Special Award

This special award is given to the live performance I went to in 2012 which was most Special.

Nominations

Norma Waterson, Eliza Carthy and the Gift Band
St Georges, Bristol, 5th Dec 

Martin has to help Norma on and off the stage, but otherwise she seems unchanged from when I last saw her two year ago, before the illness. Not a conventionally beautiful singing voice, but songs carried through personality and conviction; from God Loves a Drunk to Buddy Can You Spare A Dime (astonishing!) via Ukulele Lady; to say nothing of one of those long grim rambling narratives that we probably associate more with her husband. ("What would you give to your brother's wife? / A widow's weeds and a peaceful life.") They finish on Grace Darling, with all the daft actions ("and she ROWED away o're the foaming sea, over the ocean blue; HELP HELP she could hear the cries of the shipwrecked crew...") There is a standing ovation, of course and foot stamping. Eliza comes back on to the stage "Mum says thank you, but she's too tired to do any more, after all that rowing."

Nic Jones
Sep 22nd, Cecil Sharp House

Since noticing that I liked this stuff several years ago, I have got to hear live performances by most of the artists I admire including several bona fide legends — Robin Williamson; Martin Carthy; Ashley Hutchings, David Swarbrick and Richard Thompson (though not all at once); and even, at some distance, Bob Dylan. But I never thought that there was any chance that I would get to join in with Nic Jones singing Little Pot Stove.

And now I have.

Leon Rosselson
June 16, Cellar Upstairs Folk Club, London

It may be true that Anon is the greatest writers of all time, but it's well to remember that songs like “In 1649…” and “Palaces of Gold” and “Stand Up For Judas” "Song of the Olive Tree" didn’t just fall out of the sky — they were thought up by a person , a rather unassuming, awkward even, little man who sings complex, clever, funny patter songs with honesty and conviction. And I have been in the same room as him and said thank-you-i-enjoyed-the-gig. I am never going to get to say that to Bob Dylan, am I?

The Copper Family
Nov 1st, Cecil Sharp House

There is a sense in which the Copper Family is English Folk Music. There is another sense in which they are a group of non professional musicians singing acapella songs in pretty much the same style they have been doing for generations. People talk about Coppersongs in the same way they talk about Child Ballads. Hearing them live is something of folk pilgrimage. 

And the winner is

"Songs and Southern Breezes"

Cecil Sharp House




This evening was intended to commemorate the Eightieth anniversary of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. This turned out to mean the Eightieth anniversary of the English Folk Dance Society merging with the English Folk Song Society. Worth celebrating. Cecil Sharp House is exactly half way between Bayreuth and a rather old fashioned Anglican church hall. It's both the very heart of English Folk Music (definitely with capital letters) and it's a place where people go to learn country dancing. In the basement, the beardiest barman I've ever seen sells real ale.

The first half of the evening consisted of the aforementioned Shirley Collins giving an illustrated talk about the life of Bob Copper. Bob, as well as being patriarch of the Copper Family and therefore the main cause of the Second Folk Revival, was a BBC broadcaster and collector of folk songs during the 1950s. This was the last time when it was still possible to go into an English country pub and have a good chance of bumping into an old fellow who never went to school, started working as a farm labourer at the age of eight, and could sing to you songs as they were sung to him by his grandfather. The living tradition, to coin a phrase. He could reasonably claim that Noah Gillette’s version of the Bonny Bunch of Roses represented a direct link to the age of Napoleon. The talk was illustrated with fascinating archive recordings which I had never heard before. An old gentleman singing through an interminable “Pickle-ally Bush” which left you wondering how many relatives he would have to go through before someone paid off the ruddy hang-man; another one singing a unique version of Long Lankin (”Cruel Lincoln”) which Mr Copper said was as precious as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The second half of the evening was a rare performance by the actual Copper family themselves. I've heard them once before in their Young Coppers incarnation, but this was a multi-generational, extended line up, doing a good selection of the family repertoire, running the gamut of human experience from “isn't working on a farm awful” to “isn't working on a farm brilliant” interspersed with family history and memories of Bob and the previous generation. (He only bought a tuning fork when the Coppers were invited to appear at the Albert Hall. Up to then, they’d used a cow-bell.) They aren't all professional musicians, but they have preserved a style of singing down through multiple generations, and they love it. They all clasp hands warmly in the last verse of Drive Sorrows Away (”although I'm not rich and although I'm not poor / I'm as happy as those who have thousands or more”). In a way, there is nothing better than hearing them throw themselves into Sweet Rose of Allendale and joining in the harmonies of Sportsmen Arise. Cecil Sharp House isn't the heart of English folk music, of course: it’s these people, and a few others like them. 

A charming, informative, moving evening.