In part 7 of this article series we take a close look at a number of lesser known bands from that period of music, all rooted firmly in the British folk music. These bands wrote their own material in the style of old folk songs rather than rearranging traditional British songs of old. We start with one of the more scholarly groups, led by a married couple fresh out of university studies.
While many young musicians who took their influence from traditional English music were always on the look for old material new to them, Bob and Carole Pegg went a step farther in their research. A scholar at Leeds University, Bob Pegg trained as a folklorist in the Yorkshire Dales, making field recordings of fiddlers and squeezebox players. He said of that time: “Something in me wanted to go to a rural area and try and find music and song that came from a wellspring that had roots in a real place. So, rather like the early folk-song collectors, I kind of knew what I wanted to find before I went out there.” His wife Carole played the fiddle in the traditional style of rural musicians and together they run a folk club inside a pub in Leeds.
In 1969 they turned down an offer from Ashley Hutchings to form a new band when the like-minded bass player was leaving Fairport Convention. Hutchings went on to form a new band with not one couple but two, the legendary Steeleye Span. The Peggs formed their own group with a unique lineup based upon the instrumentation of the Dales village bands: fiddle, melodeon, harmonium, clarinet and cello. They added bass and drums and named the group Mr. Fox. Bob Pegg talked about how that mix of instruments made the band stand out among their contemporaries: “We always had a conventional rhythm section of bass and drums – though they didn’t play conventionally – but our lineup never included electric guitars. The rhythms of our music were very English and many of our songs were about the Dales, so were rooted firmly in the folklore and topography of the one place.”
Mr. Fox was made of quite a diverse group of musicians, and its influences came from wide parts of the music spectrum. American West Coast bands such as the Doors, Moby Grape and Jefferson Airplane added their psychedelic rock to the mix, and on a completely different wavelength, even the Velvet Underground. Now that is one influence you are unlikely to find with any of Mr. Fox’s contemporaries in the British folk rock scene. On their self-titled debut album, Mr. Fox performed the title song, a horror gothic tale about a young woman who outwits a serial killer. Bob Pegg said of the song: “We used the drone sound on a number of occasions. John Cale’s work with the Velvet Underground was an influence, and I think we absorbed the principles behind what they were attempting to do. There had always been a drone element to folk music, so it wasn’t a new concept in itself – it was more the way in which we chose to utilize it.””
Listening to the album, you are struck by the range of arrangements across different songs. Bob Pegg discussed his approach to music: “I was interested in a polyphonic idea of things. Different melodic strands working together. In the villages, the same musicians would often play for a village dance on a Saturday evening and then for a chapel on the Sunday. I loved that idea, and really wanted a sound that reflected what that might have sounded like. It made you feel like you were eating a good steak, musically.”
Of the many folk rock bands that were active in 1970 in the British Isles, Mr Fox was definitely closer to folk than rock, but they achieved it by writing their own material rather than adding rock arrangements to traditional songs as was customary. Their self-titled debut was well-received in the press and Melody Maker named it Folk Album of the Year, quite an achievement given the number of excellent albums released that year in the genre. They would go on to release one more excellent album in 1971 before breaking up.
Our next group went even back even farther in time digging for inspiration, and found it in Elizabethan music. Amazing Blondel is a fine example of the interest in early music during that period which also produced albums such as John Renbourn’s The Lady and the Unicorn and Shirley and Dolly Collins’ Anthems in Eden. Interestingly the seeds of the band started in amplified heavy rock and a group named Methuselah, where guitarists John Gladwin and Terry Wincott loved to feature one acoustic duo number during the band’s live performances. The audience loved it, and after the band dissolved the two decided to expand that spot into a full repertoire.
