For devotees of Davy Graham Christmas arrives early and in a clamshell box. This 8 CD collection brings together all the 1960s studio work, demos and live recordings (many previously unreleased) of one of Britain’s finest folk-blues guitarists.
Davy Graham’s musical knowledge was breathtaking. In folk clubs and studios alike, according to how he felt at the time, he would bend earnest folk ballads every which way, sometimes to the distraction of folk-evangelists in an era when eastern vibes and Simon and Garfunkel songs were being booed in some folk citadels. Those early 1960s days were still duffle-coated and fervently traditionalist – it was later in the decade that folk guitar solos slipping into jazz riffs became de rigueur and Davy’s evergreen ‘Anji’ (two versions here) became a rite of passage for finger-style guitarists following the release of the said S & G album ‘Homeward Bound’.
Across the 160 tracks of the box set Graham has drawn from a bewildering range of styles. His oddly incongruous but hugely influential collaboration with Shirley Collins, ‘Folk Roots, New Routes’ is there, as are pieces drawn from Leadbelly, Charlie Mingus, J. S. Bach, the Beatles, Thelonius Monk and Ewan McColl. There is a rare and fetching version of an Uncle Dave Macon song ‘Keep My Skillet Good And Greasy’ and he turns Dylan-angst to a jaunty roll-along on ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’. No style is off-limits to his sharp ear. His playing of Brubeck’s ‘Take Five’ is immaculate and nothing from Billboard or the Top Twenty of the day escaped his notice – torch songs (1955’s ‘Cry Me A River’) and 1930s schmaltz, ‘Little Man You’ve Had A Busy Day”. A version of ‘Both Sides Now’ has a long, haunting and faintly eerie beginning, swept aside as the sad reflective lyrics get the full combo treatment.
Davey Graham’s music was considered by many to be a little too left-field for the revivalist palate of the early to mid-1960s when unorthodox could so easily be labelled heretical. But he has left a giant shadow. His finger-style acoustic influence touched musicians from Bert Jansch, through Paul Simon to Jimmy Page.
A truly rich selection box. For disciples, a golden seam for endless mining, for the Folk/Jazz/Eastern enthusiasts an intermingling of folk-cellar, cotton field, souk and jazz club.
Bob Langstaff.
cherryred.co.uk
