After dedicating an article to Fairport Convention and their musical activities in 1970, it is only natural to review artists who were members of the group in the late 1960s and moved on to form their own bands. Richard Thompson discussed the relationship of the mother ship with its past members: “In an obvious move for promoters, we frequently found ourselves sharing a stage with Sandy’s new band, Fotheringay, and Iain’s new band, Matthews Southern Comfort. Fairport had always been a bit like that; in spite of painful splits and ‘musical differences’, everyone generally remained friends, went to each other’s gigs and even collaborated on projects here and there.” We begin with one of British folk rock’s best-known and most enduring ensembles.

Our first group is, like Fairport Convention, part of British folk rock royalty and perhaps the most successful of all the genre’s bands who peaked during the period discussed here. We are talking, of course, of Steeleye Span, who formed and released their debut album Hark! The Village Wait in 1970. Ashley Hutchings, who was a founding member of Fairport Convention, left the group after the release of the album Liege and Lief in 1969. He wanted to continue reviving old folk songs, as he later said: “I felt we needed to throw ourselves into traditional music. It was far too soon to abandon it, and I was very excited by this direction.”

Hutchings approached Dave and Carole Pegg, a like-minded couple who were steeped deep in Britain’s traditional songs. They turned the offer down, opting to start their own band, Mr. Fox (more on that group in a future article in this series). Undeterred, Hutchings recruited former Sweeney’s Men guitarist and banjoist Terry Woods, who then recommended adding his wife Gay as a singer. But this was not the only couple to join the group. Tim Hart and Maddy Prior had been performing professionally for a number of years, releasing two albums, Folk Songs of Olde England vol 1 and 2, which consisted solely of traditional songs. While they were quite successful, Tim Hart remembers that he, “was feeling restricted by being the only person backing Maddy, and we’d already done gigs with others in an attempt to broaden our scope.” Meeting with Hutchings at the Keele Folk Festival, Hart remembers their discussion: “We all sat around and expressed our annoyance that the electric input to folk music was coming from the rock side rather than the folk side.”

Soon after Ashley Hutchings+2+2 convened at his house to test the waters in a casual rehearsal. Maddy Prior: “We rehearsed songs that we liked – Terry and Gay would have done Dark-Eyed Sailor, we’d have done something like Copshawholme Fair, possibly – and we decided it would work. We knew it was going to be a band.” The result – Steeleye Span was born, taking their name from, what else, a character from a Lincolnshire folk song, Horkstow Grange.

Leveraging Hutchings’ recent success with Fairport Convention, the band secured the services of excellent producer and manager Sandy Roberton. Like Hutchings’ former band, they decided to woodshed and live together, retiring to a small village house in Wiltshire. After three months of selecting tunes and rehearsing, they were ready to record their debut album. On March 31, 1970, the day they started their week-long recording sessions, they performed at BBC’s Top Gear show, hosted by John Peel. The show proved to be the only live document by this original lineup of the band, and unfortunately was not taped.

Hark! The Village Wait was released in June 1970. The album name is again a relic of British folklore. Waits were groups of musicians, typically wind instrumentalists, who filled the function of a town or village band in medieval times and played during ceremonies and holidays. Waits are mentioned in Thomas Hardy’s poem Seen By The Waits.

My favorite song on that great album is The Blacksmith. A quick excerpt from the album’s inner sleeve: “Maddy collected this version from a number of texts in the Folk Song Journals. This Southern English song, like the better-known Twanki-Dillo, uses the blacksmith as an epitome of virility with the hammer filling the bill as a phallic symbol. A close variant of this tune is used to the John Bunyan hymn To Be A Pilgrim.”

