Davy was the guy who revolutionised acoustic guitar playing. His Anji (Angie/Angi) became the exemplar of guitar playing.
He came back from Morocco complete with exotic rhythms and incredible technique and set the whole scene on fire. Les Cousins was his haunt. Everyone copied what he was doing. He was the man.
He was quite a character too. A shame that heroin robbed him and us of so much.
Just listen to Anji and marvel!
Davy was the guy who started the whole contemporary folk scene in Britain. In the early sixties, he went out to Morroco and brought back the rhythms and chords. He married them to traditional British folk songs and created a whole new way of playing.
His work with Shirley Collins (a traditional folk singer) was extraordinary for its time. Folk Routes New Routes was something new. It lay the groundwork for bands like Fairport Convention.
He was an extraordinary guitarist – the best on the Les Cousins folk scene and his incredible work on songs like Anji laid down the standard for all the others to aspire to.
Davy was a genius – but heroin was his downfall.
Today I’ll be nodding along to those fabulous sounds
The mid-sixties produced a wealth of great acoustic music loosely under the initial heading of Folk-Blues but in reality extending much further than that. The Greenwich Village Scene, sparked off by Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Phil Ochs, had sparked a massive resurgence in folk music and made it a commercial proposition. So much so that the record companies were chasing acoustic performers and the Pop Charts featured them. The popular performers, like Donovan, were propelled into Pop stardom. But there was an underlying scene that did not see itself as part of the Pop scene at all. They were producing music for a new generation of aficionados.
Davy Graham was probably the most seminal to the movement. His brand of Folk-Blues was adulterated, if that is the right word, with jazz and middle Eastern rhythms and chords. He started the ball rolling with his brilliant Angie (Anji) which set a new innovative standard in guitar playing. Teaming up with the Folk Traditionalist Shirley Collins he took Contemporary Folk in a different direction.
Bert Jansch came roaring down from Scotland with venom and spark to illuminate the Folk Scene with his verve and mastery of the guitar coupled with strident singing.
John was more mellow and melodic and based a lot of his music on more traditional material. He was the ideal foil for Bert and together they produced some excellent music before expanding and teaming up with Danny Thompson and Jacqui McShee to form Pentangle.
Roy burst on the scene a little later, befriended Davy, Bert and John, and developed his own acoustic style that tended to be more aggressive, at least in those early days. For a time Roy had a number of musical directions to follow – his love songs, social protests, humour and instrumentals. It was a toss up as to which he was going to progress.
I was fortunate to see all of them perform on a number of occasions back in the days of Les Cousins, The Barge and Bunjies and I enjoyed them all. I also used to frequent the Three Horse Shoes where, in the basement, Pentangle performed for free – more a meeting of friends.
My feeling was that the fires that stoked Davy, Bert and John cooled pretty quickly as their proficiency developed. Their music was sophisticated and high quality but I preferred the energy, vibe and stridency of the Harper songs – like One For All, or Blackpool. They had an urgency about them. Though Roy was not as technically proficient as Bert, Davy or John, he more than made up for that with his drive and innovation. But then, as with everything, it is always a matter of taste, isn’t it? And musical proficiency does not always produce the best music, does it? Sometimes a bit of raucous energy injects a spark that is lacking in more sophisticated exponents and propels the music into a different dimension.
Oh for the wonders of those days. I’d give anything to see those four perform again. It is so strange to think that Roy is the only one of those four who is still alive.