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beacon for me, but he sang Lofty Tall Ship. Ewan made sure it was the last song that he sang. It was theatrically brilliant – a masterstroke.
I’ve said this a million times, but I walked away from that place with that tune in my head, and I just thought, “You can’t sing a tune like that. That’s non- sense, that tune.” So I sang it a bit more, asking myself, “What kind of a tune is that?!” I recognised that he always landed [smacks hands together] on doh. Now, if the only tunes you were used to were [sings], “Oh, no John, no John…” – one of those very simple, very easy tunes – and that’s your experience of folk song and that’s what you think it is, then, oh boy, are you in for a surprise!
The merest, tiniest investigation will
reveal stuff. Don’t try and correct it. Just do it. You realise that all these funny little accidentals… people just stick them in because that’s the way the tune goes on that day. That’s a really interesting notion because the tunes can vary from day to day. [Stares in wonder and then smiles] I’m not quite there yet. Sometimes I’ll stick one in and think to myself, “Oh, you cheeky boy!” As I get older, spontaneity is beginning to dawn on me. But when you experience the real thing, it’s marvellous.
Do you think it’s still possible to experi- ence the real thing, given that you’re talk- ing about a generation – Sam Larner’s generation – that’s now gone?
Erm… well, Walter Pardon turned up out of the blue, back in the ’70s. People were saying, “Is Walter Pardon for real?” He had this huge repertoire. In fact, he had three repertoires. He got what we called his traditional songs from his uncle – Uncle Billy G. He always talked about this uncle. But then he had his father’s reper- toire, and he had his mother’s repertoire. He knew them all.
Norma said to him once, “Why don’t you sing your mother’s songs?” And he said, “Because they always make me cry.” He was a very emotional man, and he had a very particular notion about the way the songs should be sung. He said, “What I do is I walk onto the stage, take my hat off my head so they can see my hair and how little I have left, put my hands behind my back and then I sing the song.” He sang in a very matter-of-fact way, often very arhythmically. But then, when you listened a little more closely, you realised just how thoughtful his phrasing was. It was never that simple.
Spinning back to the ’60s, there was this really eclectic mix of music going on. You have the folk revival – the stuff you guys were doing – and then you’ve got The Beatles and all of those rock pioneers. I wonder whether you were interested in that side of things at all?
Oh yeah, we were interested! Very much so!
You weren’t completely single-minded and focused on traditional folk music?
Well, yes we were, but you couldn’t be anything other than excited by what was going on in rock’n’roll. The Beatles, The Who… and there was Traffic. They were
The unmistakeable silhouette of Martin Carthy singing at the Troubadour folk club in Earls Court, London, 1962. Performers behind him include Diz Disley on guitar, Judith Silver, Redd Sullivan, Colin Wilkie and Shirley Hart.
absolutely mad on The Watersons. Appar- ently, Jim Capaldi could do an absolutely spot-on, fantastic impersonation of Mike. And Stevie Winwood has always loved folk music, but he just does what he does. Of course, Bob Dylan had a lot to do with it. I think Bob Dylan just changed everything, and I mean everything. They wanted him to be the new Woody Guthrie, but he was never going to be that.
He came and stayed with you in London, didn’t he?
He never stayed with me, no. He came over to do a play and the BBC put him up at The Cumberland, or one of those hotels in the West End. At other times he’d stay at The Savoy. But the story about him stay- ing with me is… what’s the word?
Apocryphal? Yeah.
But he picked up songs from you, didn’t he? Well, we spent quite a bit of time
together. We just hit it off. He would come to The Troubadour. I was a resident there and he’d come down, and he’d always sing a couple of songs. He would always sing his difficult songs, too. I remember him singing “Where have you been my blue- eyed son?” and I was thinking he was singing Lord Randall. About three seconds later I realised he wasn’t singing Lord Ran- dall at all. He was singing A Hard Rain’s a- Gonna Fall. So much stuff goes on in that song. We were just enthralled.
I’ve heard it said that when he first sang in London, people thought he was ridiculous. No! I was there the first day he sang in London, and he didn’t sing at The Singers Club – he sang there on the Satur- day. The Friday night was our club at The
Photo: Brian Shuel
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