Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)

Subject: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 16 May 12 - 03:12 PM

I stopped listening to folk around the time punk was getting interesting and Steeleye Span were getting boring, and started again some time in this millennium.

So... what have I missed?

Here are some of the albums I do know about (and rate highly):

Peter Bellamy, Fair England's Shore
Tony Capstick, Does a Turn
Martin Carthy, Landfall
Shirley Collins, Amaranth
Nic Jones, The Noah's Ark Trap
Tony Rose, Young Hunting
June Tabor, Airs and Graces
Mike and Lal Waterson, Bright Phoebus

Who else - and which other albums - ought to be on that list? I should say that I've pretty much got Peter Bellamy, Tony Capstick, Nic Jones and Tony Rose covered - either I've got everything they recorded or I know what I haven't got (and intend to get it). Apart from them, you can basically assume that if I haven't listed it I don't know it.

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 16 May 12 - 03:19 PM

Some of those are probably from before 1970, but never mind. And my personal chronology doesn't really work either - punk was '76 after all... Oh well - let's just say I never got properly into folk the first time round and go from there.

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 16 May 12 - 03:21 PM

You realise you're talking about a period of twenty five to thirty years......?

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Gurney
Date: 16 May 12 - 03:51 PM

'Jump at the Sun,' John Kirkpatrick.
'Nowt So Good'll Pass,' Bob Fox and Stu Luckly.

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 16 May 12 - 04:47 PM

Two of my personal favourites:

Among the many attractions at the show will be a Really High Class Band - John Kirkpatrick & Sue Harris

Times and Traditions for Dulcimer - Roger Nicholson, Jake Walton and Andrew Cronshaw

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 16 May 12 - 06:09 PM

too weird Phil....there were hundreds, well thousands of really good albums between those years.

If you missed them - I'm sorry. But thinnk of all the stuff between 1950 and 1975 - what you're asking is even more daunting. It was a time when not just the privileged few recorded their music - but loads of people , some in the first home recording studios - some in the first cheap four track and eight track studios.

All I can tell you is that you missed some great stuff - wouldn't like to even start to work it out. I used to love a song by the Celebrated Radcliff Stout Band about John Clare, the poet. Doubt if that ever even got broadcast.

For a while I ran a little 8 track studio. I met musicians of astonishing brilliance, who never rated even a gig at the local folk club.

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 16 May 12 - 06:41 PM

I think you may be overthinking this, Al.

All I'm saying is, if you rate two or three of the albums on that list as Albums Everyone Should Hear, then what else would you rate equally highly and for similar reasons? Not 1971-9 necessarily, but say 1965-85.

Suibhne:

Times and Traditions for Dulcimer

That looks interesting - or rather (in case that sounds like damning with faint praise) that looks very interesting. John Kelly recorded "Bogie's Bonny Belle" last year, and from his sleevenotes he loves it; I find it a bit distasteful myself, but I may be over-sensitive - I've never really liked those 'maidenhead' songs (Ups and Downs, Cold Haily Windy Night &c).

Among the many attractions at the show will be a Really High Class Band - John Kirkpatrick & Sue Harris

Blimey, that looks good. Exactly the kind of thing I'm asking about.

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 16 May 12 - 06:49 PM

Gurney - interesting stuff. This Kirkpatrick fellow (of whom I had heard...) is going to repay some investigation.

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Leadfingers
Date: 16 May 12 - 06:56 PM

The Incredible String band , First Album when Clive Palmer was still with them , and Five thousand Spirits just the duo before they went Airy Fariy ! (Just MY opinion)
And any of the English Country Blues Band - Trad English set to American Tunes !
But as Al says , thats a HELL of a lot of good stuff , and a lot of it didnt get out on C D either !

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 16 May 12 - 07:14 PM

Now I've got Five Thousand Spirits, as it goes, and if that's before they went airy fairy...

The ECBB are going on the list, though. (There's even a CD.)

Keep 'em coming!