Maddy Prior – vocals, 5-string banjo

Tim Hart – vocals, electric guitar, electric dulcimer, fiddle, 5-string banjo, harmonium

Ashley Hutchings – bass guitar

Terry Woods – vocals, electric guitar, concertina, mandola, 5-string banjo, mandolin

Gay Woods – vocals, concertina, autoharp, bodhran

Guest musicians

Gerry Conway, Dave Mattacks – drums

Maddy Prior, who sings lead vocals on this track, received rave reviews in an article written by Karl Dallas in Melody Maker magazine a month after the album’s release: “Maddy Prior is an incredibly beautiful singer. God how that girl can sing! The way she slides her voice through intervals that lie between the black and white notes of a piano, using the same sort of glissandi that you hear from a good Irish piper or whistle player, is nothing short of phenomenal.”

By the time the album was released a number of lineup changes took place. The close living quarters, which Ashley Hutchings described as, “Two couples and a referee”, were far less than idyllic. Maddy Prior summed it up: “Living cheek by jowl with complete strangers in the middle of nowhere is no guarantee of continued friendship.” There were also disagreements about musical direction, and eventually Gay & Terry Woods left Steeleye Span. The band recruited Martin Carthy and Peter Knight, two fantastic musicians who would carry the band through their next phase in the early 1970s, but that is a story for a future article.

We move to two other fine ensembles, both led by former lead singers of Fairport Convention and, unfortunately, both yielding only a sole studio album.

At the end of 1969, as Fairport Convention finished recording their milestone album Liege and Lief, lead singer Sandy Denny was on her way out of the band. She was becoming more prolific as a songwriter, but in the context of the band there was no room for all that material. In 1977 she said: “I certainly didn’t fancy the idea of being in a band where it would be hard to have my own songs played because the band was more about traditional songs and instrumentals. I had several songs which could have been included on Liege & Lief, but I knew it wasn’t worth putting them forward.” In addition, her fear of flying was a major obstacle as the band was scheduling upcoming tours in the US for 1970. Together with her partner, singer and songwriter Trevor Lucas, they decided to start their own band. The first recruit was a former band mate of Lucas in the band Eclection, drummer Gerry Conway. The band lineup was finalized with guitarist Jerry Donahue and bassist Pat Donaldson. They named the band Fotheringay, after a song Sandy Denny wrote and sang on Fairport Convention’s 1968 album What We Did on Our Holidays. Fotheringay is the castle where Mary, Queen of Scots was imprisoned.

The band rehearsed songs for their planned debut album at Sandy Denny’s house, where a piano was installed – an instrument she was increasingly using to write songs. Gerry Conway remembers: “Once she got the piano in the flat, that’s how she would introduce her songs to us. She didn’t have a great piano technique but her strength was to create beautiful melodies and graceful chords. She worked hard to learn how to play and sing, which was something she had never done before. She was a much better musician than she gave herself credit for but she was always very self-effacing about everything.”

Although the band was democratic in nature, Gerry Conway remembers clearly who was leading the band artistically: “Sandy’s songs were usually complete when she played them for us for the first time. Arrangements and parts were arrived at in an organic way. Songs were played over and over until they sounded good. Sandy never told us what to play, but you knew instinctively when she was happy with what you were doing. There wasn’t a band leader as such but for my part I felt that Sandy was the teacher and I was the pupil.”

One of the songs Denny wrote during the Liege & Lief rehearsals was ‘The Pond and the Stream’. The song is influenced by the life style of singer Anne Briggs:

Annie wanders on the land.

She loves the freedom of the air.

She finds a friend in every place she goes.

There’s always a face she knows.

I wish that I was there.

Richard Thompson remembers the origin of the song: “When Annie was around, Sandy used to try and get me to go along and meet her, but Annie would always be a little too worse for wear from drinking. Annie Briggs used to travel a lot. Sandy found the idea of that quite inspirational, wishing she had the freedom of her lifestyle, but Sandy wouldn’t have lasted too long without company. Even when she was in London she didn’t like being on her own.” Years later, Anne Briggs reflected about Sandy Denny: “She was a lovely lass, and it was very sad that all the pressures of life got too much for her. I had no idea – I thought she was happy – but I was away from all that by then. I’m sure she wasn’t envious of me and the way I chose to live, it’s just how it happened; she was more reflecting on the way her own life was going.”