Talking about their early inspirations, John Gladwin said: “I suppose Robin Hood, the TV series starring Richard Greene. There were little lute-type songs interspersed throughout the program done by Elton Hayes, I believe. They seemed to be what everyone thought mediaeval/renaissance songs were all about.” After finishing a show at a folk club in Middlesborough they asked Eugene McCoy, who later became a famous restaurateur and Masterchef guest, what he thought of their music. He replied, ” …very Blondel”. Blondel de Nesle was a French minstrel, Born in Nesle in Picardy and a favorite of King Richard I of England. Perfect, thought the two and christened their band The Amazing Blondel.
They released an album titled The Amazing Blondel and a Few Faces, playing a variety of instruments and were then joined by their school friend Eddie Baird. Between the three talented musicians, they played lute, theorbo, cittern, double bass, crumhorn, recorders, pipe-organ, tabor pipe, tabor, flute, harmonium and harpsichord. After opening for the band Free (pre-“All Right Now” success), Free’s bassist Andy Fraser was impressed enough to connect them with Island Records head Chris Blackwell. The band was summoned to his office at Island’s Basing Street offices. Terry Wincott picks up the story: “We played ‘Spring Season’ with all the enthusiasm we could summon up. We finished, the last chord hung in the air, with it a silence, an eternity, then CB asked us what advance we wanted! To say our relief was tangible would be understatement. CB negotiated us out of our old recording contract, and with a new van and a new PA we were ‘Island Recording Artists’ – the ‘high’ was immeasurable”.
Spring Season later appeared on Amazing Blondel’s first album with Island Records, Evensong. This is a wonderful album, and although all songs were original compositions, they were given names such as Pavan and Galliard, resembling titles of 16th century English music. Terry Wincott expanded on that topic: “Blondel promoted its image of English Minstrelsy and conjured up images of the golden age. Words were chosen carefully: bedroom became ‘chamber’, clothes became the Chaucerian ‘clouts’, and if we sang about contraception, then it had to be chastity belts! We perpetuated Blondel in how we dressed and how we looked – it was a time of magic.”
The band went on extensive tours to promote various Island Records artists, supporting Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, Free, Traffic, Procol Harum and Cat Stevens. Wincott said of the experience during their sets: “The audience was unusually quiet, attentive and polite, the repertoire performed as technically correct as possible, the dexterity of the instrumentation (40 in all) and the music interspersed with crude and bawdy humor.”
Here is that song that got them the Island contract:
John David Gladwin – lead vocals, lute, theorboe, cittern, double bass
Terence Alan Wincott – crumhorn, recorders, pipe-organ, vocals, tabor pipe, tabor, flute, harmonium, lute, harpsichord
Edward Baird – lute, cittern, vocals
We move to another fine band that started in 1967 at the Dolphin Folk Club in Maidenhead. Is This where Tony Pook (vocals), Roy Apps (guitar, vocals) and Robert Collins (guitar) met, all inspired in equal amounts by Bob Dylan and The Incredible String Band. A year later Collins left and two members joined, Gerald ‘G.T.’ Moore (guitar, mandolin, vocals) and Martin Hayward (guitar). They called the band Heron. Roy Apps recalled the early days of the band: “We started sitting around at home with an old reel-to-reel tape recorder. Then we took the tapes up to London and started knocking on doors. We were completely fearless. We just phoned people up, and said, ‘We’re coming round with a tape’, and turned up! Eventually Essex Music signed us up for publishing.”
Apps also remembers a funny episode from those days, involving a singer who would very soon become a bonafide rock star: “After he’d had his big hit with ‘Space Oddity’, he went quiet for a while and ran this folk club in Beckenham. He saw us playing somewhere, and, out of the blue, he booked us to play at his club. It’s quite a memory that David Bowie carried my PA into a folk club… once!”
A final lineup change took place when Martin Hayward left and was replaced by keyboardist Steve Jones, and that was when the band got its break. Tapes of their music got the ears of producer Peter Eden, who liked what he heard: “I was really impressed by Gerald Moore’s songwriting, and by the fact that they wrote and played both separately and together, which meant they weren’t reliant on any single member for material. Also, they weren’t solely interested in folk, but other styles too, which meant that they could potentially expand.” Through Eden the band signed with Dawn, the subsidiary of Pye Records established to handle ‘underground’ music. Eden continues: “We did some sessions at Pye in London, but that formal environment didn’t really suit them, so we decided to record them at home with Pye’s mobile unit, which worked very well. We’d just set up and leave the mikes on, so you get a sort of background ambience on some of the tracks, with birdsong and so on.”