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Reinhard
Date: 16 May 12 - 07:15 PM

Kirkpatrick & Harris's five Topic LPs including Among the Many Attractions... are available as digial downloads.

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 16 May 12 - 07:32 PM

my favourite - Shirley & Dolly Collins - "LOVE, DEATH & THE LADY"

also from the late 60s - Dave and Toni Arthur - "THE LARK IN THE MORNING / MORNING STANDS ON TIPTOE"

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Bobert
Date: 16 May 12 - 08:07 PM

Paul Seibel

John Stewart

Bruce Springsteen, yeah, just gotta hunt...

Teagarten and Van Winkle

B~

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Gurney
Date: 17 May 12 - 01:14 AM

Bobert, if he gets onto the American stuff he missed, this thread will go on forever.... Be good, though!
His taste runs to English trad (-ish) and that genre, judging from the stuff he knows he likes.

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 17 May 12 - 03:00 AM

His taste runs to English trad (-ish) and that genre, judging from the stuff he knows he likes.

Zackly.

On Dave & Toni Arthur, I'd heard "Hearken to the Witches' Rune" & found it a bit pretentious, but the earlier stuff sounds interesting. On the list it goes.

Toni Arthur (nee Wilson) has remarried and is now Toni Arthur-Hay, incidentally. Presumably she didn't revert to her maiden name to avoid confusion.

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 May 12 - 03:35 AM

The guys that really punched a hole in trad song were Cosmotheka. Suddenly we were hearing all the songs our grandparents sang to us. I remember in the 1970's, ian Campbell said to me - they were the single most important shift, and alternative vision - because they were in fact saying English folksong is not locked in libraries - its in the psyche of the English people. Not that they would have said any of that - they were instinctive geniuses.

They were a superb act. They really related to audiences. And it was such an individual vision.

But mention of Ian, reminds me of a lovely solo album that Lorna did.

And of course Carthy and McTell seemed to carry on developing and honing their skills and techniniqes during those years. I know nothing of their personal lives, but they seemed to have some stability in them that evaded people like John Martyn and Bert jansch.

the other thing that happened was digital recording. It suddenly became possible to hear Hank Williams, Robert Johnson and other people without that sound of fried eggs in the background. Clean recordings.

And electronic instruments and good guitar transducers - so it became possible to sit in a folk club and hear what Martin Carthy was playing.

And electronic tuners - no more arguments about who was in tune ('I've got perfect pitch! Aye! go and stick it under a steam roller!)

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: GUEST
Date: 17 May 12 - 03:55 AM

Frankie Armstrong - Lovely on the Water
Ray Fisher - The Bonny Birdy
Dave Burland - Dalesman's Litany
Muckram Wakes - A Map of Derbyshire
Derek and Dorothy Elliot - First album
John Goodluck - The Suffolk Miracle
Jim Eldon - I Wish There was No Prisons

Lots of others too which I may add when I've had a think. Reinhard's site is a great resource for reading about this sort of thing (and listening to samples): Mainly Norfolk.

My view would be if you dig out one of the above, make it the Ray Fisher. I think Frankie A has been reissued. The rest are probably eBay jobbies, though I could bring some of them to the Beech to lend you if you have a record player and promise not to bite them or leave them on the bus or anything.

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: GUEST,Spleen Cringe
Date: 17 May 12 - 03:58 AM

Me above.

Also The Bitter and the Sweet by Roy Harris which I have a copy of courtesy of Suibhne, who came round to my house the other week bearing 'spare' vinyl...

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 17 May 12 - 04:49 AM

SC - there is no such thing as 'spare' vinyl! (Although if anyone's in the market for a mixed lot of 90s electronica 12"s which I keep meaning to put up on eBay...)

There are a bazillion albums listed on Reinhard's amazing site (and that's an imperial bazillion, too). But that's why I was looking for personal recommendations - just to give me a way in.

