’ was the debut single by Fairport Convention, a band much influenced by West Coast psychedelic rock but clearly with wide-ranging tastes. They were shortly to invent folk rock with the album, Liege and Lief, but that’s another story. 

Thank you and goodnight.

eBay: Watersons in English Folk Records Shock

Facts must be faced – eBay is no longer fit for purpose! It’s been creeping up a long time. Paralysis by incremental 'improvement' is a common form of degradation in the modern world. 

I admit it. I love my folk and I love my vinyl. That might put me in a double minority, but does the persecution have to be so blatant? 

Going to ‘Folk LP Records’ on eBay, the page invites you to ‘shop by sub genre’. Very well. Here is ‘English Folk’ and then there appears to be some sub-sections: ‘Progressive’ and ‘Classic’. This is intriguing because ‘Progressive’ and ‘Classic’ are meaningless, not to say antithetical, in the context of folk music. What will we find? 

A click on ‘Progressive’ offers Roger Chapman, Yes, Atomic Rooster and Horslips. This is very fine but not to our purpose. They’re all CDs too, and we want vinyl. A Watersons LP on Topic isn’t too much to ask, surely?    

What will ‘Classic’ bring? Click click: Patti Smith, Scorpions and Foreigner. Not Vaughan Williams and Elgar, mind. Patti Smith, Scorpions and Foreigner. All are CDs. 

We’re no closer to finding a Watersons LP on Topic. 

Very well, let’s try 'Filter’. This opens a box which gives various options. Ignoring the ‘Genre’ sub-section, which is subdivided into ‘Classical’, ‘Folk’, ‘Jazz’, ‘Pop’ and ‘Rock’ (we’ve been burnt like that before), the top entry promises ‘English Folk LP Records’, ‘American Folk LP Records’ and ‘Other Folk LP Records’. This is more like it. By now I’m prepared to overlook the slight to the Scots and Irish, not to mention everyone in the rest of the world (barring North Americans), for being indiscriminately lumped together as ‘Other Folk’. 

Oh that filter. To find records that might be affordable, it’s necessary to click on ‘Filter’ again and scroll to ‘auction’. The browser directs to suggested artists, specifically Bob Dylan, Earth (Earth? Earth, Wind and Fire?), Leonard Cohen, Live (?) and Love (Arthur Lee’s outfit?). We shall skip these altogether, knowing that some dark corners are left undisturbed. No, the only way bargains can be had on eBay, in my experience, is by this 'auction' facility. To get this we go to ‘Buying Format’ and click on the ‘auction’ option. I’m in ‘Other Folk’, by the way. Aha! An Owen Hand on Transatlantic with a start price of £5! This turns out to be too good to be true. ‘Record and inner sleeve only’. It would be unfair to blame eBay for the disappointment. 

Now one more box needs to be navigated. That’s the box that says ‘Best Match’. This needs to be amended to ‘Ending Soonest’, whereby auction lists appear chronologically, in the order of those ending first. It is a rational way to view. The default setting, ’Best Match’, is another of eBay's meaningless formulations, like Bid now so you can get a deal, which defies comprehension no matter how long you stare at it.

That’s Other Folk LP Records, but we’re still looking for the Watersons on Topic. ‘English Folk LP Records’. The Watersons have always been English Folk. That’s as true as you can make it.

‘English Folk LP Records’, using the ‘auction’ filter gets you… ahem! Neil Young, X Ray Specs, The Orb, Killing Joke, Muse, Kraftwerk... And on and on. These are all CDs by the way. How far before we find something that remotely resembles an English Folk LP? Let’s see… Gary Numan, Nick Cave, Steely Dan… Free, Poulenc, Syd Barrett… Clearly the compilers subscribe to the Louis Armstrong definition: ‘All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.’

I’m on page 3 now. Virginia Astley’s lovely From Gardens Where We Feel Secure has been issued on CD, I note, and the owner wants £16 for it…  Page 5 comes and goes without a glimpse of a hey-nonny. There’s Pet Shop Boys but no Pentangle, and (here’s a weirdie!) Aleister Crowley but not Alasdair Roberts. I know Alasdair Roberts is Scottish, but he would be a sight for sore eyes right now. By page 10, I’m ready to give up. There are no English Folk LPs in the section ‘English Folk LP Records’. Not only that, there is no folk in ‘English Folk LP Records’. Actually, there are no LPs either. 

Desperate now, I resort to ‘Search for anything’. I key in ‘The Watersons’.  Do I mean ‘the water on’? No, I do not mean ‘the water on’. What have we got? One result for The Watersons with the auction option. This is a turn up! Frost and Fire, has got five days to run and is listed under English Folk Records! I wish seller rockprof30 well, but I fear this lone jewel might be buried under an avalanche of stones. 

