Showing posts with label Nick Drake. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nick Drake. Show all posts

Friday, March 1, 2024

Various Artists - The Hitmakers Sing Nick Drake (2018)

Nicholas Rodney Drake was born on 19 June 1948 in Burma, with the family, including his older sister the successful actress Gabrielle, moving back to England to live in Warwickshire in 1951. At school he played piano and learned clarinet and saxophone, and formed a band, the Perfumed Gardeners, with four schoolmates in 1964 or 1965. Drake contributed piano and occasional alto sax and vocals, and when Chris de Burgh asked to join the group, he was rejected as his taste was "too poppy". In 1966 Drake enrolled at a tutorial college in Five Ways, Birmingham, where he won a scholarship to study at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, but in his gap year before starting the course he travelled with friends to Morocco, returning to England in 1967 and moving into his sister's flat in Hampstead, London. That October, he enrolled at Cambridge to begin his studies in English literature, and in January 1968 he met Robert Kirby, a music student who went on to write many of the string and woodwind arrangements for Drake's first two albums. By this time, Drake had discovered the British and American folk music scenes, and was influenced by performers such as Bob Dylan, Donovan, Van Morrison, Josh White and Phil Ochs, and he performed in local clubs and coffee houses around London. After spotting him in one of these clubs, Fairport Convention bassist Ashley Hutchings introduced him to the 25-year-old American producer Joe Boyd, owner of the production and management company Witchseason Productions.  
Boyd was a respected figure in the UK folk scene, and he and Drake formed an immediate bond, with Boyd acting as a mentor to Drake throughout his career. Impressed by a four-track demo recorded in Drake's college room in early 1968, Boyd offered Drake a management, publishing, and production contract, and Drake recorded his debut album 'Five Leaves Left' later in 1968, with Boyd as producer. He sought to include a string arrangement similar to John Simon's on Leonard Cohen's debut, and to provide backing he enlisted contacts from the London folk rock scene, including Fairport Convention guitarist Richard Thompson and Pentangle bassist Danny Thompson. Ultimately, both Drake and Boyd were unhappy with arranger Richard Anthony Hewson's contribution, and so Drake suggested his college friend Robert Kirby as a replacement, and he provided most of the arrangements for the album, including its centrepiece 'River Man'. Post-production difficulties delayed the release by several months, and the album was poorly marketed and supported, receiving little radio play outside of shows by more progressive BBC DJs such as John Peel and Bob Harris. Despite this low-key reception at the time, 'Five Leaves Left' has since become regarded as a classic album of the folk scene, and despite a push by Boyd in 1970 to get Drake's songs more well-known, by arranging a session by Elton John and Linda Peters (later Linda Thompson) to record some of them to be sent out to publishers, most of the best covers have appeared since the turn of the last century. These ten versions of the songs from Drake's debut album all capture the delicacy of the music while still allowing the performers to add their own personality to their interpretation of the songs. 


  
Track listing

01 Time Has Told Me (Elton John 1968)
02 River Man (Norma Waterson 1999)
03 Three Hours (Keith James 2003)
04 Day Is Done (Charlie Hunter Quartet featuring Norah Jones 2001)
05 Way To Blue (In Gowan Ring 2007)
06 'Cello Song (The Books featuring Jose Gonzales 2009)
07 The Thoughts Of Mary Jane (Vashti Bunyan and Gareth Dickson 2018)
08 Man In A Shed (Beatrice Mason featuring Leoni 2018)
09 Fruit Tree (Green Gartside 2013) 
10 Saturday Sun (Alexis Korner 1971)

Sunday, December 27, 2020

Richard Thompson - ...and on guitar (1971)

Most of the posts in this series cover an artists contributions as guest guitarist over a period of five to ten years, but Richard Thompson was so prolific in his guest slots that this album covers just 1969 to 1971, and this was while he was still a member of Fairport Convention, and also a part of Ashley Hutchins' Morris On project, and The Bunch, who were a group of English folk-rock musicians (including Sandy Denny, Linda Peters and members of Fairport Convention) who recorded a selection of classic rock and roll tunes. He has said that when he left Fairport Convention in 1971 he did a lot of session work as a way of avoiding any serious ideas about a career, but by 1972 he'd released his first solo album 'Henry The Human Fly', and that was the start of a very long and extremely well-respected solo career, which still carries on today.
His first guest spot was to provide guitar on Al Stewart's 'Love Chronicles' album, most notably the lovely solo at the end of 'Life And Life Only', and he also played on Nick Drake's 'Five Leaves Left' and 'Bryter Later' albums, from which I've picked the classic 'Time Has Told Me'. Marc Ellington is a Scottish folksinger and multi-instrumentalist who has guested with Fairport Convention, starting with providing some vocal support on the 'Unhalfbricking' album in 1969, and he also worked with Matthews Southern Comfort on their self-titled album in 1969, and when Ellington recorded his debut album that same year, he asked Thompson to help out guitar, and The Matthews Southern Comfort link carries on with Thompson's contribution to that self-titled album, for which he wrote and played on 'A Commercial Proposition'. By 1970 Gary Farr had left Gary Farr And The T-Bones to embark on a solo career, and Thompson was invited to play guitar on a few tracks from his second album 'Strange Fruit'. The following year he was on hand to assist John Martyn with his 'Bless The Weather' album, and in what was a very busy year for him, his guitar could also be heard on albums by Sandy Denny, Mike Heron, Iain Matthews, Stefan Grossman, Shirley Collins, and the undeservedly overlooked Shelagh McDonald. The one linking factor for most of these artists is that they operate in the genre of British folk music, which is undoubtedly Thompson's great love, and the fact that so many of our respected folk musicians wanted him on their records just shows the high regard in which he was, and still is, held by his peers. 



Track listing

01 Life And Life Only (from 'Love Chronicles' by Al Stewart 1969)
02 Time Has Told Me (from 'Five Leaves Left' by Nick Drake 1969)  
03 Four In The Morning (from 'Marc Ellington' by Marc Ellington 1969)
04 A Commercial Proposition (from 'Matthews Southern Comfort' by Matthews Southern 
                                                                                                                           Comfort 1970)
05 Old Man Moses (from 'Strange Fruit' by Gary Farr 1970) 
06 Sugar Lump (from 'Bless The Weather' by John Martyn 1971)
07 The Sea Captain (from 'The North Star Grassman And The Ravens' by Sandy Denny 1971)
08 Flowers Of The Forest (from 'Smiling Men With Bad Reputations' by Mike Heron 1971)
09 Odyssey (from 'Stargazer' by Shelagh McDonald 1971)
10 Desert Inn (from 'If You Saw Through My Eyes' by Iain Matthews 1971)
11 Blues Jump The Rabbit (from 'Those Pleasant Days' by Stefan Grossman 1971)
12 Poor Murdered Woman (from 'No Roses' by Shirley Collins 1971)