A few days ago I didn’t own any Bert Jansch albums, now
suddenly I have two. When I wrote my story about Rosemary Lane a few nights ago a Danish friend whose views I
respect recommended I listen to Jack
Orion. I found a copy on eBay at a price I liked and this morning it popped
through my letter box. I was pleased about that because I couldn’t go out due
to the rain and it gave me something to do.
It is Bert’s third album and recorded in 1966 at 5 North
Villas, Camden, London which I am guessing was a friend’s house. There are just
eight tracks and the album is quite short at just 32 minutes. All the songs
apart from one are traditional with Bert’s own arrangements.
Unusually, Bert
plays banjo on the opening instrumental track called The Waggoner’s Lad. It shows that Bert can shine on other
instruments besides the guitar. I believe that his friend John Renbourn plays
the guitar part on this tune. The second track is also an instrumental, a short
but sweet interpretation of Ewan McColl’s The
First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. The third song is the epic title track Jack Orion. It weighs in at just under
ten minutes. Apparently, Bert learned it from Anne Briggs and he got her to
write down the words for him to learn. It must have taken her ages. Anne would
have learned it from A.L. Lloyd who dusted off a medieval ballad called Glasgerion and called it Jack Orion. By
contrast the fourth track called The
Gardener is less than two minutes long. I first heard the song Nottamun Town in 1969 on a Fairport
Convention album. Bert’s version is pure class as well. That thieving magpie
Bob Dylan took this traditional song and used it as the tune for his song
Masters Of War. Henry Martin is a
song of dirty deeds and piracy on the high seas. It has been recorded by many
people over the years such as Burl Ives, Joan Baez & Donovan. John Renbourn
plays guitar on this track as well. Blackwaterside is another song that Anne
taught to Bert. She recorded it herself later. It has caused controversy over
the years because Jimmy Page copied Bert’s arrangement note for note and put it
on the first Led Zeppelin album as Black Mountain Side. I think Jimmy should
have given Bert a few quid because he must have made a fortune from it. The
final song Pretty Polly is a murder
ballad, telling of a young woman lured into the forest where she is killed and
buried in a shallow grave. Many variants of the story have the villain as a
ship's carpenter who promises to marry Polly but murders her when she becomes
pregnant. When he goes back to sea, either he is haunted by her ghost,
confesses to the murder, goes mad and dies, or the ship will not sail, he
denies the murder and is ripped to pieces by her ghost. (I found all that info
on Wikipedia) It is another song that Dylan put to good use, recording it himself and using it as
the basis for The Ballad Of Hollis Brown.
I have played the album three times now on this rainy Saturday afternoon and think it is
great. Reading the enclosed booklet, I learned that Anne last visited Bert in
May 2011. They went in his studio at the end of his garden and sang Go Your Way. They considered working
together again and Bert had a list of songs he was keen to record. Sadly, it
never came about because he died later that year. I think it is a shame that
Anne Briggs and Bert Jansch never made an album together. It would have taken
the world of folk music by storm. I expect they might both have hated the
attention but just one filmed concert for posterity would have been wonderful.
See below for a nice film of Anne Briggs and Bert Jansch
singing Blackwaterside in 1992.
No comments:
Post a Comment