Log #141 - The First Folk Revival 1966 - 1970

Before the emergence of "nu-folk" around the latter part of the new millennium's first decade there came an earlier folk music revival in the UK in the mid 60s. This week Eddy, inspired by his reading of the excellent history of British folk music Electric Eden, examines 6 key albums from that time.

Davy Graham - Large As Life And Twice As Natural

Pentangle - Basket Of Light

Bert Jansch - Jack Orion

Fairport Convention - Fairport Convention

Shirley and Dolly Collins - Anthems In Eden

Heron - Heron

Anthems in Eden was released in 1969 by sisters Shirley, and the lesser known Dolly, Collins. A pioneering record Anthems was characterised by Dolly's odd Alice Coltrane like organ arrangements and the use of ancient period instruments courtesy of David Munrow's Early Music Consort which gives the music a medieval or renaissance court feel. It's quite spooky in a Wicker Man sort of way and fittingly Munrow went on to provide film music for Ken Russell's shocking The Devils.

Come you young men, with your music, dance and song (and animal masks), Dolly left, Shirley right.

Together with the album's successor, Death and the Lady, Electric Eden's author Rob Young writes:

These two records are among the crowning glories of English folk's Indian summer, fusing all the elements of Copper family harmonies, Early Music instruments and modern arrangements of traditional songs.

Next up we have offerings from two folk guitarists who pioneered a new finger picking style of acoustic guitar playing:

Large As Life And Twice As Natural (1968) consists of some bluegrass and lots of blues. Some of it is instrumental. Most of it is song based. It's alright by today's standards but nothing to get too excited about albeit I am led to understand that this stuff was brilliant and revolutionary in its time - Davy Graham frequently being referenced as one of the most influential guitarists of all time (I take it by guitarists only on the whole).

Indeed he is credited with inventing the now famous DADGAD guitar tuning which he picked up during travels in North Africa in the early 60s. Furthermore by far the best stuff on this album is the North African influenced pieces like the excellent Jenra and the evocative closer Blue Raga where Graham's modal and bendy circular drones and rounds sound like sitar and remind me of the best of French-Algerian guitarist Pierre Bensusan.

These tracks have aged the least. I also think their nature (existing right on the edge of being off key or out of time) depends on a player right at the peak of his game. It only takes a slight deterioration in performance for it to sound disproportionately bad. I guess what I'm trying to say is, like classical guitar playing, the music is unforgiving.

My views are also slightly soiled by the latter years of Graham's career where he made an ill advised comeback. Obviously unable to play to anything like the standard of his younger years he also started to include classical pieces played on a nylon string guitar in his sets. Heaven knows why he was attempting to play more difficult music as his physical and mental powers waned. Unfortunately the series of concerts he performed in his years shortly before his death in 2008 served to achieve little more than a spoiling of his legacy notwithstanding a hitherto sacred cow status.

Bert Jansch is another much revered guitarist. Neil Young famously said he was his favourite acoustic player and even nicked (knowingly or not) Jansch's Needle Of Death riff for his Ambulance Blues (he also covered Needle Of Death on his 2014 A Letter Home album).

What about Jansch's album - his third - Jack Orion (1966) - will that escape the Bamyasi Sword of Indifference?

Well readers, the answer is yes, it's pretty dece and personally I prefer it to the disparate Graham offering. The record consists of reworkings of trad. folk tunes. There is a nice continuity to the album with Jansch sticking to acoustic guitar and occasional banjo. Many of the songs are based on rounds of repeated riffs of only three chords or so played with unusual rhythmic accents which give the music groove. Where he sings he possesses an earthy folk voice with authentic finger in the ear sustain and flutter.

There is lots of talk about Jansch influencing Young and Jimmy Page; indeed Black Water Side heavily influenced Jimmy Page's Black Mountain Side from Led Zeppelin's debut album (reportedly Jansch was none too pleased with this unauthorised homage which seems a bit rich as his reading was itself a version of a traditional song Down By Black Water Side), but I hear John Martyn the most in his guitar picking and slapping. I say "his" playing but Jansch is complemented by fellow acoustic guitar luminary John Renbourn throughout the record. The two would go on to form Pentangle together...

As there is footage of Jansch with Neil Young performing Ambulance Blues together I can conclude Jansch's attitude to other guitarists lifting his riffs has softened over the years.

