ten folk albums (part 2)

6. martin carthy's first album

martin carthy, like june tabor, is a researcher of traditional song. this, his debut with dave swarbek with whom he would work for the next few decades, contains one of his most famous settings 'scarborough fair' and here it is not the polite song you know from simon and garfunkel but a song about a woman setting a deamon impossible tasks to avoid his love.

7. george deacon and marion ross 'sweet william's ghost'

this is another 'lost' folk album. published by transatlantic and sadly never reissued while the now defunct castle group owned the rights. the rights are now owned by sony and i see little chance of them reissuing an album that would be of such specialist interest. 

this collects a surprising number of urban songs (often these are forgotten in folk music) and tends to focus on these and broadsides.

sadly the blogging of this album is heavily policed by sony and even on youtube the one video of 'the deavonshire farmer's daughter' (which i uploaded) is only available in the uk.

sadly this album is destined to be forgotten due to sony's greed.

8. peggy mccoll and ewan mccoll 'the radio ballads'

this classic merging of documentary and folk song (a series not an individual album) by the great peggy seeger and ewan mccoll is another high point in the representation of traditional song.

thankfully these are avalable on cd from topic records.

9. Shirley collins 'the power of the true love knot' 

it's hard to pick an album by shirley collins but i chose this as it contains a variation on 'sweet william's ghost' 

it also contains the greatest, to my mind, version of 'lovely joan' a song cecil sharp wished to suppress due to it's erotic content.

10. the topic sampler series.

another series treated as a single album but an important series which unified the work of professional  artists and local singers recorded by billl leader (amongst others) who would go on to set up his own labels 'leader' and 'trailer' which would publish important work including the lal and mike waterson album featured in part one of this list.

a short note.

i have included here only traditional song and albums by singers of traditional song so there is no 'narnia,' 'mister fox,' 'the incredible string band' or any other band of that type.

sadly there wasn't enough room to include important figures like anne briggs, dick gawkin or leon rossilson and for that i ask forgivness