{"id":33030,"date":"2021-11-24T20:47:58","date_gmt":"2021-11-24T20:47:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.blog\/?p=33030"},"modified":"2021-11-24T20:47:58","modified_gmt":"2021-11-24T20:47:58","slug":"sandy-denny-bert-jansch-and-the-golden-years-of-british-folk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2021\/11\/24\/sandy-denny-bert-jansch-and-the-golden-years-of-british-folk\/","title":{"rendered":"Sandy Denny, Bert Jansch and the golden years of British folk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I regret to say that I was unaware of either Sandy Denny — former singer with the Fairport Convention — or Anne Briggs, or finger-style folk guitarist Bert Jansch, but I have rectified that thanks to Max Read and his excellent newsletter<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started getting into this stuff a few years ago, after hearing Sandy Denny\u2019s incredibly beautiful \u201cFalse Bride,\u201d<\/a> from 1967, and falling in love with her voice. Denny, a former nurse, started singing on England\u2019s folk-club circuit in the mid-1960s; she rose to become the leading vocalist of English folk-rock music \u2014 no mean feat in a staggering generation of talent that also included Anne Briggs, Shirley Collins, June Tabor, and Maddy Prior. She died in 1978, apparently from a fall, after struggling with alcohol addiction.<\/p>

I tend to associate Denny with fall, maybe because her favorite themes as a songwriter were passing time, changing seasons, and growing darkness. Though the seasonally appropriate original here is \u201cLate November<\/a>,\u201d my favorite Sandy song is the gorgeous, bitter \u201cBlackwaterside\u201d she recorded live at the Paris Theatre for the BBC in 1972, which can be listened to at 16:25 below. It\u2019s the story of a woman seduced and discarded by an man she meets on the banks of the River Blackwater<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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