Some good names on that list. Dave Burland is someone I keep meaning to investigate - I could listen to him singing the phone book, he's one of those lucky bastahemindividuals with a naturally beautiful voice. Ray Fisher and John Goodluck are new names to me, which is rather exciting.

The two albums that sparked this off were Landfall (when I finally heard it) and one other which I still haven't heard & which nobody's mentioned yet, slightly to my surprise - although on checking it turns out it was released in 1964, which is stretching the 1970s to breaking point.

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 17 May 12 - 05:08 AM

Among the many attractions at the show will be a Really High Class Band

As with Times & Traditions, my appreciation of this album is very sentimental / personal, though there's something utterly beguiling about the instrumentation. Sue Harris was folk's other oboe player (I still think of the Third Ear Band as folk) and the instrumental combination alone make this album quite unique. Worth seeking out on vinyl for the cover alone really - Times & Traditions likewise, the first side of which is about as about as perfect as it gets really, if only for the sound of the little Michael Lynch hurdy-gurdy. Sonically it's a Bill Leader masterpiece, but whilst Jake's Follow the Plough and Two Brothers touch on some genuine magic, his Bogie's Bonny Belle & Song of Wandering Aengus are so much syrupy shite really.

I find it a bit distasteful myself, but I may be over-sensitive -

BBB was one of the first Traditional Songs I started singing 35 years ago & I still sing it today. Indeed, Ron Baxter honoured me with a beer-mat sketch of it after I sang it at The Steamer a few years back & the drawing on cover of the redoutable John Kelly's very splendid For Honour & Promotion album comes from a similar tribute... Thing is though, these sort of Revival Folk albums took a back seat once I discovered the delights of 'the real thing' via the records of Seamus Ennis, Davie Stewart, Bob Roberts, Harry Cox et al, which I began picking up in the late 70s / early 80s. So you might imagine my utter delight just last month to discover the Lomax recording of Davie Stewart singing Bogie's Bonny Belle over at Cultural Equity.

http://research.culturalequity.org/rc-b2/get-audio-detailed-recording.do?recordingId=12506

Perfection!

*

Jim Eldon - I Wish There was No Prisons

Quite possibly the best slab of revival folk vinyl money can buy - or could buy. Recorded in 1983 it's probably a little late for the 70s remit, but the combination of Jim Eldon and Bill Leader is just too much really... Truly a match made in heaven.

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Fossil
Date: 17 May 12 - 05:39 AM

"Summer Solstice" - Maddy Prior and Tim Hart. Nothing like it anywhere, ever.

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 17 May 12 - 06:15 AM

Damn - I passed over a vinyl copy of that just the other day. Mind you, I passed it over in favour of a copy of Landfall, so I didn't do too badly.

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 17 May 12 - 07:09 AM

there is no such thing as 'spare' vinyl!

In my nomadic life I've lost more vinyl than I care to remember. I've given lots away, sold it, lost entire boxes in transit and yet still the urge to buy more persists, as does maintaining the equipment to play it on. I often end up with duplicates - like the Noah's Ark Trap, though I passed both of those on because I've never been such a huge Nic Jones fan myself, although I used to enjoy seeing him live. I've lately returned all the Bellamy vinyl I had on long-term loan from Greenoaken Towers, but I cherish my copies of Second Wind (bought remaindered from Cecil Sharp House in the early 90s) and Keep on Kipling which I regard as Bellamy's masterpiece (in its vinyl form anyway - shame the CD reissue messed it up with extraneous session takes). I won it off PB in a raffle at the Bay Hotel Folk Club, Cullercoats around 1988 or so & PB reckoned, with some sincerity, that it was the best thing he'd ever done. I've also got a signed copy of The Transports on which PB has drawn a Quantas flag on the transport ship. Oddly I didn't ask him to sign KOK; I was just too in awe really... The CD versions feel little better than tape copies really.

