Barbara and Ernie – Prelude To… (1971) Day 11 of FV’s 12 Days of Xmas

Barbara & Ernie – Prelude To…
Original release 1971 Atlantic
Reissue, 2013 Real Gone Music

I almost headed off to bed without posting Day 11 of this 12 Days of Xmas thing.  It’s only the fifth day of the year and I’m already exhausted with stress.  Too tired and strapped for time to give this album a proper tip of the hat.  This record pushes all my buttons in all the right places.  It’s a shame that Barbara Massey was relegated to background vocals for most of her career.  Ernie Calabria had done lots of session work with the likes of Harry Belafonte and others.  With Deodato doing the arranging, this is a treasure of soulful-psychedelic-folk-rock. #autoharp Continue reading

The Balfa Brothers Play Traditional Cajun Music (1967 Swallow Records)

The Balfa Brothers Play Traditional Cajun Music
1967 Swallow Records – LP-6011
Vinyl transcription in 24-bit 192 khz || File sets in mp3, FLAC and 24-bit FLAC

I had this record ready to post here long before there was a Cat 4 hurricane bearing down on the bayou.  I’ve been rewatching some Les Blank films this summer, which may be why I felt inspired to share this gem.  The Balfa Brothers were the real deal.  If you are remotely interested in Cajun music or the Acadian contribution to American roots music (e.g. country or “country & western”), do yourself a favor and check them out.  Some of you may know them from their inclusion on various compilations, but it is nice to have an entire long player of this material.  I don’t have any profound commentary to add; I just haven’t posted on this blog all month, and I sure hope the people of Louisiana are doing okay right now.

Tracklist
A1 – Drunkard’s Sorrow Waltz (La Valse De Bambocheurs) (03:16)
A2 – Lacassine Special (02:48)
A3 – My True Love (02:37)
A4 – La Valse De Grand Bois (02:58)
A5 – Family Waltz (02:40)
A6 – Newport Waltz (03:01)
B1 – Indian On A Stomp (02:36)
B2 – T’ai Petite Et T’ai Meon (03:03)
B3 – Two Step A Hadley (01:50)
B4 – Valse De Balfa (02:27)
B5 – Parlez Nous A Boire (03:13)
B6 – Les Blues De Cajun (02:00)

Link to all files

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The Grateful Dead – The Warfield, San Francisco, CA 10/9/80 & 10/10/80

Grateful Dead – The Warfield, San Francisco, CA 10/9/80 & 10/10/80
Vinyl rip in 24-bit/192 kHz |  Art scans at 300 dpi
Grateful Dead Productions / Rhino Records – R1-585396

This is a gorgeous collection of acoustic music from The Grateful Dead.  The Dead were  doing “unplugged” sets before anybody called them that, but in grand total of their hundreds of recorded shows, live acoustic music from the whole band was relatively rare apart from side projects.  The shows captured here, along with others at Radio City in New York, would be drawn on to produce the all-wooden live album Reckoning.  This is them at their most intimate, minimal, and parsimonious; well, as much as any group which brings a harpsichord on stage for just one song can ever be called minimal. Dead shows were famous for a wild crowd and scene that would eventually come to overshadow the actual music, but you could hear a pin drop during many of the tunes here.  Elizabeth Cotton’s “Oh Babe, It Ain’t No Lie” is a poignant highlight of the first night, while the Garcia/Hunter original “To Lay Me Down” from the second night cuts wide and deep.  What has always set The Grateful Dead apart for me from their ‘jam-band’ imitators was their ability to play soulfully, and to un-self-consciously tap so many distinctly American musical traditions.  Those two qualities are in abundance in this special Record Store Day release.

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Ned Doheny – Hard Candy (1976) (2014 Be With Records 180g reissue)

Ned Doheny – Hard Candy
Vinyl rip in 24-bit/192 kHz | FLAC |  Art scans at 300 dpi
1.4801GB (24/192) | 714MB (24/96) + 238 MB (16/44) |
2014 Be With Records BEWITH003LP | Genre:   Soul, Funk, Rock

I’m not sure that the release of Ned Doheny’s 1973 album sold enough copies to inculcate anything much in the way of expectations, but anybody who had happened to own that album could be forgiven for wondering if his second record in 1976 hadn’t accidentally been switched with the latest Vangelis when they first put it on the turntable. A full thirty seconds of  slowly faded-in, droning synth chords opens the album before a splash of Ned’s acoustic guitar, chimes and eventually drummer Gary Mallaber laying down a rock-solid beat on the moody “Get It Up For Love.” The whole record is heavenly blue-eyed soul, folky funk, swimming pool dreaminess and about as Laurel Canyon 1976 as it could possibly be.

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The Humblebums – First Collection of Merry Melodies (1969) (Transatlantic TRA-186)

The Humblebums – First Collection of Merry Melodies
Vinyl rip in 24-bit/192 kHz | Art scans at 300 dpi
1969 Transatlantic Records TRA 186 | Genre:  Folk

The other week, I ran a Patreon poll for the site’s handful of patrons to ask what genre the next post should be about, and “folk” won the day.  A few months ago I shared the final Humblebums record, Open The Door, which is split evenly between Billy Connolly and Gerry Rafferty songs.  This debut album predates Rafferty’s participation and demonstrates that it was really Connolly’s project.  In his place was Tommy Harvey, a competent guitarist who went on to play with Hamish Imlach, another Scotsman in the tradition of folk-comedy.  The record opens with “Why Don’t They Come Back To Dunoon?”, a parody of the Jonathan King hit “Everyone’s Gone To The Moon” which remained a staple in Connolly’s live performances.  While I am a big fan of Rafferty’s bittersweet balladeering, this record is less bipolar and more cohesive than their other two releases because of Connolly’s total control over the mood.  And of course, there is some hot banjo playing on it.  (P.S.  If you feel like supporting the site via Patreon, YOU TOO can participate in exciting polls and other activities!)

