... whether you call here often or have strayed into the site from Salut!, Salut! Sunderland or Salut! North. Warm festive greetings from Colin Randall - seen on Santa duty at his granddaughter's nursery - and his occasional contributor, Pete Sixsmith, below.
So extensive has been the coverage of Bert Jansch's death, and therefore his life, that it may seem unnecessary for Salut! Live to add anything to the long and detailed obituaries published elsewhere.
However, Jansch was such an important figure in British music, especially acoustic music and folk-rock, that it would be negligent not to record his passing and share with readers some material they are unlikely to find in those other accounts.
When you leave a concert hall where spectators have been dressed as if for the opera, many of the women dripping with jewellery and perched atop high heels, it is easy to forget you were there for a spot of folk music. The sense of incongruity sharpens on crossing the road to see that the shops in this part of town have Rolls-Royces and Bentleys for their window displays.
The remarkable phenomenon that is Joan Baez, touring at 70 with the energy of a woman half her age, had reached Monaco.
When listening to Ragged Kingdom (Topic) for the first time, I was in a moderately bad mood, up against a deadline and having to get to and from the airport before even beginning to try to meet it.
So I decided it was not a patch on Freedom and Rain, a breathtaking album from 1990 that deepened my admiration for June Tabor and gave me the severe shaking I needed to reverse an inexplicable failure to appreciate Oysterband.
Salut! Live is sad to report that Ray Fisher, a member of the eminent family of Scottish folk singers and musicians, has died aged 70 after a protracted struggle with illness.
The warmth and the distress evident in responses to news of her passing offer some measure of the affection and regard in which she was held, and a few examples of the messages will be included in this account.
No, this is not a sneaky way of reopening the Song of the Day series, though it may, as I have said elsewhere, become Song of the Week/Month/Millennium as the mood takes.
But the message from Janet, published here as a comment yesterday, and another from my old electronic acquaintance "Sir Robert Peel", at Talkawhile, made it clear that the hit rate for the series, and indeed this site generally, is a little higher than I feared.
Sandy Denny, Fairport Convention, Albon Band, Dave Swarbrick, Dervish, Damien Dempsey, Eliza Carthy, Tony Capstick, High Level Ranters, Doonan Family Band, Jez lowe and the Bad Pennies, Republica, Capercaillie, Show of Hands, Jackson C Frank, Simon Mayor and Hilary James, Martin Simpson, David Campbell, Tom Paxton, Paul Brady, Sharon Shannon/Kirsty MacColl, Danu, Tommy Sands, Kathryn Roberts and Sean Lakeman, The Cottars, Flossie Malavialle, De Dannan with Dolores Keane, Cara Dillon and Sam Lakeman, Vin Garbutt, Joan Osborne, Touchstone, Bothy Band, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Bob Dylan, Linda Thompson, Oysterband, Altan, Mary Black, Nic Jones, Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick, Françoise Hardy, Richard Thompson, June Tabor, Kate Rusby, The Watersons, Bob Fox & Stu Luckley, Del Shannon, Christy Moore, Eric Clapton, Sharon Shannon/Dessie O'Halloran, Joan Baez, Luke Kelly and The Dubliners, Steeleye Span, The Unthanks ...
... have all figured in the Song of the Day series at Salut Live which began on June 24, immediately before I discovered Jon Boden had been doing something remarkably similar for a year and had just finished.
I pressed on despite this inconvenient reminder of how far out of the loop I am these days ... Sandy Denny's wonderful song, Who Knows Where The Times Goes?, one of the Fairport versions of which appeared here yesterday, was essentially the closing clip, though I have added a bonus from Mary Coughlan above.
Well, I did refuse to rule out more from Fairport Convention before the end of Song of the Day and the series cries out for this. For the last but one edition - the final one will go back over the ground covered - I have duly returned to Fairport and the irreplaceable Sandy Denny.
Despite the inverted snobbery that makes some of us smugly content that folk music is not for everyone - and I am as guilty as Kate Rusby in that respect - there is still room. paradoxically, for a sense of satisfaction when others recognise a truly great song, performance or tune.
In our discussions of folk-rock, we have tended to overlook the Albion Band.
This grossly unfair oversight is put right today by the inclusion in our Song of the Day series of the power mining disaster song (commemorating one of Britain's worst such tragedies) the band performed so well.
Happy Christmas
December 23, 2011 in Salut! Commentary | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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