CD Review

by Andrew Calhoun

= don't bother
= ok
= pretty good
= ah!

Martin Carthy
The Carthy Chronicles - 4-CD Box Set
Free Reed (www.free-reed.co.uk , available in US from Amazon.com)

Here to celebrate English folk musician Martin Carthy's 60th birthday is The Carthy Chronicles box set, with a 96 page book, a poster, and four jam-packed CDs: "Classic Carthy," "Carthy In Company," "Carthy Contemporaries," and "Child: Carthy." It's an enjoyable tribute to a pioneering musician.

Mainstream journalists have attemped to put Martin Carthy's importance in context by citing his influence on Bob Dylan and Paul Simon in the '60s, and his participation in electric folk in the '70's. The box set book calls him "the greatest singer of story songs," and folkies argue over whether Carthy or Nic Jones is the greater guitarist. All of which is off the point. F.R. Leavis once said of Joseph Conrad that he was not the greatest novelist, but the greatest artist who ever wrote a novel. It's like that. Along with a happy confluence of gifts - a distinctive, ringing voice, trained by choral singing as a youngster, thorough dexterity on guitar, highly developed rhythmic and harmonic sense - what makes Carthy's music extraordinary is just how unequivocally his art embraces human experience. Through his ballad reworkings, Martin taps the realm of archetypal meaning, creating arrangements of stark, wild beauty. He's kept a sense of fun, adventure and exploration, a "beginner's mind" in his approach to music that has made him a steady beacon of artistic integrity in folk music for thirty-five years.

A wonderful quality of this collection is that its effect is quite different from a usual Carthy album. It's a series of windows into different time periods, stages of development, and musical partners, with many unreleased live tracks, including cuts from the "Hullabaloo" television show in 1965. There are selections from every solo album and cuts from each of the many bands he has worked with. Of the 83 recordings, twenty-five are previously unreleased, another seventeen from impossible to find titles. The book is packed with wonderful stories and photos - Martin and Norma's wedding picture is priceless - lots of family and career background information and a minimum of hype. It's a good read. Free Reed's Neil Wayne produced the project, with Nigel Schofield assembling the recordings. Several writers and commentators are included in the book. Longtime musical compatriot Dave Swarbrick writes: "I have known Martin for well over thirty-five years, and you don't need me to tell you what a marvelous guitarist he is, or what a wonderful voice he's blessed with. You are, I am sure, well aware of what a fine singer he is, and of the care and attention he pays to all the details of his art, and of his passion for the tradition, and the many hours spent in study, interpretation and invention. Perhaps what you don't know though, is what an absolutely twenty-four carat friend he's been to me down the years."

Carthy is a charismatic solo performer who has continually allied himself with fellow musicians, and often in a backing role. That's unusual. "Carthy In Company" presents a moving program of songs and tunes, with "Wimoweh" (with Thamesiders and Davey Graham, 1963) and "Nafarroa" (sung in Basque with the group Oskorri in '96) being curious surprises. There are three consecutive versions of "Joy, Health, Love and Peace," first with Dave Swarbrick, then Steeleye Span, then the Watersons. Among all these marvelous musicians, Carthy's duets with Dave Swarbrick hold a particular intuitive electricity. After listening to all these formations, experiments and diversions, the final piece here, "Byker Hill," performed by Dave and Martin in 1990, appears as a dizzying pinnacle of musical accomplishment and risk. Fiddle and guitar, you can't beat it.

"Classic Carthy" - "The Famous Flower Of Serving Men," a massive reworking of a monster ballad, is here in its gripping, cathartic glory. There's a series of horse songs- "Skewbald," recorded live in France! - and Brass Monkey's wild, swinging arrangement of "The Maid and The Palmer." Less successful is Carthy's update of "The Begging Song (And A-Begging I Will Go)," in which the singer's opinion about the political situation merges with the voice of the song's character, robbing it of dimension.

cont'd -> Classic v. Contemporary Carthy - plus audio visual links