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The Young Tradition with Shirley & Dolly Collins – The Holly Bears The Crown

The Holly Bears the Crown
The Young Tradition with Shirley & Dolly Collins
Originally recorded 1969 but unreleased (see below)
Fledg’ling Records FLED 3006 (CD, UK, October 30, 1995)

 

Recorded in London in 1969 (but shelved because of the Young Tradition’s break-up);
Produced by John Gilbert
Mastered by Dennis Blackham at Porkys, London
Photography by Brian Shuel
Cover artwork by David Suff

Musicians

Peter Bellamy, vocals;
Shirley Collins, vocals;
Dolly Collins, portative organ;
Adam Skeaping, violone;
Rod Skeaping, bass viol;
Heather Wood, vocals;
Royston Wood, vocals;
Gary Watson, narrator [1, 8]

Tracks

Prologue from Hamlet (0.28)
The Boar’s Head Carol (Roud 22229) (1.38)
Is It Far to Bethlehem (2.12)
Lullay My Liking (2.10)
The Cherry Tree Carol (Roud 453; Child 54; G/D 2:327) (2.48)
Shepherds Arise (The Shepherd’s Hymn) (Roud 1207) (3.10)
I Sing of a Maiden That Is Makeless (1.56)

Interlude: The Great Frost (2.16)
Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day (Roud 21931) (2.08)
A Virgin Most Pure (Roud 1378) (4.19)
The Coventry Carol (Roud 19028) (1.55)
The Holly Bears the Crown (Roud 514) (2.49)
March the Morning Sun (2.24)
Bring Us in Good Ale (Roud 203; G/D 3:590) (2.33)

All tracks trad. except
Track 1 William Shakespeare;
Track 3 words Frances Chesterton, tune trad.;
Track 4 words trad., tune Gustav Holst;
Track 5 words trad., tune Shirley Collins;
Track 7 words trad., tune Dolly Collins;
Track 8 Virginia Woolf;
Track 13 Royston Wood

Arrangements by Peter Bellamy, Shirley and Dolly Collins, Royston Wood, Heather Wood;
All instrumental arrangements by Dolly Collins;
All titles published by Cacophony Music

Information in this text file was found on the wonderful website:
https://mainlynorfolk.info/peter.bellamy/records/thehollybearsthecrown.html

One single was released from this project at the time:

The Boar’s Head Carol / The Shepherd’s Hymn
The Young Tradition

Argo AFW 115 (single, UK, 1974)
The Young Tradition: The Boar’s Head Carol (Argo AFW 115)


Here’s one for getting out the mulled cider and spiced wine, although this will be the most sober of my holiday offerings. It is one of those genuinely “lost classics,” an album that went unreleased at the time except for one single on Argo.  It’s all very, very English.  The Collins sisters teamed up with vocal group The Young Tradition, whose name itself suggests that core folk revival principle of recovering, preserving, adapting, and recontextualizing ancient tunes.  Each “side” of the unreleased album was opened by brief recitations of passages from Shakespeare and Virginia Woolf, as if to underscore that traditional/modern dialectic.  A couple of the melodies were newly composed by Shirley and Dolly for traditional lyrics, and one comes from composer Gustav Holst, who played a part in the previous folk revival of the early 20th century, in the same cohort as Vaughan Williams.  Another deploys lyrics by Frances Chesterton (wife, manager, and religious anchor of G.K. Chesterton) to a traditional melody.  One original Royston Wood composition graces the album, sung by Shirley.

I’ve had the pleasure of visiting the UK during part of the Christmas season, and to make a broad generalization, man are they really into Christmas there.  Sure, it’s also saturated with American-style consumerism and filthy capitalism.  But being there as a Yank still impressed upon me that there’s a basic human kindness and warmth that is stronger and less transitory than all of that.  The kind of goodwill that individualist Americans reserve only for their family and friends (or church congregation) seems to spill forth from every city street and village corner to embrace you.  Yes, I know there are more people “sleeping rough” (that’s British for “homeless”) than there ought to be in any so-called civilized place, there are forces trying to gut the NHS, and the isles have their fair share of socioeconomic problems, racism, and moral contradictions.  But when Theresa bloody May has to publicly chastise the child-tyrant of the USA for retweeting fraudulent Islamophobic propaganda made by fascists, perhaps you can indulge me in a bit of fantastic romanticizing that at least some remnants of British society hold fast to a more humane, compassionate, less-batshit-crazy worldview than what currently prevails in the land of my birth.  Since I won’t be able to take in evensong at St. Paul’s Cathedral, at least I can put on this record, though certainly less grandiose than a choir or pipe organ, and keep myself in good ale.

Once again, if you’re feeling the holiday spirit and have anything left over from your gift fund, consider becoming a patron of the blog via Patreon, using the links at the footer of each post.  It would help us with some site ‘remodeling’ and with enough patrons I can actually run some of the fun features like opinion polls and requests.

 


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