The Electric Muse Revisited by Robert Shelton

Author:Robert Shelton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Omnibus Press
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

SOURCES

You’ll find the originals of many of the electric folk “chartbusters” on albums in the Topic, Leader and Trailer catalogues, sung by country singers, collected mainly in the fifties and onwards, or by various revivalists. The best kaleidoscope of the traditional origins of electric balladry will be found in Topic’s ten-volume Folk Songs of Britain. For instance, Volume 8, A Soldier’s Life for Me, includes the originals of Steeleye’s “When I Was On Horseback”, “The Banks Of The Nile” and “Prince Charlie Stewart”. Two failings of this anthology should, however, be borne in mind: the fact that it treats the six or seven separate traditions of this Disunited Kingdom as one (the mythical “Britain” of the collection’s title) and the fact that some of the songs are denuded of some of their verses. Though they are printed in full in an accompanying booklet, this truncation encourages the singer to think of all the verses as being sung to the same tune as the first, whereas it is of the essence of folk music that each verse varies, melodically, in keeping with the pace of the narration. Each time the song is performed, of course, a new set of variations occurs.

Other strong traditional influences have been Harry Cox, who appears on several volumes of Folk Songs of Britain and has two albums to himself, English Folk Singer (EFDSS LP1004) and Traditional English Love Songs (Folk Legacy FSB20), which has the original of Steeleye’s “Spotted Cow” on it, as well as the rhythmically fascinating “Betsy The Serving Maid” referred to in the text; Phil Tanner (EFDSS LP1005), from whose recording came “The Gower Wassail” for Steeleye; and the Coppers (EFDSS LP1002, Leader LEA 4046/9), from whom stem the glee-type harmonies used by some groups for their ensemble singing. The Coppers’ repertoire has more effect in the folk clubs than on the electric scene, though.

Some of Fairport’s traditional repertoire is hard to trace: the words of their “Matty Groves” were dictated to them over the phone when they were working on Liege and Lief, but the tune is basically similar to that of the American Hedy West, recorded on “Pretty Saro” (Topic 12T146).

The list of songs electric folk has acquired via the redoubtable Bert Lloyd, sometimes passed on more or less as he got them, sometimes extensively reworked, is really remarkable. We would be much poorer without his talent for spotting a good song, for instance “Blackwaterside”, “A Sailor’s Life”, “Reynardine”, “The Deserter”, “Jack Orion” (the latter more or less an original song on the theme of the traditional “Glasgerion”), and “The Handloom Weaver And The Factory Maid”. A fine singer, though very idiosyncratic and less traditional in style than is sometimes believed, he has not always been well served by his recordings, but First Person (Topic 12T118) almost does him justice.

Lloyd and Ewan MacColl (aka Jimmy Miller) did an interesting set of recordings of ballads from the collection of Professor F.J. Child for Riverside many years ago which was criticised by musicologists at the time for the rather mannered singing and wayward way with texts and tunes.

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