Nottamun Town, Fairport Convention (1969)

"My route to school took me past a music shop and there were always guitars on display. I just liked the shape, I suppose; I wanted to possess one." - Simon Nichol, co-founder of Fairport Convention

I have long suspected that if it weren't for the seemingly primal affinity that boys have for guitars and their shapes, the world might have been deprived of much of the world's existing music catalog. When you read the stories of how bands came to be, how often does it hinge on schoolboys who had zero interest in formal education but a full complement of zeal for wringing sounds out of their curvaceous instruments?  Exactly! 

Certainly that was the case with Fairport Convention. I discovered Fairport's haunting repertoire of guitar licks and vocals just as I hit the gloomy prison of my college dorm room in 1970, the perfect time and place to immerse myself in their electrified traditional and folk music. 

Although their original creative influences as a group were often American singer-songwriters, both Nicol and one of the group's other co-founders, the in-a-class-by-himself Richard Thompson, have credited the British Fender Stratocaster wizard, Hank Marvin, of Cliff Richard's backup band The Shadows, with inspiring them to become proficient in the instrument as youths. Before the Beatles and the Stones invaded their own country, the Shadows were breaking ground with a home-grown rock and roll sound that took the world (except for the U.S.) by storm.  Here they are with (Ghost) Riders in the Sky, in a rendition that I have to assume was revolutionary at the time.

Fairport Convention worked the London pubs relentlessly, honing their craft interpreting the music of others, but eventually settled upon an eclectic, almost improvisational fusion of musical forms that was later dubbed the British folk-rock genre. No one in England was doing this, not well anyway, at the time. Thompson, on Elvis Costello's Spectacle show, noted that they drew on The Band's emergence as a successful traditional, roots-driven group in arriving at their newfound direction. 

Fairport's music in that early heyday was distinguished by a number of things, not least of which was what Nicol referred to as "the structured freedom and strength" of Thompson's playing. (Anyone who has never seen him live should put this on the list of Things To Do Before You Die.) Another thing that set them apart was the addition of a girl lead singer, Judy Dyble, who duetted with Ian (now Iain) Matthews.  They felt she wasn't the strongest vocalist, but they and their audiences liked the female touch, and a subsequent search for her replacement turned up ex-Strawb Sandy Denny. Denny is the much revered songbird whose voice you hear floating into the stratosphere in my song selection today, Fairport's glorious reworking of the traditional folk song Nottamun Town. (During her audition, Nicol said she "stood out like a clean glass in a sink full of dirty dishes.")

Fairport landed an American producer based in the UK, Joe Boyd, allegedly after he witnessed Thompson's half hour interpretation of Paul Butterfield Blues Band's East West. (He also produced The Incredible String Band, Nick Drake and others in this genre, and had known Denny previously.) Fairport were sometimes compared to Jefferson Airplane, their sound being viewed in some circles as having a tinge of psychedelia. I didn't particularly see the resemblance, but whatever.

Though in its early days the group was as close knit as they could be, some of them living communally, the seminal lineup proved not to be enduring. Matthews left after the Holiday album, not much liking the turn toward traditional folk music; Thompson got restless to pursue his own solo career, and was gone by 1971. Denny left, came back, then left again, forming Fotheringay with her boyfriend Trevor Lucas. She died at the age of 31 from injuries sustained in a fall in 1978 (Thompson's stunning ode to her, That's All, Amen, Close the Door, is RT artistry at its very best). The group has had easily a dozen former members altogether over the years.

Simon Nichol came and went and returned, and today is the only original member of the group, which still tours. For 35 years, they've held the annual Cropredy Convention, an outdoor festival showcasing British folk-rock music that goes on for days (among other things, it boasts that it has "the cleanest toilets you'll find at any music festival"), closed by a lengthy performance by the band themselves.

Gone Gone Gone, Everly Brothers (1964)

Heaven. I'm in heaven. There's actually a connection between Gone Gone Gone and Richard Thompson.  Just one of the many reasons I love doing this blog.  More on that later.

I never knew much about these boys; their greatest success had largely occurred before I became cognizant of rock & roll.  But their hits were always played on the radio, so they were certainly part of the sonic backdrop of my teen years. I was vaguely aware that they'd had a long period after the 60s where they'd stopped speaking to each other, although they've long since gone into détente. What I didn't know was how influential they were in the overall scheme of things and how many later artists - from Barry Gibb to Keith Richards - freely paid homage to their talents. 

So maybe I shouldn't be surprised that they were in the first class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, inducted in 1986 by Neil Young, who made no bones about the fact that it was pretty impossible to duplicate the Everlys' harmonies, though many had tried, in his experience. And in the fall of 1964, they were tapped to be on the first episode of Shindig!, which was must-see TV for baby boomers. 

(Just for grins, I searched Twitter before writing this post, to see what, if any, profile they have today in the cyber-conversation. I expected nothing; I got page after page of tweets just covering the past few days.)

This appears to be another case of the talent being in the DNA. Don and Phil Everly were the sons of a Kentucky coal miner who, along with his brothers, perfected a thumbpicking guitar style that became all the rage in their county.  When the family moved to Chicago, the elder Everly brothers continued to ply their trade in the city's honky-tonks. Don Everly grew up thinking that families singing together was just what you did.

Moving further midwest where Ike Everly got the itch to forge a radio career, the sons soon were singing on their parents' live program on station KMA in Shenandoah, Iowa. Ike had taught them to play guitar and they apparently had naturally appealing singing voices. As records began to supplant live shows, the family continued its nomadic existence, landing in Knoxville, Tennessee. 

This put them within striking distance of Nashville and, when they got old enough, they went out on their own, hired by Roy Acuff's publishing company as songwriters. They were befriended by Chet Atkins, who found them enthralling and took them under his wing.  In 1957, songwriters Felice and Boudleaux Bryant gave them Bye Bye Love, a song at which dozens of other acts had turned up their noses.  And they were off ... marrying their splendiferous close harmonies with their rollicking guitar licks into a rockabilly-style musical form that pleased crowds across the land.

Gone, Gone, Gone, co-written by Don and Phil, was a relatively rare (for them) full-out rocker, and they did a bang-up job at it.  It was one of the last songs they recorded that did reasonably well on the charts. I love watching them performing this (and so did the near-crazed go-go dancers in that video!); it reflects the best of them in their heyday. They radiated such joy, cocking their pompadoured heads toward and away from the shared mike, in constant motion from start to finish as they reveled in what their voices could do.  Of course now I realize that they were knee-high to a grasshopper when they learned how to be entertainers, and they were experts at it. 

Gone Gone Gone is a song that has enchanted others, most recently Alison Krauss and Robert Plant, who were bestowed with a Grammy for their efforts (I saw them perform this in concert and, honestly, it was the song I liked the least in their storied collaboration, but whatever ... ).  Circling back to Richard Thompson, though - Fairport Convention loved the song, too, and performed their cover of it for Heyday: the BBC Radio Sessions 1968-69. You can hear 30 seconds of it on Amazon.  I might just have to buy it.