BRITISH FOLK SONGS

Now that folk singers are edging their way into the Top Twenty and one can hear Strawberry Fair in the most unlikely places, there seems to be even more confusion than ever about the best way of singing a folk song. Should the song come first and the singer second, or vice versa ? In the case of traditional British folk songs, where anonymity seems ingrained even in the lyrics, the former policy seems the right one. Certainly it's the one followed by A. L. Lloyd on Collector Git JGB5001, "A Selection from The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs", a book, of course, which Lloyd and the late Ralph Vaughan Williams edited together. Perhaps the foremost authority on folk music living in this country, A. L. Lloyd adopts, understandably enough, a highly scholarly approach, and his performances here could be classed as documentary, exactly the kind of thing, in fact, that one would expect to find as an appendix to this book. This attitude, it seems to me, is entirely correct, and I'm happy to say that the disc contains sixteen rare and interesting songs, most of them sung unaccompanied but with Alf Edwards playing concertina on about half a dozen. Among the most interesting tracks are The False Bride, The Grey Cock (a bird with Byzantine forefathers), The Whale-Catchers and Gaol Song, one of the very few specimens of an English prison song. But the finest poetry is to be found in Six Dukes Went A-Fishing, supposedly about the murdered first Duke of Suffolk and containing such stanzas as "Black was their mourning,/ And white were the wands,/And so yellow were the flamboys/That they carried in their hands." Lloyd's impersonal style of singing makes the sharp imagery of a song like this stand out even more boldly. After criticising Collector Records quite sharply on one or two occasions in the past for indifferent recording quality, incidentally, may I congratulate them on the great improvement shown on this, one of their very newest releases.

I suppose Shirley Collins is aiming at a similar effect to A. L. Lloyd, but anonymity is not the same thing as apathy, and too much of Miss Collins's singing on Collector til) JEB5 sounds both transparent and sleepy. Apart from The Unquiet Grave, a song which inevitably rivets the attention, the performances on this

EP are sadly lacking in vitality. (And after praising Collector Records for an improvement in quality, I now have to back-pedal and warn would-be purchasers of this Shirley Collins EP —not one of their most recent issues—that my copy contained one or two flaws.) What might be described as the eclectic school of folk-song is demonstrated by Steve Benbow on Parlophone 0 45-R4716, whereon he sings Sixteen Come Monday and O'Rafferty's Pig. The former (its lyric starts, in true English fashion, "As I roved out on a May morning . . .") is set above a musical setting that incorporates Caribbean rhythms and a flautist who would sound more at home with Edmundo Ros. The blend was too rich for me. O'Rafferty's Pig, on the other hand, preserves the unities all right, combining pleasantly comic lyrics with an Irish fiddle, a penny-whistle and a jig tune. Finally, before moving northward to Northumbria and Scotland, let me point out that on Parlophone GEP8803: 0 SGE2006, Uffa Fox can be heard singing (with support from Ron Goodwin's Orchestra and the Michael Sammes Singers) four "Sea Shanties and Jack Ashore Songs", all extracted from an LP (PMC 1112) which I reviewed in June, 1960. Mr. Fox's approach is pretty functional and the heartiness of his style (and his occasional faulty pitching) merges a little oddly with the orchestral furbelows.

Certainly the most authentic record that I'm reviewing this month is Jimmy Macbeath's "Come A' Ye Tramps And Hawkers", Collector

JES10, a collection of bothy ballads performed by a genuine wandering singer, "a quick-footed, sporty little character, with the gravel voice and urbane assurance that would make him right at home on skid-row anywhere in the world"—as Alan Lomax once wrote. The singing is both untutored and unbuttoned but very much alive, and the fact that Macbeath was recorded while actually performing to an audience (and not a "folk audience" either) adds to the sense of vitality. As well as the title-song, the EP includes two typical songs from the Scottish countryside—Nickie Tams and The Moss 0' Burreldales, both as spirited as their singer. Performances of a rather more contrived character can be found on Pyc Cit 7N15307, 45 by Josh MacRae, a singer who has been reviewed in these columns before, both as a soloist and as a member of The Reivers, the Scottish folk trio. If you don't mind the occasional gimmick in the background, the songs are interesting enough. Let Ramensky Go celebrates a one-time safe-blower who became a war hero and afterwards drifted back into prison, while Sky High Joe pursues still further what might be called the explosives theme and tells of another famous character who went around slipping gelignite into Edinburgh post-boxes. MacRae is an attractive singer and he gives a nice bite to the lyrics. Singing of a more traditional kind can be heard on "Last Leaves of Traditional Ballads", Collector JFS4002, a ten-inch LP by Robin Hall, a singer who always sounds better on records than he does on television. The material has all been drawn from the Gavin Greig collection of Scottish songs, hence the title. It includes The Trooper and the Maid (a song about seduction and betrayal), The Cruel Mother, the heroic Inverey, and the ambiguous but moving Mary Mild (sometimes called The Queen's Four Maths). Leon Rosselson accompanies well on both guitar and banjo, although it might have been better to leave The Cruel Mother unaccompanied.

At the start of this piece I commented on the different ways in which a folk-singer can approach his material. One I've not mentioned so far is the "concert platform" style, the singer ("legitimate" as opposed to "folk") who performs folk songs in tidied-up, harmonized settings. The following two records both fall into this category and will appeal rather more to the general listener than to the folk collector. H.M.V. 7EG8578, a second volume of "North Country Folk Songs" by Owen Brannig' an (with Gerald Moore at the piano), is rather better than the first volume. The best tracks are The Lambton W07711, Doon The Waggon Way (both dialect songs), Blow The Wind Southerly and an unaccompanied Elsie Marley. The Water Of Tyne is to be found both here and on Philips (D SBF304, a 45 of "Northumbrian Folk Songs" performed by Tom Stephenson, a baritone, with Mary Earl at the piano. Stephenson's version is slightly more personal than Brannigan's; otherwise there is little to choose between them. Also included by Stephenson are The Keel Row, The Bonny Fisher Lad and Buy Brooms Buzzoms, all sung buoyantly and professionally. CHARLES Fox