Naturally it's impossible to contact eBay and tell them their English Folk LPs are up the creek without a paddle, if they cared. You can report a seller (‘innocent until proven guilty’ doesn't apply to sellers on eBay), but communication with the eBay behemoth is impossible, meaning the site can self-destruct without ruffling corporate complacency. 

Is Discogs any better? I shall soon see. 

Brought to Book II: The Peter Bellamy Connection (key words: Rudolph Valentino, Grundy, Herman Melville, John Renbourn, Good Soldier Svejk)

There’s nothing like an old book for making tangible the reality of other people and other places, long since gone. I described how I came to be in possession of several boxes of tomes, dusty and otherwise – http://www.dyversemusic.com/2014/09/brought-to-book-table-talk-of-chris.html. Browsing through them, I fell to wondering about the people behind the inscriptions and signatures on the front leaves. All these refined, self-educating, intelligent people, happily oblivious to their own mortality and the concerns of future generations of book dealers. Book people (and record collectors) should take heed: we're none of us owners but custodians, because the lifespan of a book (or record, properly cared for) is greater than the lifespan of a human being.      

I wondered about Jack Atkinson, who was awarded a copy of The Sheik by E.M. Hull as a prize for regular attendance by Girlington Wesleyan Band of Hope on March 26, 1923, and was impressed by the broadmindedness of Girlington Wesleyan Band of Hope, who passed The Sheik (with a frontispiece photograph of current heartthrob Rudolph Valentino) as suitable reading for a lad of impressionable age. The altogether more edifying The Essays of Elia and Eliana by Charles Lamb, was clearly not intended as a giveaway: it was a fixture at the Zion Baptist Sunday School, Burnley, as two antique stamps, as old as the book (1867), reveal. 

And what was Neil Darlington doing taking out A Portrait of Britain From Peril to Pre-Eminence 1688-1851 (by Lindsay and Washington) from Marple Hall County Grammar School For Girls on "10/9/74"? Can we reasonably deduce that sometime between publication in 1962 and 1974, Marple Hall County Grammar School ceased to be a single-sex institution? An entire social history can be constructed from ephemera such as this. 

We already know something about R.B.S. Jones of Pembroke College, whose neat hand adorns The Way of All Flesh, Erewhon and Erewhon Revisited by Samuel Butler, E.L. Woodward’s History of England and Mrs Grundy: Studies in English Prudery by Peter Fryer. Chris Ackroyd: “I lodged for a while with one of my tutors, called Roger Jones, who died tragically young. He was descended from a duke. He was posh and he was clever: Oxbridge, Courtauld Institute. And some of the books that I’d bought off him (I didn’t nick them), he’d inscribed in the front, in very nice writing, “R.B.S. Jones”. Roger Jones sounds a bit common. Roger Beauchamp, and then I think Spencer, Jones. Maybe he was related to the Spencers. I know he was aristocracy. The only warm room in the house was his, now that I think about it.” 

But what stopped me in my tracks was the legend on the inside cover of a cheap, hardback USA edition ($1.75, The New American Library) of Typee by Herman Melville. It read, “Peter Bellamy, 11 Victoria Street, Norwich NR1 3QX Telephone: 0603 60411.” 

This can only be the late Peter Bellamy, the great Norfolk singer, celebrated for recordings  with the group Young Tradition and solo outings such as Merlin’s Isle of Gramarye and Tell It Like It Was (quite a few made by Bill Leader: you may remember that I’m writing a book about Bill Leader). Peter Bellamy moved from Norwich to Keighley, West Yorkshire, which is where he died and had a splendid funeral. 

The discovery led to an enquiry about the reading matter of sixties folk musicians, directed at John Renbourn.  I had recently interviewed the Pentangle guitarist in the course of my Bill Leader researches, and followed through with an email asking about the books he had in common with Nat Joseph, the chief of Transatlantic Records. Apparently, both had a passion for Elizabethan literature. This is Renbourn’s reply: – 

“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was certainly one. Mallory’s Morte D’Arthur was probably another. We talked about John Donne and Robert Herrick. Other books that came obliquely into the folk equation for me were Jessie Weston’s From Ritual to Romance and Robert Graves’ The White Goddess. 

“Don’t remember discussing literature with Pete to be honest. He was clearly well read. Quite a coincidence that one of his books should have turned up. 

