Review: Shirley Collins & Davy Graham - Folk Roots, New Routes (1964)
Tracks: 1) Nottamun Town; 2) Proud Maisrie; 3) The Cherry Tree Carol; 4) Blue Monk; 5) Hares On The Mountain; 6) Reynardine; 7) Pretty Saro; 8) Rif Mountain; 9) Jane, Jane; 10) Love Is Pleasin’; 11) Boll Weevil, Holler; 12) Hori Horo; 13) Bad Girl; 14) Lord Gregory; 15) Grooveyard; 16) Dearest Dear.
REVIEW
I am not the world’s biggest fan of Dame Shirley Collins; indeed, I find it hard to understand how it would be possible to actually «love» Shirley Collins for being Shirley Collins, rather than merely a hard-working, dedicated, respectable vessel for preserving and publicizing the British folk song tradition. Her classic early records from the late Fifties, such as Sweet England and False True Lovers, have inarguably influenced and inspired the folk revival, as well as all sorts and varieties of folk-rock from Fairport Convention to Led Zeppelin. But she herself had always stressed that her role was that of a minimally involved medium between the song and the listener — which would pretty much make any single description of any single Shirley Collins record more of a meditation on the roots, the nature, and the impact of specific folk songs than anything personal. In other words, I would surely amend Billy Bragg’s oft-quoted reference to Shirley Collins as "one of England’s greatest cultural treasures" to "one of England’s greatest cultural treasurers" — that single r actually makes a big difference.
That said, Shirley Collins was not really some sort of stiff-collared Victorian prude who would hold up her academically conservative treatment of folk legacy with religious fervor: every once in a while she would agree to collaborate with various musicians who had their own agenda (such as Ashley Hutchings’ Albion Band, for instance), acting as an anchor of stability in a potentially (though, as a rule, quite modestly) experimental setting. In such collaborative projects she actually becomes somewhat more interesting herself — which is why this album, pairing her up with one of folk music’s biggest iconoclasts, is unquestionably one of the most intriguing, if not the most intriguing, steps in her career.
But see, I have actually almost allowed myself to fall into the usual trap: the majority of retro reviews of this poorly remembered, but well-respected classic LP tend to concentrate on Shirley Collins, just briefly commenting on Graham’s work as her sideman. This is not something that would probably happen in the classical world (I have a hard time imagining how a review of, say, a recording of Schubert’s Winterreise could focus almost exclusively on the singer and forget about the pianist next to him, especially if the pianist were of the caliber of Sviatoslav Richter), but it may be generally excused for the world of traditional folk music, where words and the way they are delivered have always been treasured over the generic and usually predictable music patterns to which they were set.
The funny thing is that with the aptly titled Folk Roots, New Routes this trope is inverted: a single serious listen will clearly reveal that Davy is firmly in charge of the proceedings, while Shirley is essentially a sidekick. First, there is the little matter of the setlist — which does, it is true, to a large degree consist of (largely untraditional) recordings of traditional folk music; but it also happens to contain Graham’s solo acoustic guitar arrangements of Thelonious Monk’s ‘Blue Monk’ (!) and an obscure composition called ‘Grooveyard’, by jazz pianist Bobby Timmons. The ‘Blue Monk’ cover is particularly stunning in how neatly it captures the groove of Monk’s main theme, and then seamlessly transforms it into what could have been mistaken for a little creative improvisation from an old Delta bluesman — at the same time preserving the spirit of Monk’s weird harmony experiments at his piano. The big question, however, is — what exactly is a thing like that doing on an album of vocal folk covers? Is it merely to provide a grateful (or gratuitous) spotlight for the accompanying musician, or is it to accommodate some sort of grand vision that goes way beyond loyal coverage of royal heritage?
Now to answer this question, we must cast a wider net and look at the actual covers. A good introductory example would be ‘Pretty Saro’, a long-forgotten melancholic British ballad allegedly revived in the Appalaches, and then re-imported by Shirley into her own native country — except that Graham seems to ironically misread the title as ‘Pretty Sarod’, and proceed to reinvent it as a cross between a Western ballad and an Indian raga, while Shirley nonchalantly delivers the lyrics precisely the way they are supposed to be delivered. This musical equivalent of an interracial marriage is fresh and lovely, with the slow and meditative Eastern pulse of the arrangement agreeing surprisingly well with the brooding spirit of the old song itself; and as if to strengthen his synthetic point, Graham immediately follows it with ‘Rif Mountain’, his own instrumental composition drawing upon the musical experience he’d picked up during his stay in Morocco with the local musicians. Everything’s pretty Moroccan about it, except it’s all played on a regular acoustic guitar — and if you enjoy that sort of approach on your Jimmy Page records, there is nothing wrong to check out Jimmy’s foremost inspiration, who did it earlier and with just as much, if not more, verve and professionalism.
On other tracks, Graham largely prefers to stay within more Western territory, but this often means taking Western quite literally. Thus, the arrangement for ‘Proud Maisrie’ (an old Scottish ballad also known as ‘The Gardener Child’) seems to follow a regular old folk chord progression at first, but then Graham begins to embellish the melody with bluesy phrasing copped from Robert Johnson’s records, creating rather jarring dissonant impressions that break up the lullaby-like monotony which so often plagues stereotypical folk ballads. Right after that comes ‘The Cherry Tree Carol’, for which Davy (for once!) trades in his guitar for a banjo, sitting his ass down on the porch of his winter home in the mountains and playing his instrument with a certain confidently amateurish flair, as opposed to the aura of deep experience which usually flows from his guitar performances.
This could be continued and expanded to almost each of these tracks — it’s just that at this point, a certain amount of technical and musicological knowledge vastly exceeding mine would be needed to disclose all the nifty secrets of this record. But do believe me when I say that in order to be charmed and wooed by its unusualness, all you have to do in advance is sit down with a «generic» Shirley Collins record on which she plays the guitar herself: the difference will hit you like a ton of bricks. I even feel a bit sorry for Shirley: she always does her job well — but there is a goddamn reason why Graham actually gets to have three solo numbers on this collaborative record, while she only performs one number (‘Lord Gregory’) a cappella. It is quite transparently clear who is the «folk roots» and who is the «new routes» on this album — although, in the end, it is precisely the combination of the two (my favorite sort of combination!) which makes the whole experience so admirable. If it weren’t for the extremely limited appeal of the folk genre as a whole, the record could have become a major classic: as it is, it remains more of a cult favorite for the select few, but then I guess that this is precisely how the select few would like it to stay, and I sort of get their point.
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