What A Beautiful Place by Catherine Howe.

I had intended going for a long walk today but due to the inclement weather I remained indoors. The rain was quite fortuitous as it turned out because it gave me a chance to have a good listen to my new CD. It is called What A Beautiful Place by Catherine Howe. I discovered this album quite by chance during a conversation with a friend about great singers from the past who deserved more recognition than they received. He said I should check out this album, so I ordered it and I’m glad I did because this album should be celebrated as a lost treasure rediscovered.

Catherine was born in Halifax, Yorkshire in 1950. She moved to London and went to drama school and had TV roles in such programmes as Doctor Who and Z-Cars. The family moved to Swanage in Dorset where the beautiful coastline inspired many of her songs. She headed to London again with a bunch of her songs and landed a recording deal with the small Reflections Records label. They hired American producer Bobby Scott to work on the album. He is best remembered for writing He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother and also won a Grammy for A Taste Of Honey. No expense was spared, top session musicians were hired as well as The London Symphony Orchestra to play on Bobby Scott’s arrangements. I must say they all did a wonderful job.

I don’t think the album was originally conceived as a ‘concept’ album, but Bobby Scott persuaded Catherine to have a spoken word prologue, interlude and epilogue, speaking her own words. It does have the effect of binding the album together as a whole and she has a lovely speaking voice. After Prologue the first song is Up North which I guess is a homage to her hometown of Halifax. It is very evocative of the gritty grimy landscape of satanic mills and dirty rainy streets. It reminds me in a way of the song Life In A Northern Town by Dream Academy and Kate St John’s cor anglais. On A Misty Morning displays Catherine’s shimmering vocal to full effect. I was reminded momentarily of Linda Perhac’s album Parallelograms. Bobby Scott has to be commended for the lush sophisticated arrangements. Nothing More Than Strangers is one of my favourite songs on the album, a short, simple, sad, wistful reflective song and one of the folkier tracks (See video below). My Child is also an ethereal atmospheric song which seems to fit perfectly with a rainy dark day such as today.

After the spoken Interlude the next song is It’s Not Likely which has a very dramatic arrangement behind Catherine’s restrained singing. I like the woodwind instruments on this album. Words Through A Locked Door is as haunting and mysterious as a Bronte novel. It immediately reminded me of The Pond And The Stream by Fotheringay. Not because it sounds familiar but because of the emotion that it evokes. The title track What A Beautiful Place by contrast is much more vibrant, upbeat and jazzier. I looked on youtube for this song and found a nice video of Catherine singing it live quite recently and I must say she is still in great voice. The lyrics suggest that this song was inspired by her Dorset home.  The Innocence Of A Child has a timeless quality that all great music has. It has the feel of a jazz standard but is a Catherine Howe original. It Comes With The Breezes is another fabulous song in which the shimmering orchestral accompaniment brilliantly evokes the sea and the wind. It is incredible to think that this album was recorded nearly half a century ago because it sounds so fresh. The spoken Epilogue is next, followed by the bonus track In The Hot Summer which is just as wonderful as the rest of the album.

On it’s original release in 1971 the album was only available for a few short weeks because the record label went bankrupt. Catherine did make other albums, none of which sold in large numbers and she gradually retired from the music business. She raised a daughter and gained a first-class honours degree and has published books. I’m pleased to see that she still performs occasionally, sometimes with Ric Sanders who I have seen quite often in recent years with Fairport Convention. I highly recommend this album. I’m not surprised that The Guardian described her as ‘Kate Bush before her time’. I think if you like music by Nick Drake, Bridget St John, Sandy Denny and people like that then you will love this album.

Nothing more than strangers - Catherine Howe

Catherine Howe and Vo Fletcher - What a Beautiful Place

The Tale Of The Black Rat.

I got up at 8.00 this morning and my little feathered chum with the red jacket was waiting at the back door. I threw a handful of suet pellets out to him and he was soon joined by the blackbird, some scruffy sparrows and the big fat wood pigeon. It had been raining overnight and the sky was dark and overcast but a good soaking has made my tiny garden look quite lush. We should be grateful to live in such a green and pleasant land but a few degrees warmer wouldn’t go amiss. I won’t be going far today so it is a good chance to catch up with my blog page. So, what have I been doing for the past few days? I have stayed in quite a lot. I just finished reading another book by Kazuo Ishiguro called When We Were Orphans. I saw it in a charity shop for £2.00, quite a nice hardback copy. I enjoyed it and when I read about it later on Wikipedia it said that it is regarded as the weakest of his novels. That surprised me because I thought it was almost as good as Remains Of The Day, although there were a couple of things in the story which remained unexplained. Possibly he might have been intending to write a sequel, but I don’t know about that.

I did venture out on Sunday when I went over to Bradford On Avon. There was a reggae band on in the Three Horseshoes pub. The place was jumping, and I met lots of family and friends. It was good fun. I’m glad I left when I did though because I was drinking this cider called Black Rat. I had four pints which was more than enough. I caught the train back to Westbury and went in my local pub and had two more pints of cider. As you can imagine I felt quite rough on Monday and stayed in all day recovering.

I sold a couple of books over the weekend. One was called Stones In The Park which was all about the Rolling Stones concert in Hyde Park in 1969. Somebody in Italy bought that and a lady in Germany bought an autobiography of Joan Baez. I posted them yesterday morning and went over to Warminster. I found three nice signed books in the Dorothy House charity shop. Firstly, a signed autobiography by Roger Moore called My Word Is My Bond.

I should get quite a few quid for that, I hope. Secondly, a signed book by Neil Gaiman called Norse Mythology. I had heard of this writer, but I didn’t know anything about him, so I looked on Wikipedia and found that he is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, nonfiction, audio theatre, and films. His works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. He has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie medals. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work, The Graveyard Book (2008). In 2013, The Ocean at the End of the Lane was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards. Looking on eBay I found that signed copies of his books are very sought after indeed. The third book I found was called The Death Of Dylan Thomas which is the one that I would actually read myself.

After that I met my friend S in Wetherspoon’s and we shared a bottle of wine and had a nice chat for an hour or so and that was the end of that. Tomorrow, if it’s not raining, I might go for a long walk because Glastonbury is only a few weeks away and I need to get fit for it.