Worth mentioning is Martin Carthy's Because it's There from 1979. Apart from one song (a pointless inclusion of Gilbert O'Sullivan's Nothing Rhymed) this is one of the perfect folk albums of that decade. And a big YES to Ray Fisher too - track down Willie's Lady if you can; but The Bonny Birdy is such stuff as dreams are made on. And, of course, The Battle of the Field - the only other truly great English Folk Rock LP (IMHO) though both Mr Fox albums give it a run for its money.

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 17 May 12 - 07:19 AM

So, wait a minute - are you only interested in UK artists? and only in traditional material? can't interest you in a little Stan Rogers? Bill Staines? Eric Bogle? Kate Wolf? Art Thieme?

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 17 May 12 - 07:24 AM

The Battle of the Field

Passed over a copy of *that* the other day, too.

- the only other truly great English Folk Rock LP

You may need to spell this out!

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 17 May 12 - 07:29 AM

are you only interested in UK artists? and only in traditional material?

At the moment (on this thread), yes.

can't interest you in a little Stan Rogers?

Stan Rogers was wonderful. For now I want to stick to British traddies, though.

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 17 May 12 - 07:47 AM

Have I missed it or should Dick Gaughan's "No More Forever" be included here?

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 17 May 12 - 09:14 AM

.. how many shopping days left till Xmas ???

no sign of decorations and trimmings in the local shopping centre yet,
but might as well mention:

The Young Tradition & Shirley And Dolly Collins "The Holly Bears The Crown" [1969]

one of the best crimbo LPs ever !!!

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Victor Mourning
Date: 17 May 12 - 10:07 AM

As has been mentioned this is a massive subject, but as a tangent to the Incredible String Band suggestion, one that's been growing on me lately is the Sun Also Rises LP from 1970. They were definitely ISB influenced, but in a good way, sort of "ISB Lite". It's one of those LPs that might not grab you at first but gets a bit richer with repeated plays.

Oh, and the group name is a pun of sorts. The group is fronted by a couple surnamed Hemingway...

Steve Canner
The Victor Mourning
Maryville, Tennessee
http://www.thevictormourning.com

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Reinhard
Date: 17 May 12 - 01:16 PM

one other which I still haven't heard & which nobody's mentioned yet, slightly to my surprise - although on checking it turns out it was released in 1964

Shirley Collins and Davy Graham's Folk Roots, New Routes?

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: GUEST
Date: 17 May 12 - 01:48 PM

I liked the unique sound of Blondel.

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 17 May 12 - 01:53 PM

Sorry, cookie neede re-setting.

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 17 May 12 - 02:10 PM

Reinhard - Correct!

Steve - listening to the SAR on Youtube reminded me of an odd little skit Victoria Wood wrote years ago. It was an ad for bras for men, and it opened with a male presenter saying "Want to wear a bra - but you don't want to wear a women's bra?"

I love flutes and bongoes and harmonies and drones and twangly acoustic instruments - I use them all myself. But I can't stand that psychedelic ISB sound; it turns me right off. ("Want to play drifty flute-and-bongoes folk music - but you don't want to play hippie drifty flute-and-bongoes folk music?")

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 17 May 12 - 02:31 PM

2 more of my favourites - more 'folkish' than 'folk'..


Dando Shaft - various CD sets


Carolanne Pegg - solo LP - "Carolanne Pegg"

Found her musicassette for about 50p in late 70s
then the tape self destructed sometime mid 80s...
finally got to enjoy it again with 90s CD release.

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: GUEST,David E.
Date: 17 May 12 - 02:46 PM

Steve Ashley's "Stroll On" is still wonderful. That's 70's and English and folk.

David E.

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 17 May 12 - 03:00 PM

.. actually I've just listened to some Dando Shaft for the first time in about 5 or 6 years
since I boxed the CDs away,
and I'm not sure I even like it myself anymore ???

Taking into account youtube sound quality, the tracks do sound a bit of an incoherrent mess..

oh well...

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 17 May 12 - 03:18 PM

I liked the unique sound of Blondel.