The crown achievement of Fotheringay’s album is, interestingly, the only traditional song on it. Banks of the Nile (numbered Roud 950 in the Roud Folk Song Index), is a song about the British campaign against Napoleon’s army in Egypt. It was previously performed by Ewan MacColl, accompanied by Peggy Seeger on guitar in 1956. The vocal delivery by Sandy Denny here is epic. Heather Wood of The Young Tradition: “Sandy Denny learned it from us but put her own inimitable stamp on it.” Beautiful guitar accompaniment here by Trevor Lucas and Jerry Donahue. Gerry Conway remembers the band laboring on the song: “We rehearsed it but it never really settled, and when we got to the studio it was still in a state of flux. We came to record the song and did quite a few takes of it, and it wasn’t happening. It was a long song, a lot of verses. We finally got to the point where it was getting a bit frustrating, so we went to the pub and in a conversation we decided that we were just gonna go in and busk it. And that’s exactly what happened. It was a first take, everybody doing what they felt, and that became the album cut.”

The song caught the ears of fellow artists and critics alike. Banks of the Nile is a favorite of Martin Carthy, Shirley Collins, Linda Thompson and Ashley Hutchings, who said: “Banks of the Nile, that’s the one, and what a one. It’s one of Sandy’s great performances.” Richard Williams wrote in in Melody Maker: “Banks of the Nile is probably the best rock arrangement I’ve ever heard, simple as that, and the rest of the album isn’t far behind. This is the way that British music must go.”

Sandy Denny – guitar, piano, vocals

Trevor Lucas – guitar, vocals

Jerry Donahue – lead guitar, vocals

Pat Donaldson – bass, vocals

Gerry Conway – drums

Unfortunately Fotheringay did not last for long. Increasing pressure from the record company to go solo forced Sandy Denny to disband the group. With only a few live performances, and shortly after starting to record material for their next album, the band was no more. In 1978 Trevor Lucas conveyed the importance of that short-lived group: “All musicians have a group in their lives that’s the group they enjoyed playing with the most. That they felt they were being most creative in, most expressive. For all of us in that group, it was Fotheringay.”

We remain with lead singers and come to Fairport Convention’s original singer Judy Dyble. She sang and played electric harp on the band’s self-titled 1968 debut album but only lasted until after the recording of the album, after which she was replaced by Sandy Denny. She then rehearsed with the group Giles, Giles and Fripp, recording a lovely version of I talk to the Wind. The band moved on without her to form the progressive rock legend known as King Crimson. At the beginning of 1970 Dyble joined forces with ex-Them member Jackie McAuley, who moved to London after that group was no more. The two bonded over similar musical influences, as Dyble told Melody Maker in March 1970: “Jackie’s musical opinions differ from mine but we’re all pretty crazy about early classical music, and we’ll probably dabble in Elizabethan dumps (dances).” They formed a band and called it Trader Horne, named after John Peel’s nanny Florence Horne as a thank you after the DJ bought Dyble an electric harp. The one she played with Fairport Convention she assumed lost in the tragic car accident that claimed the lives of drummer Martin Lamble and Jeannie Franklyn in 1969, but years later found it was still with the band.

In various interviews with music trade papers at the time Dyble was self-critical of her talents as a singer and instrumentalist. In the same Melody Maker interview she said, “You know, I can’t really play anything – I’m just a big con.” A year later she told Disc & Music Echo, “I’m really not very good at being a singer or a musician. I should practice my harp but I don’t. I should practice my breath and stop smoking but I don’t. And I should take some more singing lessons but I can’t afford it, although I could if I gave up smoking.” It is perhaps this view of herself that prevented her from making it in the music industry in the early 1970s, because she definitely had the talent and voice, as evidenced by the songs on Trader Horne’s debut and sole album, Morning Way.

