Davy Graham moves through the fair with new anthology
Davy Graham
He Moved Through The Fair - The Complete 1960s Recordings
Cherry Tree, (8-CD Set)
If you ever find yourself lying awake at night wondering how meaningless the majority of musical genres really are, turning your attention to folk — and, in particular, those players most frequently proclaimed folk’s greatest guitarists — is a fine place to start.
Richard Thompson, John Martyn, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn and yes, Davy Graham, all grew weary knowing that the majority of their albums would be filed beneath the F word; all the more so because, with just a few (early) musical exceptions, their careers were (and, in Thompson’s case, still is) largely predicated upon playing anything but folk guitar.
And this box hammers that home with ruthless intent.
It’s a biggie. Of eight CDs, seven represent Graham’s entire studio output between 1963’s The Guitar Player and 1970’s Godington Boundry, with the eighth capturing a period live show (recorded 1967, released 1997). Also here are the relevant portion of the 2012 Anthology: Lost Tapes collection, and a slew of bonuses, adding up to an impressive 160-plus tracks.
It’s a lot of Graham, but there was a lot of him to fit in, a guitarist who might have got his start in those ubiquitous folk clubs of early sixties Britain, but whose own inclinations leaned towards jazz, the blues, eastern techniques and pure experimentation. Often on the same album, sometimes on the same song.
Paul Simon's annexation of "Anji" is undoubtedly Graham's best-known number. Of the albums, however, it is 1964’s Folk Roots, New Routes album that has probably received the most attention over the years, a not altogether evenly balanced collaboration with Shirley Collins which is nevertheless widely regarded as one of the very foundations of all that was to follow in terms of folk’s musical destiny. In fact. Collins later admitted that her then-husband Austin John Marshall, who put the pair together in the first place, wanted the duo to take things even further than they did. Finally, she put her foot down.
“John loved jazz,” Collins later said, “and I hated it — too fidgety for my taste — and I thought it was inappropriate for English folk music, so I resisted having any further jazz influence on Folk Roots.” At the same time, however, she acknowledged that “What Davy Graham did was different, and it worked with my songs.”
It is that difference — intangible though it sometimes is; instinctive though it always feels — that gives this box so much of its impact.
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