Yay! I love the Amazing Blondel - but without Gladwin it just wasn't the same, was it? Mind you, Gladwin was never the same with Wincott & Baird so it cuts both ways. Strange then that their finest album was their 1997 re-union album Restoration which really is the most perfect 70s folk album ever made & all new material too. Go figure... Some nice live sets out there too (Corner of a Foreign Field, Live in Transylvania and 20-minutes of a BBC In Concert set on The Harvest of Gold : The English Fok Almanac double set on Dejavu which they share with Fairport, Steeleye Span and Magna Carta).

Seeing we're on this road - do the Strawbs count? As with the Amazing Blondel there's no trad material as such (though I do have a near perfect Cousins-rendering of Banks of the Nile from the early sixties) as such but along with Gladwin, Dave Cousins has one of the iconic voices of Englishe Country(side) Musick... If he did get round to doing an album of traditional material you just know it would be amazing, just as long as he didn't rock it up too much. He even wrote a song for The Young Tradition once (a weird pastiche of the Beatles Paperback Writer called Where Is This Dream of Your Youth?) but I think they politely, and wisely, declined.

The classics:

Grave New World
Two Weeks Last Summer
Hero and Heroine

(Dragonfly would be in there two if it wasn't for ghastly The Vision of the Lady of the Lake which is one ill-advised overlong re-write of Tam Lin too far. Otherwise - a great acoustic album with some of the best folk cello ever from Claire Deniz.)

*

Can I use this opportunity to crave a minute's respectful silence for the passing of the archetype / institution that is Strawhead? Friday nights in The Euston Ballroom will never be the same again. Gregg Butler - another iconic English voice as well as top geezer and national treasure.

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: GUEST,Spleen Cringe
Date: 17 May 12 - 04:05 PM

I like a bit of drifty flute'n'bongo meself...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlfWVDtyPUs

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 17 May 12 - 04:33 PM

Try this (which you'll probably love anyway):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_i9z_XKuNA

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 May 12 - 04:37 PM

Bob and Carole Pegg; John Faulkner & Sandra Kerr [indeed all the Critics Group]; The Boys of the Lough; Planxty; The Bothy Band; The Watersons; the Young Tradition; Tim Hart & Maddy Prior's Folk Songs of Old England; Robin & Barry Dransfield...

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 17 May 12 - 07:17 PM

Michael - can you be less specific?

I know that all those people exist[ed], but what I'm looking for on this thread is recommendations for particular albums that people love dearly: if you like Landfall you've got to hear...

Everyone else: Oi! Traddies please! (Strawhead... how did I not know about Strawhead?)

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 May 12 - 08:06 PM

I liked rubber Records - Brimstons's pink album called very good time

Also Tony Capstick did this wonderful half spoken version of the song - you spoke the first word John Brown on the sampler - there was this bloke.. I also love the Punch and Judy Man by him - loved The Bonny Bunch of Roses onn that record. John connolly says he prefers Capsticks version of the title track to all the others. Though having said that the Yetties did a wonderful green album with that one on , and Pete Shutler playing a beautiful electronic keyboard.

paddy reilly who later joined the Dubliners - he did some great albums. Wonderful voice.

Tommy Dempsey's Album Green Grow the Laurel was pretty special - as is Tommy.



Its like I say - you could go on all night. And Christy moore of course!

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 17 May 12 - 10:32 PM

Of the Planxty voices, I still prefer Andy Irvine, closely followed by Paul Brady in traditional mode - their duo album was one of my favourites back then. Paul Brady's "Welcome Here, Kind Stranger" also a favourite from the same period. Also "The Missing Liberty Tapes" is a live rendering of material from that album.

In June Andy Irvine proposes to celebrate his seventieth (!) birthday with a bunch of his former colleagues [Sweeney's Men, Mozaik, Andy & Paul, LAPD (Liam O'Flynn, Andy, Donal Lunny, Paddy Glackin)]in a couple of concerts in Dublin http://www.andyirvine.com/calendar.html I haven't heard ALL the albums he has been connected with, but I reckon any one of them could be recommended.