“Bert [Jansch] wasn’t a Goethe man as far as I’m aware [the German heritage and romantic sensibility had misled me]. He did enjoy The Good Soldier Svejk though. 

“Are you considering the sort of reading matter that would have been prevalent on the folk scene at the time? 

“Interesting slant if you are.”    

Martin Carthy, Band on the Wall, Manchester

July 17, 2014

‘John Barleycorn’, that most English of songs, sets the tone nicely. Seeing Martin Carthy in full flight, possibly at the same age the old-timers were when the stripling Carthy saw them (Sam Larner in ’58 at the Ballad and Blues Club was a life-changing moment, apparently), is both poignant and strangely heartening. With luck, dedication and long life, we might all become old-timers, just like our first idols. But whereas the original country singers seldom bothered with instrumental virtuosity and were content just to put the song across, Carthy has it all, as an enthralling storyteller with a distinctive, forceful guitar style.   

He’s also, undoubtedly, travelled further and performed more widely than Sam Larner, Walter Pardon et al. He’s as comfortable with an audience as you or I would be in a pub with some dear old friends, and his conversation is compelling. What did I learn? For one thing, Carthy got ‘Scarborough Fair’ from The Singing Island, a songbook compiled by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, and MacColl got it from Mark Anderson, a retired miner, in Yorkshire in 1947. Thus, with typical self-effacement, Carthy undermines his major claim to fame in pop culture (the unspoken message: yes, he taught ‘Scarborough Fair’ to Paul Simon, but he only had it from a book). This comes in the introduction to ‘The Bonny Moor Hen’, another song with an Anderson source. It’s characteristic of Carthy to sidestep the obvious too. 

With such a vast repertoire, Carthy can chase threads and follow the inspiration of the moment in structuring a set. A poacher theme begins to emerge, as ‘The Bonny Moor Hen’ is succeeded by ‘The Bold Poachers’, which escalates to a wider sense of injustice - ‘My Son John’ is an odd mix of heartlessness and indignation, but powerfully conveys its anti-war message - to be dispelled by this indisputable bit of advice from the Music Hall song that follows: “Don’t go in the lions’ cage tonight, mother.”  

A swift change of guitar, and a less swift tune-up, and Carthy confides that he was electrified when he read the first four and a half verses of the next song. This turns out to be ‘The Famous Flower of Serving Men’, one of those big ballads that Carthy specialises in, and a transforming song in every sense. It may be that the English folk canon rebounds in instances of cross-dressing, infanticide, magic realism, courtly intrigue and bloody revenge - but all in one song!? 

And note the strange stretching of time. The original atrocity is conveyed with the terseness and dispassion of an account by a shocked survivor. (“My mother did me deadly spite, for she sent thieves in the dark of the night…”) whereas retribution, when it comes, is lingered over and savoured in every detail (“the fire took first all on her cheek…”). 

Why only the first “four and a half verses”? Could it be that ‘The Famous Flower of Serving Men’, in its definitive form, is largely the product of Martin Carthy’s craft? The notes on the inner of Carthy’s LP, Shearwater, are informative. If I understand right, Carthy bypasses the Broadside version and expands on a short text by Sir Walter Scott, and sets to a tune learnt from Hedy West. And the riff, surely, is Carthy’s own invention. Forget ‘Scarborough Fair’: ‘The Famous Flower of Serving Men’ is Carthy’s towering achievement. 

Another running theme, implied rather than declared, is the undeniable blessing of possessing a strong wife. This was the sub-text of ‘The Lochmaben Harper’ and also, in a more backhanded way, ‘The Devil and the Feathery Wife’. Of course, amateur psychology can only get you so far. Let’s not make too much of the fact than an alternative title for another song (performed on his recent tour with Eliza) is ‘The Daughter in the Dungeon’). 

A word too for Carthy’s highly individual guitar style, with its surging rhythm and syncopated accents, often following the melody line like a second voice. ‘The Third Man Theme’ was a happy choice of encore, bringing black and white film into Carthy’s revivalist remit: as if digesting and embodying the best of all previous folk music was not enough! 

Wizz Jones & John Renbourn

Band on the Wall, Manchester, June 5

Wizz Jones is something of a hero in this household, chiefly because of a 54 year-old television clip unearthed on youtube: - 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDsQSOf6_ow

Woody Guthrie lives! If Wizz Jones’ guitar doesn’t actively kill fascists, it’s certainly seen off a few Torquay councillors! 

