Byker Hill

Carthy, Martin (with Dave Swarbrick)

album cover

The Best from a Folk Catalyst

It doesn't take much in the way of musical acumen to get by as a folk performer. The basic guitar-strumming techniques can be acquired in a matter of hours—even if, as with all things, mastery takes longer. It isn't even necessary to have a pleasing voice. For a while there in the early '60s, if you could sorta tell the story about the woman who pines for the seafaring two-timer with a drinking problem, you were ready for the coffeehouse.

That's why it's good to have a copy of Byker Hill, the third album from the British guitarist and singer Martin Carthy, and the third to feature Dave Swarbrick on mandolin and violin. A few minutes with this will prove to skeptical friends that in the right hands, folk can be a virtuoso thrill. Acknowledged for "modernizing" folk and lending encouragement to such important bands as Fairport Convention (see p. 268) and Steeleye Span (see p. 738), Carthy is a multitasking marvel here, singing breathless extended melodies and plucking out fast counter-lines in the background. These sad tales of murder and marital infidelity are shadowed, and often elaborated upon, by the wily Swarbrick, whose improvised lines are so elaborate they could have been written out, note for note, beforehand.

Though this was fairly early in his career, Carthy was already emerging as a folklorist—he was known to scour obscure references (among them the field recordings of British composer Percy Grainger) in search of "definitive" lyrics or music, and was not only equipped to compare each one, but inclined toward profound rearrangements. Here, Carthy shows a healthy respect for tradition while constantly pushing at its confining aspects—he's doing folk on a technically astute plane, with an intellectual vitality worlds away from the aw-shucks simplicity that often defines the form.

Genre: Folk
Released: 1967, Topic
Key Tracks: "The Man of Burnham Town," "Byker Hill," "John Barleycorn."
Catalog Choice: Second Album
Next Stop: Fairport Convention: Unhalfbricking
After That: Albion Band: The Prospect Before Us
Book Pages: 146–147