We continue our look at the music of 50 years ago….
The English folk revival of the late 60’s and 70’s was another genre of music I did not get into until college.I found alot of these records while exploring the vast stacks of vinyl at 90fm in Stevens Point. Along with Fairport Convention, Pentangle and the Anglo-Brit group known as Renaissance, was a troupe that called themselves Steeleye Span. I think it was the golden throats of the female lead singers that got me as much as anything. Whether it was Sandy Denny, Jacqui McShee, Annie Haslam, or any of the others, it was those voices that made these songs come alive. Songs that were sometimes written hundreds of years before…dealing with subjects that would have been familiar with those living in the days of Henry VIII. Steeleye Span had Maddy Prior out front. I believe the first time I encountered that voice was on the band’s biggest hit, ‘All Around My Hat” in late 1975.
Little did I know, as I then went back to explore the band’s earlier music, was that this was not the same band that had emerged in the late 60’s. They had a drummer now and an almost rock sound that strayed a bit from the folk renderings of those earlier LPs…which included the offering from 1971 called “Please To See The King”.
Steeleye Span was formed when bass player Ashley Hutchings left Fairport Convention in 1969. He thought the band was moving too far away from it’s folk roots and wanted to do a more traditional type of music. Tim Hart and Maddy Prior had been working as duo when they met Hutchings…they later added veteran folkies Martin Carthy and fiddler Peter Knight as they prepared to record their second album. The songs dealt with issues and traditions of British life hundreds of years before. Some were old children’s songs…some were of more adult subject matter. Let’s face it, alot of traditional folk music dealt with death, murder and madness. The music was dense behind the harmonies of Prior, Hart and Carthy…using all kind of stringed instruments including guitars, dulcimer, banjo, violin and mandolin.
It was named the Folk Album of the Year by Melody Maker Magazine.
This stuff did not get played in Central Wisconsin so chances are good, once again, that you have never heard this record. Pour yourself a glass of mead and leave this place for a bit.
