Saturday, January 19, 2019

Jack Orion by Bert Jansch.


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.

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