Andy Irvine was also one of the band who backed the Silly Sisters (Maddy Prior and June Tabor) on tour and on record (1976). Recommended.

Also in that band were Nic Jones (already recommended above):
Tony Hall, an extremely talented and relaxed player of the melodeon from East Anglia, whose albums of tunes and songs are worth a listen (Fieldvole Music, 1977):
Johnny Moynihan, who for better or worse introduced the bouzouki to Irish music, and an associate of Andy Irvine's in Sweeney's Men - I wish there was an album from him!
and Liam O'Flynn (many solo albums - one of the most lyrical of the uilleann pipers - as well as his traditional material, Shaun Davey wrote several orchestral suites to feature Liam's piping "The Brendan Voyage" still a favourite, though "The Pilgrim" and "Granuaille" also recommended.

Suibhne mentioned Strawhead and the redoubtable Gregg Butler. Apart from the thirty-eight years of Strawhead material and a twenty-year-old album for the last Preston Guild, as far as I know Gregg's only other recording credit is on the Shirley Collins/Albion Country Band "No Roses" album which I don't think anyone has mentioned yet - highly recommended.

Neil Wayne produced a series of great albums on the Free Reed label in the seventies, including Peter Bellamy's "Transports" which you have no doubt come across. Many of those albums are classics of the period, now once more available in re-mastered form. "Plain Capers" features John Kirkpatrick and others on an album of Morris tunes. Recommended.

I could go on - but I'm nursing a cold and I should go back to bed.
Good luck with the search and good listening!

Ross

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Alan Day
Date: 18 May 12 - 02:38 AM

Rosbif Traditional Dance music from Central France and Bouree a Six
Al

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 18 May 12 - 04:42 AM

Oi! Traddies please!

Like Bright Phoebus you mean? That's what happens when the Trad meme sparks in the sparkling hearts of creative souls in the inventive vats of Popular Music. Phoebus is the risen glory of its era whose light shines on eternally, but no more so than ISB, Strawbs, Amazing Blondel et al whose contribution to Folk is vast. And my favourite track on Phoebus is the perverted rockabilly Danny Rose which maybe prefigures what Jim Eldon did on Loaded Dice and The Sharpshooters album with Custom Car Kid, though with less bathos.

Times (late at night, muttering in my cups) I might wish Folk had left Trad well alone really; I could live without the humpty-dumpty macrame beat makeovers and the crazy juxapositions of the old & new - Airs and Graces always did my head in, and Because it's There features a Gilbert and Sullivan song FFS. Hardly the wonder I started listening exclusively to the old guys... I still reckon The Battle of the Field is a top album though; I note that Vic & Bob must be onto it too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y04Qb9bLub4

(Strawhead... how did I not know about Strawhead?)

Stawhead were doing the FC rounds in the mid-seventies when I first started crossing the murky threshold. I think I first saw them at The Bay Hotel in Cullercoats in 76 or so, where the Whitley Bay Guardian billed them as 'Medieval'. They came in somewhere around the St. George's Canzona* meets Amazing Blondel but were unlike anything I'd ever heard. They inspired a laege & devoted following who eagerly buying their innumerable albums. Friday nights at Fylde have always been Strawhead nights - we'd always go in to check the atmos which was always inspiring, with Ron Baxter as emcee; they will be sorely missed & bitterly mourned.

* The Canzona teamed up with The Druids & others (including rhodes kind Dave MacCrae) to become Giles Farnaby's Dream Band for an eponymous LP of folk rock for Argo in 1973. But then there was GRYPHON and GENTLE GIANT so the zeitgeist was really kicking back then, which brings me back to Bright Phoebus.

Anyway, all this folk talk is making me slightly queasy. I'm off to listen to some Rahsaan Roland Kirk whilst making my breakfast...

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: GUEST,Don Wise
Date: 18 May 12 - 04:50 AM

Lea Nicholson : "Horsemusic", "The Concertina Record"

Pete & Chris Coe: "Out of Season,out of Rhyme", "The Game of All-Fours"

The ISB were OK up to and including "Wee Tam and The Big Huge". After that I went off them.

