Anglophilia, Part I 9 comments

By Andy Whitman

With this post we welcome another member to the Good Letters blogging team, the gifted music critic Andy Whitman.

Chalk it up to Anglophilia if you must. Although I was born in England, I’ve spent less than six months of my life there. In any case, I have a longstanding affinity, dating back to my high school years, for the traditional folk music of the British Isles, particularly after it has been filtered through a couple generations of musicians raised on rock ‘n roll. While everybody else was listening to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, my friends and I were buying Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span albums and singing hey-nonny-nonny choruses in the high school corridors.

You can imagine the impression we made on the cheerleaders.

In spite of that questionable start, the music has stayed with me now for close to four decades. It’s hauntingly beautiful, and there’s often a quite unconscious mingling of sacred imagery and earthy sentiments in these songs, as if the two were intertwined and inseparable. Imagine.

For anyone curious about such music, I thought I would compile a highly personal and subjective guide to the genre. Part 1, which you are now reading, covers the origins of the music up to 1980. Part 2, which follows next time, covers 1980 to the present.

It all starts with Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span. The time? The late Sixties. Two English bands, both founded by one Ashley Hutchings, forego their fascination with all things Dylan and Beatles and decide to strike out in a new direction, exploring the traditional music of their native land and tarting it up with electric guitars and a backbeat. This is far more square than it might originally seem. Imagine the American counterpart—rocking out to, say, “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain” or “On Top of Old Smokey.” Exactly. It was a wonder that the idea didn’t wither on ye olde vine.

But it didn’t, partly because these traditional folk songs have a timeless quality and appeal that transcends customs and cultures, and partly because these musicians were really, really great. Consider the best-known Fairport Convention lineup, and the amazing musical tree that sprang forth—Sandy Denny (possessor of one of the greatest, purest, most soulful voices you will ever hear, who later made a handful of achingly gorgeous solo albums with her band Fotheringay), Richard Thompson (who for almost forty years has constructed, with sometime help from then-wife Linda, a catalogue that rivals Bob Dylan or Van Morrison for longevity and quality), Dave Swarbrick and Simon Nicol (who recorded several fine albums as a duo), and Ashley Hutchings, who went on to found The Albion Band, one of the better Celtic bands of the Seventies, after he launched Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span.

By now you’re probably getting the idea. The British Trad Rock genre is as convoluted and inbred as any imaginable, with bands constantly breaking up, re-emerging with slightly altered lineups, and switching members like trading cards. For what it’s worth, then, here is a roughly chronological guide to the best that this confusing genre has to offer:

The Seventies

Fairport Convention—The definitive British Trad Rock band, at least in its earliest and best incarnation. Best albums are Unhalfbricking, What We Did On Our Holidays, and Liege and Lief. The band has limped on to the present day, with about thirty different lineup changes, the British version of The Beach Boys. Only one of the current members was in the original band.

Steeleye Span—The, umm, other definitive British Trad Rock band. Best albums are Below the Salt and Parcel of Rogues, although anything from the Seventies is very worthwhile. Maddy Prior was a great singer, the equal of Sandy Denny. And although Steeleye couldn’t compete with the jaw-dropping guitar work of Richard Thompson, they made up in volume and power chords what they lacked in virtuosity. A couple of their late-Seventies albums, notably All Around My Hat and Commoner’s Crown, could best be classified as elf boogie, a sort of Foghat-meets-Frodo approach that is surprisingly effective.

Pentangle—Featuring more marvelous vocals from yet another thrush, this one named Jacqui McShee, and some stunning intertwined guitar work from John Renbourn and Bert Jansch. Best albums are Sweet Child and Cruel Sister. There’s a strong traditional folk flavor to the music, but the band was surprisingly versatile, incorporating jazz and blues influences as well, as witnessed by their inspired cover of Charles Mingus’ “Goodbye Porkpie Hat.”

Martin Carthy—Carthy was in and out of Steeleye Span a couple times, but he’s best noted for a fine solo career, which continues today. His best solo albums are probably Byker Hill and Landfall, although you can’t go wrong with anything he’s recorded. He also has a distinctive guitar style that profoundly influenced the morose, fragile folk music of Nick Drake.

John Martyn—Another great and largely unrecognized guitarist who mixed jazz chops and sensibilities with more traditional folk sounds. Best albums are the lovely Sunday’s Child and his moving tribute to Nick Drake, Solid Air.

Nick Drake—The saga of Nick Drake is well known by now. Criminally ignored during his brief lifetime, a suicide or the victim of an accidental drug overdose at the ripe old age of 26, Drake’s music was resurrected courtesy of a wildly popular Volkswagen commercial, and he’s now the toast of hipsters worldwide. He only recorded three albums – Five Leaves Left, Bryter Layter, and the luminously heartbreaking Pink Moon—but each is essential, the perfect merger of traditional British folk, baroque string arrangements, and a romantic sensibility worthy of Keats and Byron.

Next time: From The Pogues to Kate Rusby.