Indeed, a studio environment just did not work for that band. Roy Apps: “We hated it. We were so used to playing to audiences, and having something coming back and being relaxed, that the pressure of being in a recording studio – well, we just couldn’t perform.” The recording eventually took place at Tony Pook’s family farmhouse in Berkshire, the band playing out in the field. The sleeve notes in the resulting album, released in November 1970 and simply called Heron, thank the farm for providing electricity. The album is full of charming and gentle songs with lovely harmonies and accompaniment on acoustic guitars and accordion. Here is a fine example:
Heron toured with label-mates Comus, Titus Groan and Demon Fuzz on Dawn’s loss-making Penny Concert tour, where audiences were charged one penny. Steve Jones remembers: “The reception to the various bands differed from venue to venue – we got a standing ovation in Bristol, for example, whereas it was Titus Groan who went down well in Birmingham. But we were a quiet band, and we felt more comfortable when we played more intimate gigs.” Sadly, album sales eluded the band. They managed to release one more album the following year before calling it quits for the remainder of the 1970s.
Our last review looks at the debut album of a band that took its name after the title character of a 1965 novel by Don Calhoun. Dando Shaft formed in Coventry in 1968, a drummer-less quintet of acoustic musicians. From their beginnings the interplay between Martin Jenkins (mandola, mandolin, flute, fiddle) and Kevin Dempsey (lead guitar) was one of the highlights in the band’s performances. They were unique among their contemporaries for their interest in Bulgarian music. Visiting John Martyn at his house, he played them a copy of Elektra Nonesuch’s label release of Music of Bulgaria. Dempsey said of that experience: “It totally took our breath away – we couldn’t pretend that we were Bulgarian, but they heavily influenced us.” Describing other early influences, Dempsey added: “None of us listened to rock music. Personally, I listened to acoustic and folk music and to an American singer/songwriter named Biff Rose. Some of our other favorites included John Martyn, Sandy Denny, Joni Mitchell and from the vocal point of view, Crosby, Stills & Nash.”
The band connected with producer and songwriter Miki Dallon, known for his work with pop and rock acts such as The Sorrows and The Townsmen. He signed them to his label Young Blood and on the strength of hearing them in the studio recording a single, suggested that they record a full album. Dempsey remembers the recording session: “We all sat in a semi-circle and recorded the album live and because Miki Dallon was an old rocker, he found us interesting and unusual. So we made our first album in two four hour sessions on a Sunday.”
An Evening With Dando Shaft was released in 1970. Here is the lovely opening track, Rain:
Martin Jenkins – mandola/ Mandolin / Flute / fiddle / vocals
Dave Cooper – guitar/ songwriter
Kevin Dempsey – lead guitar
Roger Bullen – Upright bass
‘Bongo’ Ted Kay – tabla / percussion
The band was sometimes compared with Pentangle, both bands featuring two fantastic guitar players and a double bass, and also to the Incredible String Band. Listening to the track here you can hear their distinct style. Dempsey joked later on that indeed they were quite different, but thankfully there were not compared to bands that sound awful.
The band would later add singer Polly Bolton and release a few more albums in the 1970s. Martin Jenkins went on to work on some of my favorite albums from that decade, including Plainsong – In Search Of Amelia Earhart and Avocet with Bert Jansch.
Sources:
Sleeve notes by John Tobler from Dando Shaft’s Compilation CD – Reaping the Harvest, 1990
Sleeve notes by David Wells from Mr. Fox – Join Us In Our Game, 2004 CD release
Sleeve notes by Alan Robinson from the Amazing Blondel’s Evensong/Fantasia Lindum 2004 CD release