Sunday 27 May 2007

Bert Jansch - Jack Orion (1966) (@256)












In one of my frequent returns to my stockpiled mags I discovered in a rather recent edition of Wire (Feb. 07 - issue 276), an excellent Mike Barnes article that has initially slipped my attention. It was about Bert Jansch, one of my favourite artists, so I couldn't resist posting one of his lps although there have been some months since the circulation of Wire's certain issue.
In the article, Jansch was asked to identify and comment a series of songs; his performance was almost excellent, since he identified almost all of them. Among the songs he was played, was Davy Graham's "She Moved Through The Fair" from "Folk, Blues and Beyond" (1965) and C.O.B.'s (one of Clive Palmer's groups) "Spirit Of Love" from the s/t album (1970) - he identified them both at once. In Jansch's comments, he named Graham and Palmer as his major influences in guitar and singing respectively. (You can find both albums in the folk bible blog of Time-has-told-me (C.O.B. and Graham)). Jansch also recognised:
-Big Bill Broonzy's "Hey Hey Baby" ('many are the hours I spent trying to play this one when I was a young man' Jansch said),
-Jimi Hendrix's "If 6 Was 9" (Hendrix and Pentangle were in the 1970 Isle of Wight bill - Hendrix's last performance in Britain),
-Anne Briggs' "Reynardine" (the song "Blackwaterside" from "Jack Orion" was taught to Jansch by Briggs - later it was reshaped and renamed to become "Black Mountain Side" and was included in Led Zeppelin's 1st lp),
-Beth Orton's "Shadow Of A Doubt" (Orton has collaborated with Jansch),
-Charles Mingus' "Wham Bam Thank You Ma'am" (already from "Bert and John" lp Jansch had covered Mingus' tracks while with Pentangle he did the same),
-Roy Harper's "All Ireland" (frequently at 'London's Les Cousins folk club' along with Jansch) and
-(with a little help) Devendra Banhart's "Rejoicing The Hands", where Vashti Bunyan is doing dual vocals.
His sole miss was Sandy Bull's "Bouree".

review link (allmusic): here

download link (with gatefold notes-extract from Colin Harper's 'Dazzling Stranger: Bert Jansch and the British Folk and Blues Revival'): here (mirrorcreator) or here (rapidshare)

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