Think not what he was, admire and imbibe what he is! A Martin Carthy birthday celebration.

Release Date: 21st May 2025 (His birthday: Happy Birthday, Sir!!)

Label: Self-Released

Format: CD / digital

How and where

How to begin? As in, where do you begin to approach new music from Martin Carthy, a figure whose head is raised way above all those about him, in the vanguard of the British folk revival of the 1960s. There is always someone somewhere proclaiming a folk revival, often people like me, but those heady days in London basement coffee bars and the like, they all seem so full of some elixir of real, leaving behind a flavour, a tangible touchstone that few now can rightly claim to have been part of.

Carthy was, hobnobbing with all those seeking too to find something at the altar of such steadfasts as Ewan MacColl. Quite the melting pot, amongst his fellow acolytes were ex-pat Americans, Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, each of whom picked up on his song arrangements and, literally, ran, copywriting the often ancient songs as their own. We all now know these tales, even up to the latter day rapprochements.

ROOTS AND BRANCHES

Me, I was a tad too young for that, with my awareness coming more from the roots and branches of the Fairport family tree. Increasingly there seemed to be a singular presence amongst the other slightly more happy go lucky seeming regulars, am ascetic looking fella, with an extraordinary way with both voice and guitar. Never before had an acoustic guitar sounded so primitive and wild, as much a percussive instrument as for melody, with his voice rolling over and around it, a monk lost in emotion, a sound like nothing much, before or since.

Instantly recognisable. I came to relish those early Steeleye Span releases and Albion Country Band’s Battle Of The Field, latching on to his Gregorian vibrato with glee. Which meant then nipping back to his solo repertoire and that with one David Swarbrick. As the years and decades passed, he was always still there, ploughing his idiosyncratic farrow. The Watersons, Brass Monkey and, more recently, and astoundingly, The Imagined Village, a Zelig of quality and style in whatever folk revival of the day was being touted.

here he is a witness

His solo eponymous debut LP came out in 1965. Here, sixty years later, is his latest, most having believed him retired, at least from recording, since the death of his beloved Norma. Much the same set as he currently performs live, the names of a majority of the songs are the same as were on that first release. But the contrasts are stark; a lot more than just vocal timbre changes between 24 and 84. The guitar less leaps and more lurches out the speakers, for at a clipped and funereal pace, for The Trees They Do Grow High, ahead the vocal, which emerges as a wracked and thin wraith, dripping with emotion and experience. if the singer was a historian of the detail, all those years ago, here he is a witness, as if having lived and been the song.

A raw scraping of fiddle then reveals the version of Ye Mariners All is not the acapella of the original, being a reprised duet, with daughter, Eliza, of the Waterson-Carthy rendition, from almost midway between then and now. Given the joy of all and every Waterson and Carthy chorus is the ever so slight mismatch between the voices, that cleft being the emulsifying factor in their oil and water, here it has never been quite so gauntly elegant. (It is also the song that provides the lift of lyric for the unusual title of this album, should you have earlier wondered.)

LOVELY…

Lovely Joan has always had a lovely melody, although you may have missed that truth in the pell-mell approach of ’65. 14 years later, with a pre-Brass Monkey John Kirkpatrick and Howard Evans to enhance the slower version, it is with that arrangement stuck with here, if now sparse and spare, just voice and guitar, each with a flicker of fairy-dust. Then, in a first step away from the template, Carthy reprises a song, Dream Of Napoleon, which he brought to Topic Records 8oth birthday party release, Vision And Revision.

Boney has always been a bit of a folk hero across many a song, and, despite only 6 years between versions, the years show their ravaging of his range. So why is it I prefer this one, not least the exquisite guitar? This track also had me scouring the notes to see who was adding the additional mandolin. There is no additional mandolin, it being the sitar of Imagined Village bandmate, Sheema Mukherjee, which adds a sheen that transcends its usual sound.

Carthy, Patton and Johnson

Mukherjee sticks around for Eighteenth Of June, her playing now offering some of the more expected curveball dones of the instrument. But rather than suggesting any elements of India and the East, her play invokes the debt, and link, actually, that Carthy pays to country blues tradition of the deep south of America. Go compare Carthy with some of the earthier aspects of Charley Patton or Robert Johnson and it really isn’t that much a jump. The song, another one about Napoleon, is a further relative newcomer to his repertoire, but benefits the twists gifted by Mukherjee.

Eliza now bounces back for The Handsome Cabin Boy, who, shock horror, as in so many songs in the tradition, isn’t. It is her 1,2,3 that sparks it off, her fiddle adopting a maritime gait to mimic the waves. Her father applies what seems a huskier demeanour, accompanied only by his daughter, in contrast to the more robust acapella 1965 iteration. Already I’m anticipating some sort of joint appearances, as has been taking place over the atlantic.

A faithful document

A Begging I Will Go is one of those classic constructions of the tradition, the initiative to songs, like Jolly Beggar Girl, penned by Richard Thompson, if revealing the source ingredients having as much vim as his variation. Having said, Carthy himself couldn’t resist tinkering with it, the song changing a fair bit between his debut and a later live recording, each in cahoots with Dave Swarbrick. It is a longer version still, revived from Swarb’s 50th birthday celebration that is included here, if shorn of any fiddle, with as lyrical guitar as provided elsewhere sufficient to suffice.

There are similarly several Carthy High Germany’s, beyond 1965. I’m surmising this song comes from the same session as the two before, the hoarseness and huskiness persisting. I guess this may be where some lifelong aficionados peel off, and I know of a few, it proving difficult to appreciate the diminishment in the once vibrant range. Their loss, there being no competition, the whole to be considered a faithful documentation of time.

NEVER STATIC

Perhaps the biggest change, in even the myriad canons of Carthy’s never static approach to how he might tackle a song, comes with The Famous Flower Of Serving Men. A slight shame, as I enjoy the ghost of Shady Grove/Matty Groves that inhabits his 1972 version, but here it is recited as spoken word. He has a enticingly aged voice for verse, but I’d have preferred a song. As for the song that comes next, I was uncertain if he’d be unravelling Scarborough Fair, but he does. It’s OK, but, possibly tarnished by too much ubiquity, even with Muhkerjee’s sitar, sounding now like a sitar, and it is the first skipworthy track, second if you dislike recitations.

So, finally, to close the set, a clearly exhausted singer has the chance to seize back attention with a grand guignol Spring Hill Mine Disaster. Which he does, his fading narrative set against a fever dream of drones and drama from Eliza’s fiddle. I always love(?!) me a song about a pit implosion, and this version, for all the desolation in and of the vocal, wins out, as he shouts/groans out the despair of a a survivor. I’ll buy that.

File under treasure

In last year’s live review of Carthy, comment was made as to how much needed was a Rick Rubin figure to capture and catalogue what unexpected gifts age can confer on an artist, much as was given the late Johnny Cash. Lo and behold, rather than waiting for any such call, the Daddy has gone and done it himself, at home, at Eliza’s own Piggery Mobile, produced by herself and Ben Seal, and mixed by Seal. I’ll bet there is a veritable treasure trove of material there, songs set aside for at least this time around. File under treasure and don’t bury it, please.

High Germany, a year ago:

Martin Carthy online : TMTIAF website / Facebook / fansite & archive

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