If the English folk revival of the 1960s had a single "father" and guiding spirit, then
Martin Carthy was it.
Carthy's influence transcends his abilities, formidable though those are -- apart from being one of the most talented acoustic guitarists, mandolinists, and general multi-instrumentalists working the folk clubs in the 1960s, he was also a powerful singer with no pretensions or affectations, and was an even more prodigious arranger and editor, with an excellent ear for traditional compositions. In particular, he was as much a scholar as a performer, and frequently went back to the notes and notebooks of folk song collectors such as
Percy Grainger, scouring them for fragments that could be made whole in performance -- no "second hander," he used the earliest known transcriptions and recordings of many of the oldest folk songs known in England as his source, and worked from there. By 1966, at the time he was cutting his first two albums,
Carthy was already an influence on
Bob Dylan and
Paul Simon, and by the end of the 1960s was de facto mentor to virtually every serious aspiring folk musician in England. At least three major English folk-rock bands,
Fairport Convention,
Steeleye Span, and
the Albion Band, were formed either directly or indirectly with his help and influence.
Surprisingly given his musical prowess,
Carthy didn't initially set out to be a musician. Upon leaving school, he served as an assistant stage manager for different theatrical companies, and only gradually drifted into performing in the coffeehouses springing up around London during the late '50s and early '60s, as skiffle, with its heavy American influence, was supplanted by more specifically British material. He joined Redd Sullivan, Marion Gray, and Pete Maynard in a group called the Thameside Four, and sang with them for three years, until his reputation had grown sufficiently, and the demand from the clubs in London was such that he began making solo appearances. He became the resident singer at a folk club called the Troubadour in London, and during that time he recorded a four-song extended-play single for
Topic Records that got lost somewhere between the studio and the pressing plant.
Still, he had an audience, and among those listening was a pair of Americans who happened to be in England at the time. One who heard
Carthy perform his arrangement of the traditional song "Scarborough Fair" was
Paul Simon, who was trying for a folksinging career in London following the failure of the very first
Simon & Garfunkel album (
Wednesday Morning, 3 AM) back in America.
Carthy gave
Simon his arrangement, chords, and words for the song, and it became the basis for
Simon's own version when he returned to the United States. Another American working around London in 1965 was
Bob Dylan, in London appearing in a television play called Madhouse on Castle Street (wherein a teenager named
Duncan Brown heard his guitar playing and decided to become a musician, recording one classic '60s album).
Dylan heard
Carthy's version of "Lord Franklin" and transformed the melody into "Bob Dylan's Dream" for the album
Freewheelin', which also mentions
Carthy in the liner notes.
Carthy made his recording debut on the English Decca anthology album Hootenanny, but neither song was really representative of
Carthy's work. "My Baby Has Gorn Dahn the Plug 'Ole" and "The End of My Old Cigar" provided what he later referred to as comic relief amid the earnestness of the rest of the compilation. His big influences, in addition to the expected folk song collectors and arrangers such as
A.L. Lloyd, included
Ravi Shankar (
Carthy had attended the latter's first London performance in 1957) and
Davy Graham, whose version of "She Moved Through the Fair" encouraged his interest in Indian music. By the mid-'60s,
Carthy was a musical polymath, drawing inspiration from music all over the map, although his repertoire came entirely from the British Isles.
In 1965,
Carthy was signed to Fontana Records and recorded his debut album,
Martin Carthy, that same year, which contained his arrangement of "Scarborough Fair" and featured contributions from fiddler
Dave Swarbrick as a performer and co-arranger. From the very first,
Carthy's records became songbooks for thousands of lesser performers and less ambitious would-be folk musicians -- he literally was the
Bob Dylan of the English folk revival, without the feigned anger or the affectations, but with all of the skill and depth. That first album was also the first manifestation of what eventually became a more formal partnership with
Swarbrick. That didn't begin, however, until March of 1966, when the violinist found himself turned back by Dutch customs officials while traveling to Denmark --
Carthy offered to team up with
Swarbrick on an upcoming tour with a 50/50 split of the proceeds. Their recording situation was more complicated, due to the fact that
Carthy was signed to Fontana as a solo artist, and the record company wouldn't modify the contract -- they were never able to split the revenues of their recordings during the 1960s, a situation that never hurt their working relationship. The two ended up recording six long-players and an extended-play single between 1966 and 1969 (at around that time,
Swarbrick went off to join
Fairport Convention). Their records, all carefully programmed and recorded (each new song was a surprise: a solo number by
Carthy might be followed by a work featuring the two of them, followed by an a cappella number by
Carthy), sold well among folk enthusiasts, and put both
Carthy and
Swarbrick on the map nationally.
Carthy became not only one of the most popular folksingers in England but, more than that, a musical resource. Unlike most of his rivals,
Carthy respected original -- or at least the earliest known -- versions of the songs he performed, and where possible he would go back to field recordings done early in the 20th century. One of
Carthy's specialties was finding and completing fragments of songs that didn't exist in complete versions -- not only did this add dozens of songs to the repertoire (usually played and heard by people who had no inkling of the editorial and musical skills that had gone into making the songs "whole"), but it gave
Carthy a starting point very far from the superficial commercial folk-rock that was typical of the 1960s. His use of primary sources allowed him to pick up nuances from the songs that most of his rivals never guessed were there. Additionally, he was open to recording original material, if it were the right material under the right circumstances, and several of his 1960s albums feature songs by his friend, songwriter
Leon Rosselson. Coupled with his vocal and guitar skills, all of this made
Carthy perhaps the most important folksinger in England, as a source of inspiration, a conduit for songs, and a model for how to approach the music.
By 1970, however, a modern group beckoned
Carthy in the form of
Steeleye Span, which had been formed by
Ashley Hutchings,
Tim Hart, and
Maddy Prior in the wake of
Hutchings' exit from
Fairport Convention. Unlike
Fairport Convention, which freely mixed original and traditional material,
Steeleye Span played traditional folk music, albeit on a mix of electric and acoustic instruments (they didn't have a drummer at this time), and
Carthy became something of their resident sage and musicologist -- the group inherited and adopted many songs that he had recorded during the 1960s. By 1972, he was out of
Steeleye Span and recording on his own again. That same year, he married
Norma Waterson and became a member of her family's folksinging group,
the Watersons, of which he has remained an active member. He also became a member of
the Albion Band, the group formed by
Hutchings in the early '70s, working with them on the album
Battle of the Field. During the 1970s,
Carthy also began doing theater work, which led to the formation of the group
Brass Monkey in the early '80s.
Carthy revived his partnership with
Dave Swarbrick again in the 1980s, and the two have continued to perform and record together in the ensuing decades, issuing Skin & Bone in 1992 and
Straws in the Wind in 2006, both on the
Topic label. The
Carthy solo efforts
Right of Passage (1988), Signs of Life (1999), and
Waiting for Angels (2004) were released on
Topic as well. All of
Martin Carthy's classic albums on
Topic and Fontana are available on compact disc. ~ Bruce Eder