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Davy Graham and Shirley Collins (+Video)

Thursday, 07 February 2008

There is something quite magical about introducing an album from 1964 as "New in"...but then that's what makes this station different. The album is "Folk Roots, New Routes", which was seen as a milestone in the English Folk Revival. I've included some video and short Biographies to help set the scene. I wish I had a time machine!

Davey Graham: Biography (wiki)

Davey with Louis Killen

Davy Graham was born to a Guyanaese mother and a Scottish father and he took up the guitar at the age of 12. As a teenager, he was strongly influenced by a guitar player called Steve Benbow, who had travelled widely with the army and played a guitar style influenced by Moroccan music. At the age of 19, Graham wrote what is probably his most famous piece, at least for aspiring guitarists: the acoustic solo tune "Anji". Colin Harper credits Graham with single-handledly inventing the concept of the folk guitar instrumental (whilst acknowledging that John Fahey was making a similar invention, simultaneously, in the U.S.)

One way that he came to the attention of guitarists was through his appearance in a 1959 TV film produced by Ken Russell, entitled Hound Dogs and Bach Addicts: The Guitar Craze. This was broadcast as part of the BBC TV arts series Monitor.

Graham introduced the DADGAD guitar tuning to British guitarists, though it is not clear if it originated with him. Its main attraction was that it allowed the guitarist more freedom to improvise in the treble while maintaining a solid underlying harmony and rhythm in the bass. While 'non-standard', or 'non-classical' tunings were widely practiced by guitarists before this (Open E and Open G tunings were in common use by blues and slide guitar players) his use of DADGAD introduced a second standard tuning to guitarists.

During the 1960s he released a string of eclectic albums with music from all around the world in all kinds of genres.

His continuous touring of the world, picking up and then recording different styles of music for the guitar, has resulted in many musicians crediting him with founding world music.

He was the subject of a 2005 BBC Radio documentary Whatever Happened to Davy Graham ? and in 2006 featured in the BBC Four documentary Folk Britannia.

Recently, he has been working closely and consistently with singer-songwriter Mark Pavey, he has once again returned to the stage, playing live acts, and has also been working once again with familiar guitarists and friends, including Bert Jansch, Duck Baker and Martin Carthy. Graham is in the process of releasing a new album called "Broken Biscuits" consisting of originals and new arrangements of traditional songs from around the world.

Two clips from Folk Britannia with some great familiar faces:

Shirley Collins: Biography (wiki)

Shirley and Dolly

Shirley Collins and her older sister, Dolly, grew up in the Hastings area of East Sussex in a family which kept alive a great love of traditional song. Songs learnt from their grandfather and from their mother's sister, Grace Winborn, were to be important in the sisters' repertoire throughout their career.

On leaving school, at the age of 17, Collins enrolled at a teachers' training college in Tooting, south London. However, in London she also involved herself in the early folk revival and in 1954, at a party hosted by Ewan MacColl, she met Alan Lomax, the famous American folk collector, who had moved to Britain to avoid the McCarthy witch-hunt which was then raging in America. Lomax and Collins began a romantic relationship which led to their undertaking a folk song collecting trip in the Southern states which lasted from July to November 1959 and resulted in many hours of recordings, featuring performers such as Almeda Riddle, Hobart Smith, and Bessie Jones and culminated in the discovery of Mississippi Fred McDowell. Recordings from this trip were issued by Atlantic Records under the title "Sounds of the South" and also featured in the Coen brothers’ film Oh Brother, Where Art Thou. The experience of her life with Lomax and the making of the recordings in religious communities, social gatherings, prisons and chain gangs was described in Collins's book America Over the Water (published 2004).

Back in Britain, Collins proceeded with her own singing career, and in a series of influential albums, she helped to introduce many innovations into the English folk revival. In 1964, she recorded the landmark jazz-folk fusion of Folk Roots, New Routes, with guitarist Davy Graham. 1967 saw the essentially southern English song collection, The Sweet Primeroses, on which she was accompanied for the first time by Dolly Collins's portative organ.

In 1969 there was another collaboration, this time with The Young Tradition (featuring Peter Bellamy, Heather Wood and Royston Wood) and Dolly Collins, The Holly Bears the Crown.

Collins's seminal recording is considered by many to be Anthems in Eden, released in 1969. It featured a suite of songs centred on the changes in rural England brought about by the First World War. Dolly Collins created arrangements featuring David Munrow and various other players from his Early Music Consort. The highly unusual combination of ancient instruments included rebecs, sackbuts, viols and crumhorns and hinted that the guitar was not the only appropriate accompaniment for the folk song. Several critics have suggested that it is impossible to imagine that electric accompaniment for traditional song, as successfully purveyed by Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span, could have developed quite as it did without the pioneering 'Anthems In Eden'.

All these recordings strove to marry a deep love and understanding of the English folk music heritage with a more contemporary attitude to musical settings. Anthems In Eden was followed by Love, Death & The Lady, and No Roses, recorded in 1971 with the Albion Country Band, and a total of 27 musicians.

Collins married her second husband Ashley Hutchings in 1971. He left Steeleye Span and the couple created the all acoustic Etchingham Steam Band with Terry Potter, Ian Holder and Vic Gammon. The Etchingham's repertoire was drawn from the traditional music of Sussex. With The Albion Dance Band, performing traditional material on a mixture of modern (electric) and mediaeval instruments, Collins recorded The Prospect Before Us.

1978's For As Many As Will was the last studio album recorded by Shirley and Dolly Collins. Collins retired from public performance, although she continues to lecture and to appear on radio as an authority on traditional music. In 2004, she was awarded a Gold Badge by the English Folk Dance and Song Society and became patron of the South East Folk Arts Network in 2006[1]. She was awarded the MBE for services to music in the Queen's New Year's Honours List, announced 30th December 2006. On 14th April, 2007, she was awarded an Honorary Degree by the Open University, for a "Notable contribution to education and culture".

With actor Pip Barnes, she tours with her three illustrated talks "America over the Water" (about her field trip in the Southern States of America with Alan Lomax), "A Most Sunshiny Day" (about the traditional music of England and Sussex in particular) and "I'm a Romany Rai" (about the Gypsy singers and songs of Southern England).