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 18 May 12 - 06:51 AM

I'll throw in a few of my favourites of the time that haven't been mentioned yet (limiting myself!)

The Dransfields: The Rout Of The Blues
Louis Killen: Ballads and Broadsides
Dick Gaughan A Handful of Earth

and some of the North-Eastern ones:
Along The Coaly Tyne
Jack Elliott of Birtley


and for a taster of a lot of traditional singers the two Topic records from the Folk Songs of Britain series:
The Child Ballads, vol1 & 2


(And I always had a fondness for The City Waites - historical rather than traditional maybe, but with some songs you'll recognise from the tradition: The City Waites or A Goreous Gallery of Gallant Inventions).


Mick

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 18 May 12 - 08:27 AM

I'm now becoming wary of recomending LPs I've not listened to for any thing up to a decade
because my tastes are constantly mutating
and I might no longer like myself...

Anyway, surprised no ones stated the obvious Anne Briggs yet..???

Anne Briggs - "Sing a Song for You"

The long withheld 1973 recording that finally surfaced in the late 90's

Some rumours say she wasn't happy with the sound of her voice;
other rumours point to her not likeing the jumper she was photographed
wearing for the front cover art.


I definitely remember enjoying this CD last time I played it,
but.....

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 18 May 12 - 09:31 AM

One of the albums I started with, all of four or five years ago, was the Anne Briggs compilation; I went off it fairly quickly, though. (I don't like singers who lose the time or treat old material with breathy solemnity, & she did a bit of both.)

Don - they're on the list. Wasn't it Lea Nicholson who played concertina on Pentangle's Lord Franklin?

Suibhne - Like Bright Phoebus you mean?

I did Red Wine & Promises at the Beech a couple of weeks back; I was planning to do Winifer Odd the other night but ended up doing Two Pretty Boys instead (it's all fun and frolics when I get started). But at the moment I'm on a musical spam diet - trad, trad, trad, trad, Bright Phoebus, trad, trad, trad, bit of MacColl, bit of Tawney, trad, the January Man and trad.

I could live without the humpty-dumpty macrame beat makeovers and the crazy juxapositions of the old & new - Airs and Graces always did my head in and Because it's There features a Gilbert and Sullivan song FFS

Well, this is it - this is why I started by saying "name me an album to stand alongside Landfall and Young Hunting", rather than "who was good in the 70s?". I love Airs and Graces - all except Gamekeepers (once you start hearing macrame-beat you can't unhear it) and the contemporary songs (I don't often want to listen to well-intentioned songs exposing the troubles of lifestyles the singer has never lived and experiences they've never had*). I think Landfall is great pretty much all the way through, but Carthy's a bit variable - as I discovered yesterday when I listened to "Byker Hill" (what is he doing to that song?) and "Poor murdered woman" (obvious pun resisted). So anyone who said "get some Martin Carthy/June Tabor, they're good" would be setting me up for some awful disappointments (alongside some brilliant stuff, I'm sure).

Bellamy's different, for some reason. I guess it's that voice: even songs I don't much like sounded good from him (I'm smiling now just thinking of how he sang "Slip jigs and reels" (But he took MO-OST delight...).

*In case somebody's going to ask me when I last shared the experiences of Lord Bateman or Musgrave, ISTM that the old songs are mostly about love, hate, trust, betrayal, sex, birth and death, in varying combinations. Hands up.)

Subject: RE: Great 70s folk LPs (that I've missed)
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 18 May 12 - 09:58 AM

fair enough.. I'm mostly listening to Reggae and Northern Soul this year..

But when I do start recording my own efforts it'll probably be trad folk
with loads of vintage electronic instruments and valve amps
informed by a 1950's rock 'n' roll studio ethos & methodology..

anyway Phil, thanks for starting this thread.
The listed LPs here will be invaluable source of inspiration.