Pentangle's 1969 album Basket Of Light was the folk "supergroup"'s third and most commercially successful record. It begins with the upbeat Light Flight which became a minor hit. However what is most evident on this record are the jazz influences particularly brought to the group's sound through two established folk/blues/jazz session players on the 60s London scene, Terry Cox on drums and Danny Thompson (later John Martyn's constant sparring partner) on double bass.

Small rhythmic cells bubble up in repetitive cycles around interlocked bass and drums that flex with the elasticity of jazz.

Rob Young

Their extended instrumental interludes and improvisations took them away from traditional folk and closer to the underground acid folk rock and psychedelic scene represented by emerging bands like Pink Floyd, Soft Machine and even The Grateful Dead. Even their stark black and white silhouetted debut album cover suggested something new. Indeed the album is credited with the first time a rock drum kit was employed backing English traditional songs - an approach Fairport Convention would shortly take up a notch in their classic Unhalfbricking and Liege and Lief albums...

The debut and eponymous album from Fairport Convention however isn't great. It sounds extremely dated and serves to accentuate the gap between where they started and where they got to in an incredibly short time of prolific music making; the debut album arrived in the summer of '68 - by the end of 1971 they'd already moved through three significantly different line ups and had recorded 7 studio albums:

June 1968 - Fairport Convention
Jan 1969 - What We Did on Our Holidays 
July 1969 - Unhalfbricking
Dec 1969 - Liege & Lief
July 1970 - Full House
June 1971 - Angel Delight
Nov 1971 - Babbacombe Lee

The line up for the debut was:

Judy Dyble – lead vocals, electric and acoustic autoharps, recorder, piano
Ian MacDonald (Iain Matthews) – lead vocals, Jew's harp
Richard Thompson – vocals, lead electric and acoustic guitars, mandolin
Simon Nicol – vocals, electric 12 and 6 string and acoustic guitars
Ashley Hutchings – bass guitar, jug, double bass
Martin Lamble – percussion, violin

The line up at the time of the classic Liege and Lief (often held up as the greatest folk-rock album of all time) was:

Sandy Denny – vocals
Dave Swarbrick – fiddle, viola
Richard Thompson – electric & acoustic guitars, backing vocals
Simon Nicol – electric, 6-string & 12-string acoustic guitars, backing vocals
Ashley Hutchings – bass guitar, backing vocals
Dave Mattacks – drums, percussion

By the end of 1971 the Dave heavy line up was:

Dave Swarbrick – lead vocals, mandolin, fiddle, viola, cuckoo
Dave Pegg – bass guitar, vocals, lead guitar, viola, violin
Dave Mattacks – drums, percussion, vocals, harmonium, tambourine, bass guitar, piano
Simon Nicol – lead vocals, guitar, bass guitar, electric dulcimer, violin

Note that the only common member throughout this period was Simon Nicol who is also incidentally still there (along with Dave Pegg). The latest line up of Fairport Convention is:

Simon Nicol
Dave Pegg
Ric Sanders
Chris Leslie
Gerry Conway

Note also that one line up change was enforced by a tragic road accident in May '69 that claimed the life of drummer Martin Lamble.

Unfortunately their rapid rise from the foothills of the debut to the peaks of Liege and Lief was matched by an equally rapid decline down the other side of the mountain after they abandoned their revolutionary rock folk readings and moved towards traditional folk and then finally, sadly, irrelevant easy listening.

Heron/Heron (1970) with its lovely harmonies set to gentle guitar strumming and mandolin plucking is a little gem which deserves to be better known. In fact, why have I not heard this before, or not even heard of the band?

Heron, recording outside, and on the cover of Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music

At first I had assumed this album was a solo album from Mike Heron from The Incredible String Band (in fact one of the Heron band members does resemble Mike Heron). But not at all, Heron were originally a 3 piece formed in Berkshire in 1967. By the time of their self titled first album which arrived in 1970 the band had expanded to consist of Tony Pook (vocals), Roy Apps (guitar, vocals), Gerald ‘G.T.’ Moore (guitar, mandolin, vocals) and Steve Jones (keyboards).

Unused to the studio the band decamped to a rural Berkshire farmhouse to record the album. Playing outside and deliberately including the surround sounds of the wind and the birds the album is perhaps the first ambient record.

The method was repeated for the follow up record, the double Twice As Nice And Half The Price, recorded in the grounds of a Devon Cottage which graces the cover. It all looks rather idyllic but despite rubbing shoulders with the likes of David Bowie and Elton John and gaining support from John Peel commercial success eluded them.

And that was it... or was it? Remarkably the band (remarkably with the same members) made a come back in the 80s and are still going today. Their most recent album Jokerman was released in 2016.