f84 Peabody Chronicle
Last but not least of this issue’s veteran blues geezers, Garth Cartwright turns the journalistic table on the UK’s under-rated Dave Peabody. He twangs as well as photographs, you know…
D
ave Peabody may have spent his life singing the blues but don’t expect him to be bit- ter, tormented or miserable. Instead, the 70-year-old Lon-
doner is a happy chap who loves to entertain and is quite the raconteur. I’ve known Peabody for around twenty years – memorably introduced to him by Char- lie Musselwhite, the great US blues har- monica virtuoso – and, through us both contributing to fRoots, initially recog- nised him as a photographer and writer. Then I went to see Honeyboy Edwards, the last of the Mississippi country blues musicians, and there was Dave playing up a storm alongside Honey. Surprised? In the best sense. He laughs when I men- tion that I came to his music in this roundabout way.
“I’ve been a working musician since the mid-1960s,” says Peabody, “and have appeared on dozens of albums over the past 47 years but I suppose its possible that some people know me for my writing and photography. I attended art school and that exposed me to the idea of being cre- ative in as many areas as possible.”
Peabody’s photos of musicians have appeared on dozens of album covers – striking images of Robert Cray, Dr John and Bo Diddley (amongst others) have graced LPs and CDs by those legends – and, for more than a decade, he was fRoots’ primary snapper. Looking through old copies of this magazine its remarkable how many covers he shot: the first Folk Roots after it changed from being South- ern Rag features a very youthful looking Richard Thompson as its cover star and Peabody was behind the lens. Along the way he shot Billy Bragg, Ali Farka Toure, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (“one of the most amazing musicians I’ve ever heard”), the McGarrigle sisters, Flaco Jimenez (“a good friend”), June Tabor, Thomas Mapfumo and others for this magazine’s cover.
“I think that, as I’m a musician, I have a good understanding of how musicians like to be portrayed,” explains Peabody.
Still, music has always been Peabody’s greatest passion and how he’s earned the best part of his living over the past half-
century. 2018 sees him with a new album being released – Some Of These Days (with Regina Mudrich) – and dates across the UK and Germany lined up. Some Of These Days finds Peabody in fine voice and humour as he mixes original songs with ancient hokum, blues and jazz numbers that, he notes, have informed his music since he started out.
“There’s so much variety on this record. I tackle some early jazz tunes like Delta Bound and After You’ve Gone. I also do Little Wheel by John Lee Hooker and Gus Cannon’s Going To Germany – which I’ve been playing since the ’60s. Hokum is great fun – to me jug band music is the accessible part of early jazz. And I love double entendres!”
David Peabody was born and raised in Southall, the west London suburb best known for its Asian community.
“Both my parents played piano. Mum liked classical and show tunes. South Pacif- ic was the music they listened to at home – as a boy it drove me crazy! Southall was already a very Asian community then and you just accepted it, part of daily life. And Southall High Street was very colourful. Because I grew up in the environment it
was very welcoming. I didn’t get to hear any Indian music at the time – even though I remember it being sold on the High Street market stalls – but I subse- quently have come to love music from across the world. Contributing to fRoots certainly helped with that.”
“Battle Of New Orleans by Lonnie Donegan was the first record I bought in the early 1960s and, around the same time, I got interested in early jazz. I was buying Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke EPs. I also liked The Everly Brothers, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan’s debut album. A folk club started in Ealing run by Don Partridge – he’d had a chart record called Rosie. I’d already got a guitar but hadn’t got up enough courage to play in public and then, one evening, he announced he was playing a concert with Julie Felix at Ealing Town Hall. Me and other members of the folk club went along and Jesse Fuller was on the same bill – Jesse was the first blues man I’d ever seen and he hit me like a speeding train! This is what I was looking for! The veil lift- ed, the curtain opened… it had the rhyth- mic drive of jazz, the flexibility of folk, it all came together!”
Dave 2nd from right with Pongo Flossy Goodtime Merger, 1968
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