Old Fogey’s Favourites

An intense, insistent and hypnotic version of this tragic and vicious ballad from Fairport Convention. The late Sandy Denny’s deadpan vocal suits it perfectly. Dave Swarbrick on banshee wailing violin, Richard Thompson’s guitar crackling with electricity.

“I’d rather a kiss from dead Matty’s lips than you with your finery” before being skewered to the wall.

The coda is a long instrumental, an improvised duet between Swarbrick and Thompson, a tribute to their close musical relationship in the band, cranking up the tension.

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This is one of those odd jazz encounters between two men whom you wouldn’t ever expect to share the same stage - Ian Wheeler, traditional jazz clarinettist, and Joe Harriott, avant-garde alto sax player, England’s answer to Ornette Coleman. They are accompanied by a rhythm section of banjo, bass and drums. To try and get a sense of its oddity, imagine John Coltrane playing with Eddie Condon’s Dixieland Band or the Firehouse Five plus Two. But it works and it’s’wonderful. Listen to them chase each other round and round this Gershwin tune, Wheeler the more outgoing, Harriot more introspective. I wrote my original appreciation of this 1961 concert recording here.

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Following on from my previous, I was intending to post something from the Well Tempered Clavier played by Wilhelm Kempff on the piano. Alas my vinyl recording is worn and hasn’t transfered to digital well. So here, as a more than adequate substitute is Alfred Brendel playing the lovely Andante from the Italian Concerto. Imagine, as you listen, this being played tinnily, plinkety-plink, on the harpsichord and acknowledge how much better and fuller, to our ears, it is, played so well, on the modern piano.   

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I’m pretty much set against authenticity in music - the idea that the only way to play a piece of music is by replicating the conditions under which it was originally played. So we get whinnying valveless trumpets, catgut wailing violins and any keyboard piece before 1780 played on that instrument guaranteed (like a nail across a blackboard) to set my teeth on edge - the harpsichord. The best version of the Well Tempered Clavier is by Wilhelm Kempff, played on the piano.

By the same token the best versions of songs aren’t always by the originals. I think this is particularly so with Lennon and McCartney songs. In many cases the Beatles did them worst - naive top-of-the-voice vocalising, clanging guitars, primitive bass and Ringo’s thumping-headache drums.

Here’s an example of one done better - Maura O’Connell singing I Will. Heaps better than McCartney.

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Robert Casadesus’s interpretation of Mozart has a particular nobility that seems to me to be of another age. His recordings of the Piano Concertos have a special place in my record collection. I try to explain my reasons here. In the end, though, reasoning won’t do. You just have to listen. Here he is playing the last movement of Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat major with the Columbia Orchestra conducted by George Szell. It was recorded in 1962.

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I have no excuse - ever - for forgetting my wedding anniversary. Ann and I were married on 16 August 1977 - the day Elvis died. Here’s an Elvis song from his best, early period (that is, before he went into the army) in memory of that event - and of the man himself.

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I’m not sure if this is a Scottish or an Irish song (I’m inclined to thinking it Scots) but this is a superb version by the Black Family. Mary Black  (bottom left in the photo) takes the lead vocal, but the effect is in the chorus when they all join in. It’s a universal song about what we all know - that new love is always sweeter than true love.

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For me this is one of the most dramatic and tragic songs ever recorded by The Corries. It never fails to move me. In part it is because of the simple direct singing of the late Roy Williamson but in part too by the dramatic colour given by the instruments played by Roy and Ronnie Browne. These are Combolins, hybrid instruments, designed and made by Roy Williamson himself. The two instruments aren’t the same - the one played by Roy comprises guitar strings and some thirteen extra strings which act as a drone. Ronnie’s instrument is a combination of mandolin and guitar with an additional four bass strings.

The song is an ancient Scottish ballad about love and vengeance. I have written a fuller appreciation of the  song here.

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My favourite Mozart song, sung at a concert I went to at Wigmore Hall, London, on 3 October 1995. The singer is Rose Mannion, with Julius Drake at the piano. She sings it beautifully. There’s a period of catarrhal coughing from the audience beforehand, which mercifully shuts up when Rose starts to sing.

‘Smiling, contentment rests upon my soul……you have come bound in sweet chains to my heart’

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Jo-el Sonnier is a Cajun accordeon player and country singer who made several albums in the eighties. This is his best song. It was written by Tony Romeo. It’s a summer night and, six pack high, he’s waiting for her to come. But Come on Joe, buck up, she’s not worth it.

Joe Brown (and his Bruvvers) did a good version of this song when I saw him in concert at Bournemouth, there on holiday fifteen years ago

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