44 Thursday, September 22, 2016 H&H Series ETCETERA

REVIEW Folk star still singing after all these years LIZ THOMSON drops into a gig at Crouch End’s century; and “The Devil and the Feathery Wife”, a folk tale collected Kalamazoo Club to see song collector and folk and set to music by A L “Bert” Lloyd. And there was Carthy’s own legend Martin Carthy who inspired Dylan and Simon poignant “Company Policy”, “written in a rage” as Margaret Thatcher gloated over victory in the South Atlantic and prompted by the he US has the Seeger This is the man who inspired the sight of a mother weeping as she family. Britain has likes of Bob Dylan and Paul Simon; watched the victory parade on the Waterson:Carthy. The who has played with such bands as multiple screens in a TV rental union of Martin Carthy Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, store: “There were twenty screens and Norma Waterson has the Albion Band and, of course, the in the showroom window/Victors Tgiven the world both great folk Watersons, and, for many years, in marching large and small/As they music and a great folk musician, partnership with Dave Swarbrick. wheeled on by I heard her sigh/Oh, Eliza Carthy, the singer-songwriter, Dylan, plucked by Carthy from the and oh for my darling boy”. fiddler and guitarist. Separately audience at Fitzrovia’s King and The instrumentals had no less a and together, the two generations Queen folk club on his first visit to tale to tell: “The Heroes of San continue to make extraordinary Britain in 1962, has long Valery”, written by a member of music, keeping the tradition alive. acknowledged his debt to the the 51st Highland Division that was Now 75, Carthy is as active as ever Englishman but it took Simon sent to create a diversion from and earlier this month he was back many years to credit Carthy with Dunkirk and so was captured as a at the Kalamazoo Klub at the Kings the arrangement of “Scarborough PoW, and “The Downfall of Paris”, Head in Crouch End, not far from Fair” he purloined for Simon and its origins in the Napoleonic Wars where he grew up, playing a Garfunkel’s debut album. – both sides, apparently marched to remarkable solo set that featured It was notable that Carthy dropped ■ Martin Carthy who grew up in Hampstead back on his old stomping ground it. The encore was a version of The songs from all corners of these not one star name last week, but he Harry Lyme Theme”, from The British Isles: songs of work and war did pay tribute to each of the locales as disparate as Sussex and bring Margaret, Maid of Norway to Third Man. and love, of fair maids bedded but singers and collectors who passed Shetland, songs that chronicled the Scotland to claim the throne in the One man and his guitar: a not wedded by duplicitous lords and down the songs, beginning with history of these islands as vividly late 13th century; “The Blind troubadour carrying on the great masters; songs that have been Marina Russell, a key figure in as any period drama, and doubtless Harper”, one of the celebrated tradition. Long may he play on. passed down and preserved by Dorset folk music, a charwoman, more accurately: “Sir Patrick English and Scottish Popular Liz Thomson is co-founder of the those, like Carthy, who listened and whose ‘The Bedmaking’ provided Spens”, which Carthy described as Ballads catalogued by Harvard charity Square Roots, which learned and recorded this living his opening number. “one of the great Scottish ballads”, Shakespeare professor Francis celebrates Anglo-American folk history for future generations. The evening included songs from telling of the disastrous attempt to James Child in the late 19th music heritage.