89 f Carthy’s Commitment
From the archives, the first of this issue’s two major conversations with Martin Carthy came nearly two decades after his debut album was released. Ian Anderson talked with the Big C. for Southern Rag 24, Spring 1985.
songs, the ‘Crown Prince of the Revival’ as he was dubbed by a certain scribe back in the mists of the ’70s. Pretty much coin- ciding on its original release with other debuts by contemporaries like Bert Jan- sch, John Renbourn, The Watersons and Jackson C. Frank, it received favourable reviews in the specialist press of the day and soon formed a cornerstone of any British folk revival collection.
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In the intervening years, not only had he already left an indelible mark upon the styles adopted by British folk-based singer/guitarists all over the world, he’d also been found in trail-blazing outfits like Steeleye Span, the Albion Country Band and Brass Monkey, not to mention becom- ing a member of Yorkshire’s mighty singing family, the Watersons.
Martin Carthy’s musical biography had already been extensively documented in other interviews over the years so this 1985 conversation turned towards the dif- ferences between the mid-1960s and the ’80s, and what the folk scene had lost and gained in the intervening years.
What was it like working your way around the folk scene twenty years ago, compared with now?
Golly! What a question! I can’t
remember. There weren’t so many clubs, obviously, in ’65, though there were quite a lot. Who was around then? The Camp- bells [Ian Campbell Folk Group] were in full flow. The people who wanted to make it and the people who wanted to just do it, which is the same as now. The big fights used to go on between the Spinners and the Campbells for who wanted to go on last, and stuff like that – absurd situations where the group that had won the argu- ment would finish, go off the stage, and the other group would sprint on from the other side of the stage and do the encore that had been demanded! And on the other hand you had people like the Water- sons, who just wanted to do it. Shirley Collins was performing a lot, and Nigel
he next year was to mark the twentieth anniversary of the first solo record by a man who was to become England’s most influential singer of traditional
Denver was around – that was at a time he was singing very well. Who else was on the road at that time? My mind has been wiped totally clean. People like Owen Hand, Anne Briggs, Bert & John. Davey Graham was in full flow too.
Of course, in those days having an album out was a fairly rare thing for a British folk singer, compared with nowadays when everybody doing the circuit has probably made several. Was there a real thrill in being asked to do one?
I think I probably thought I deserved it at the time. I was a very elitist being in those days. I definitely thought that this was Art and had to be treated with a bit of respect. I did my interview, having done my test – I went and talked to Jack Baver- stock at Fontana and he just took the piss out of me for about an hour. He presented me with these songs and said, “Go on, why don’t you sing that one, that’s a folk song.” I’d say, “No it’s not,” and he’d say, “Course it is. If I said ‘That’s a folk song. If you don’t do it, you don’t get the record- ing contract’, what would you do?” And I sat very regally up in my chair and said, “I’d turn down the contract.” And I could see him sinking into his chair, thinking “Who is this prick?” But it was very neces- sary to be terribly pure at that time, and I’m glad I was.
Any idea how many that first album sold? It was one of those records that was in everybody’s collection in the ‘60s.
Not in the slightest. I’ve no idea how many any of my records have sold, except once Max Hole told me that Crown Of Horn had gone over 10,000. I can remem- ber getting a statement from Fontana say- ing that I’d sold 500 copies, and that was when I’d seen more than 500! After that I decided not to bother to look at state- ments any more. As far as I was concerned, the folk side of Fontana was a tax write- off, to help Dusty Springfield make her records, or Kiki Dee.
At your gig last night, it was noticeable that quite a lot of the floor singers were doing songs which meant something…
That’s something that was there in ’65 and is beginning to creep back now – com- mitment. It’s been missing for an awful
long time. There’s still an awful lot of flab and wind about, but I think the miners’ strike has had a lot to do with it. It has focussed a few people’s minds wonderful- ly, as it should.
There certainly was that commitment 20 years ago, even though we didn’t have that general malaise, the unemployment and so on.
A lot of the clubs in those days were started by CND people. A lot of it was youthful commitment, but there were plenty of older people there too, who were as committed.
That’s certainly reflected in your Three City Four album for Decca.
Well that was the nature of the group. A group that Leon (Rosselson) is in doesn’t sing traditional songs, or only one or two. Basically, it’ll want to sing committed stuff. If you join a group with Leon, you’re giv- ing yourself to what he does.
What became of the other two in that group?
Ralph Trainer was a headmaster – I
don’t know much about what’s happened to him. Marian MacKenzie married Pete Shutler of the Yetties and doesn’t sing any more – yet another case of a woman folk singer getting married and never stepping onto a stage again, or only occa- sionally. That’s a thing that has been wrong with the folk scene over twenty years. When we were all young and we were all together, there were a lot of women singers. Then the committed women singers got married to the com- mitted men singers, and the men were the only ones who stepped outside of the house to do any singing. I don’t think it was a question of deliberate chauvinist piggery, it was just the way it had always been done – it didn’t occur to them. There’s a lot of consciousness-raising could have been done, still has to be done. A lot of it seems to have passed us by, I’m afraid. I heard a good woman singer the other night in Brighton and it reminded me – you just don’t hear good women singers. It ain’t that they’re not around. And that old thing of the girl just standing up singing and the bloke play- ing the instruments – it’s absurd.
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