MY BACK CATALOGUE part 2

 MY BACK CATALOGUE PART 2: 

A look at the recordings I have made over the past 40+ years. 

THE HARD TIMES OF OLD ENGLAND cassette VFM 1979

This was a step up from my first album Tales of the Land and Songs of the Sea. This time VFM paid for a day in a studio in London—somewhere off the Edgware Rd, I think. The engineer knew what he was doing and made sure I knew that he had recently worked with Bert Jansch! It all worked very well apart from a brief interruption when the actor Patrick Allen came in to do a voice over. He was brilliant, one take; in and out in about 15 mins. I hate to think how much he was paid for it though! On this album I was joined for the first time by Andy (Rob) Whalley, a fiddle player who I worked with a lot over the next few years live and on recordings. Apart from double tracking a couple of choruses it was all quite simple.

Titles were:

The Hard Times of Old England, 

Turpin Hero

The Shepherd’s Song, 

Ship In Distress, 

Home Dearest Home

Princess Royal (Morris tune)

I Loved A Lass, 

Jim Jones at Botany Bay

The Plaitman of B…. Shire, 

John Barleycorn

I still do a few of those: Jim Jones is a great song and I think our arrangement of Ship in Distress was very good—but it needs Andy’s fiddle to make it work so I’ve rarely sung it by myself. I sang John Barleycorn to the tune of We Plough the Fields and Scatter… and that was probably the hit of the album. A lot of people learned it and credited me with setting it to that tune, but I didn’t! I heard a vocal group do it as a floor spot at a club somewhere and pinched the idea. Sorry, whoever you were! That’s the ‘folk process’.

Most of the tracks were just recorded 'straight'. There is just a little bit of double tracking on chorus vocals and an extra guitar on Turpin Hero. 

You can hear Turpin Hero here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHmfO9Ypk1o