Reviews of the album were positive, including this from Melody Maker: “An old fashioned acoustic masterpiece, with ringing autoharps and harpsichords which suggest fantasy, different songs which make beautiful listening. That’s Trader Horne – a group who is destined to make a big impact.” The magazine got it right with its appreciation of the album but quite wrong with its prediction of the band’s success. Sadly the band did not last the year following the publication. After performing alongside Humble Pie, Yes and Genesis, they broke up when Judy Dyble decided to leave due to tour fatigue. When the album was released in 1970, the band was no more.

Robert Plant was one of many admirers of the band. In a 1970 interview he said: “I enjoy listening to people like Fairport Convention and Matthews Southern Comfort – I would like to see Trader Horne getting more recognition. They have that feel, that warmth, in their music that brings it to life.”

Album credits:

Judy Dyble – Vocals, electric autoharp, recorder, glockenspiel

Jackie McAuley – vocals, guitar, piano, bass

John Godfrey – bass, arrangements

Andy White – drums

Ray Elliot – alto flute, bass clarinet

Our last album review is by another member of Fairport Convention and the last to join their original lineup that recorded their debut album at the end of 1967. Ian Matthews (then Ian MacDonald), co-sang lead vocals with Judy Dyble, and then with Sandy Denny on Fairport’s second album ‘What We Did on Our Holidays’. As the band changed direction from a west-coast folk rock vibe to British traditional folk music, Matthews decided to leave the band and pursue a solo career. His debut album Matthews’ Southern Comfort was released in 1969, with many of his alma mater band members guesting on it. In order to promote the album, Matthews formed a group and gave it the name of his debut: Matthews Southern Comfort. They released their first album, Second Spring, in July 1970.

In June 1970 the band performed at a BBC Radio One session for the Stuart Henry Show. A few months earlier Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young released their version of Joni Mitchell’s song Woodstock as a single from their milestone album Déjà Vu. A month later Mitchell included the song in her album Ladies of the Canyon with a vastly different arrangement. Matthews decided to play his version of the song on that show, explaining: “It wasn’t a conscious decision to find a hit single. It was just another song I liked. We did a BBC session and included Woodstock, which we’d just learned. The record company heard it, and told us to record it.” A single with Matthews Southern Comfort’s version of Woodstock was released in July 1970. While during their BBC performance they played an arrangement not very different from Mitchell’s, for the single release they opted for a sunnier arrangement that perhaps best embodies the flower power vibe that is associated with the song’s lyrics.

Bassist Andy Leigh recalls: “We took the song apart and reassembled it and we knew we had something. We were an album band. We didn’t do singles, but we knew this track was something special.” Matthews, unable to hit those high notes that Joni Mitchell dished out in her original version, opted to change the arrangement, giving the song an interesting, fresh interpretation. MCA records was reluctant to release the single in the UK, fearing competition with CSN&Y’s version. The clear signal was given when the hard-rock version by the super group failed in the charts. Lucky turn for Matthews Southern Comfort, as their single made it to the top of the UK charts in October 1970. It was also added to the band’s second album, Later That Same Year.

Most of the material Matthews recorded on his debut solo and the two Matthews Southern Comfort  albums is closer to American folk-rock and country-rock than British folk-rock of that period. In the tradition of that style the great Gordon Huntley plays a wonderful double neck pedal steel guitar solo on Woodstock. The band had the opportunity to meet with the song’s creator, worrying Ian Matthews that he committed a musical crime by altering such an iconic song. But he was happily surprised, as he recalls: “I felt quite very guilty when I met Joni, because I had changed the melody of the song. Funnily enough she said that she thought it was better the way I did it!  I told her the only reason I altered the melody was because I couldn’t reach the high notes.”

Ian Matthews – guitar, vocals

Carl Barnwell – guitar

Gordon Huntley – steel guitar

Keith Nelson – banjo

Mark Griffiths – bass

Andy Leigh – bass

Roger Coulam – piano

Ray Duffy – drums

Sources:

Steeleye Span band History page at https://steeleyespanfan.co.uk/the-history/1969-1971

Sleeve notes by David Wells for Steeleye Span’s Hark! The Village Wait 2005 CD release

I’ve Always Kept a Unicorn: The Biography of Sandy Denny, by Mick Houghton