“I’m only interested in playing the guitar and travelling,” Jones told Alan Whicker on Tonight in 1960. Faithful to the beat philosophy, Jones busked his way around Europe and Africa, before returning to the UK. The best of his generation were all travellers and free spirits. Think of Clive Palmer, Andy Irvine, Allan Taylor, Anne Briggs. Whereas the adoption of a beatnik lifestyle in the States led to jazz, UK beatniks tended to gravitate towards folk. Or, more accurately, folk and blues. In all these cases, records were incidental, or positively accidental, by-products of the lifestyle. Good beatniks are determined anti-careerists. 

Wizz’s clear vitality, not to mention his shock of unruly grey hair, testify to the efficacy of a life spent doing just what you love best. He plays ‘Song to Woody’, ‘Black Dog’ and ‘The Glory of Love’ and his own ‘Lucky the Man’, and roars them like a busker competing with the trains in the Paris Metro or the attractions of a bustling Marrakesh marketplace. He strikes every string very hard and sometimes shakes the guitar for added resonance. What Wizz lacks in finesse he gains in force. 

Which makes him the ideal partner for John Renbourn, who is exactly the opposite. 

The first song they share is Archie Fisher’s ‘The Mountain Rain’. This little beauty about vengeance killing demonstrates that Archie Fisher is a songwriter of the first rank. And its treatment - oddly lyrical given its grim nature - finds a perfect counterpart in Renbourn’s accompaniment, which is deft and light of touch. ‘Strollin’ Down the Highway’ closes the first set with a nod to the late, great Bert Jansch. 

During the break, I get Wizz to sign my copy of The Legendary Me. 

A vintage shot of John and Wizz 

The show is designed along symmetrical lines, so John Renbourn heads the second half with a short solo set. He opens with ‘Sweet Potato’, a tune by Booker T & The MGs he first essayed on Sir John Alot. The version tonight is less Gabor Szabo and more Tal Farlow, dare I say, as he treats Booker T’s groovy riff to a veritable chromatic blitz. 

‘The Snow That Melts the Soonest’ is his first vocal contribution and contains another shock. The distinctive wispy burr of old has been replaced by something deeper and more uncertain of pitch, prepared to settle for recitation if the melody presents too great a challenge. Or it may be that folk singing is not what he wants to do. Tonight he would rather be the hipster philosopher Mose Allison (who gets two songs, ‘Getting There’ and ‘You Can Count On Me To Do My Part’) or the fingerpicker Merle Travis (‘The Cannonball Rag’), whose exuberant virtuosity is in no way dimmed by the gentleness and delicacy of Renbourn’s delivery. ‘Great Dreams From Heaven’ channels both Ry Cooder and Joseph Spence. The voice is coming into focus now. It’s like meeting someone you may not have seen in years at an unexpected moment. The middle-aged, if not positively elderly, features of a stranger are, within moments, overlaid by the familiar, timeless outline of an old friend. By ‘Lord Franklin’, perhaps the best-loved Renbourn song of them all - here adorned with a blues paraphrase and some sumptuous extemporising - the contours are fully in place again. 

Dylan gets a second appearance with ‘Buckets of Rain’, featuring a relaxed vocal from Renbourn and a friendly exchange of fire between the guitarists. And Bert Jansch makes a return with ‘Fresh As A Sweet Sunday Morning’. Wizz takes lead vocals on the Jansch tunes, and Renbourn takes lead guitar, with the pair emulating the old relationship between Bert and John quite instinctively. 

With ‘Bad Influence’, the Robert Cray song, the pair are in danger of slipping into blues default mode. Actually, although I miss the baroque side of Renbourn’s genius, it’s none the worse for the casual nature of the music-making. It’s a pleasure to see two old-timers enjoy themselves so much, so the pleasure just multiplies. “Anyone would think we planned this,” Jones says at one point. “No,” replies Renbourn simply.  

‘Cocaine Blues’, complete with beatnik-inspired Tangiers reference, provides the encore.

John Renbourn and Bill Leader reunion, BOTW, June 5, 2014 (with the author looking on) 

Afterword, 9.4.15

The news about John Renbourn’s death (26 March, 2015), so close on the heels of the concert reviewed above, came as a shock indeed. Perhaps it counts as a good death, indeed: at the height of your powers and doing the thing you love best. I took the opportunity to request an interview, and subsequently found him charming, illuminating and high-spirited. I wonder, with hindsight, if it was what Dennis Potter, in his last interview, called “the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom” – that is the great joy of life vouchsafed to someone soon about to leave it – that tipped the interview, in places, into unreliability. But no, not unreliability. Subjectivity, I think. He might always have been like that. 

Anyway, you’ll have to wait until the book comes out, although some of the interview, or the aftermath of the interview, appeared in a later blog, Brought to Book II …