Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A folk musician at the forefront of the English folk revival, inspiring Bob Dylan and Paul Simon.
On the island
Eight records
Orendeti l'asperme from Bellini's I Puritani. That was recorded in nineteen seventy one.
Les Compagnons de la Chanson featuring Edith Piaf
Because it reminds me of everything that's wonderful about um about music.
Genoese Longshoremen (recorded by Alan Lomax)
The sort of things that ordinary people invent out of thin air.
Freight TrainFavourite
She more than anybody else is, I think, responsible for the way I like to play today
She actually can impart a feeling of real calm to a dramatic song.
Paco de Lucía with El Camarón de la Isla
I thought this man's mad. He was astounding.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:45How did you go about choosing [your eight discs]?
Shut my eyes and stuck a pin in an imaginary list. I just chose eight, but I could have I could have chosen a dozen times.
Presenter asks
2:17We tend to have a very strong reaction for or against music that we would classify as folk music – why do you think people have such strong reactions?
I think folk music has has had a lousy press for a very long time. It's almost almost as though people are taught to look down on their own music. People are em embarrassed by their own music and by their own dance, by Morris dancing. Morris dancing is the one that gets all the flack and all the hilarity. Yet when you put ninety-nine percent of people up in front of a Morris dancer and have him dance in front of them, they will be blown away.
Presenter asks
5:00How comfortable are you with being the grand old man of the folk scene these days?
As long as I can get to my next gig, I'll be all right. I d I don't think about it actually, I just I just love doing gigs.
The keepsakes
Presenter asks
5:59What do you remember from [Bob Dylan] in those early days?
What I think is that the influence of British folk music shows in his later work. He started writing these really, really anthemic tunes. And he I think he picked up on that notion in England.
Presenter asks
21:20Can you explain to me how Paul Simon got hold of Scarborough Fair?
At the time … everybody had a piece which was their piece. Davy Graham had Angie, Bert Janch had Strolling Down the Highway, I had Scarborough Fair, and we all basically learned each other's pieces because it all helped us to improve. Later on, Paul Simon took it away, he could play it, he recorded it with Art Garfunkel, who wrote the canticle that sits on top of it, and it became the signature piece of the graduate. It's very silly. It's a traditional song. It doesn't belong to me. It belongs to everybody.
Presenter asks
28:56How do you feel about folk music's resurgences into the popular mainstream – is it inevitably diluted, or do you welcome it?
Well, what I think is that when when it gets it has it has its resurgence, there there is inevitably benefit. because people will suddenly become aware and they'll think, Oh, no, this stuff is not quite so uncool after all. Maybe I'll go and investigate it more. I can remember in the eighties when things were quite bleak, somebody saying to me, Well, what seventeen year old's going to be interested in that nonsense? And my reply was always, Well, this seventeen year old was. This one here, I was seventeen, I heard Sam Lana, and it changed my life. Why would it not do that do the same for anybody else? And when Billy comes along, and Mumford and Sons, people start looking at where okay, that's folk music, let's have a look at what says folk music. And they get frequently get bitten by the bug.
“I couldn't eat because the tears just flooded down my face.”
“It actually seems these days that the harder a time I have getting to the gig, the better I'll do when I'm there.”
“I don't believe that anybody who saw his first performance at the King and Queen down in Foley Street will be able to say that he gave a bad performance. He stood up, did three songs and absolutely knocked everybody flat.”
“She wanted me to be happy. What she and my dad had promised each other when they married was that he wanted to be a poet, she wanted to write, and she had a real talent for it. And so they lived together like that for a while and then he went and got a job. Proper job. You must look after the family. It's your duty. And she was very disappointed. and she didn't do any writing, because she was busy bringing up children.”
“But there is something extraordinary about blood relatives singing together, you know. The Bee gees, the Nolans don't care whether you like or hate the music. The the blend that they achieve is something that can only be marvelled at.”