Fishes and Fine Yellow Sand

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#F7F7FF" bgproperties="fixed" background="0ad005a0dvldtc.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#CCFFCC" FACE="Tahoma" ><B>Waterson:Carthy</B></FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#CCFFCC" FACE="Tahoma" ><B> </B></FONT><B>   </B><B> |     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Waterson:Carthy"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> <B>Fishes and Fine Yellow Sand</B>   |   <A HREF="id17.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Dark Light"><U>Dark Light</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id18.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Broken Ground"><U>Broken Ground</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id19.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Common Tongue"><U>Common Tongue</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id20.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Waterson:Carthy"><U>Waterson:Carthy</U></A>                                                                                                                                        <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#CCFFCC" FACE="Arial" ><B>  </B></FONT></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>  </B></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#330000" TEXT="#F7F7FF" bgproperties="fixed" background="0aed2c00dvldvb.jpg"> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>For all booking enquiries</B></div> <div> <B>please contact</B></div> <div> <A HREF="http://www.alanbearmanmusic.co.uk" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.alanbearmanmusic.co.uk"><U><B>Alan Bearman Music</B></U></A></div> <bR> <div> <B>Website by </B><A HREF="mailto:ps@heypressco.com" TARGET="_top" TITLE="mailto:ps@heypressco.com"><U><B>heypressco</B></U></A></div> <div> <B>Powered by </B><A HREF="http://www.bluesock.com" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.bluesock.com"><U><B>bluesock.com</B></U></A></div> <div> <B>Copyright Waterson:Carthy</B></div> <div> <B>Updated 6 March 2008</B></div> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" height=390 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <B>Fishes & Fine Yellow Sand</B></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <A HREF="albums.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Albums"><U>Back</U></A></div> <div> <IMG SRC="04bc8c80.jpg" border=0 width="200" height="200" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <div> Released in 2004 on Topic Records TSCD542 (CD, UK, June 2004)</div> <bR> <div> Recorded, mixed and produced by Oliver Knight.</div> <div> Farewell Lovely Nancy recorded by Ben Ivitsky.</div> <div> Executive producer Tony Engle</div> <div> Photography, design and sand-fish by John Haxby</div> <div> (P) & © 2004 Topic Records Ltd   </div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>Track Listing:</B></div> <bR> <div>   1. Goodbye Fare You Well</div> <div>    2. The Oxford Girl</div> <div>    3. The Galopede / Walter Bulwer's No. 2 / Walter Bulwer's No. 1</div> <div>    4. Newry Town</div> <div>    5. Farewell Lovely Nancy</div> <div>    6. Black Muddy River</div> <div>    7. The Quadrille / The Tempest / The Portland Fancy</div> <div>    8. Napoleon's Death</div> <div>    9. Green Broom</div> <div>   10. Georg Tills' No. 2 / George Tills' No. 1</div> <div>   11. Captain Kidd</div> <div>   12. Twenty One Years on Dartmoor</div> <bR> <bR> <div> All tracks trad. arr. Eliza Carthy, Martin Carthy, Tim van Eyken, Norma Waterson pub. Topic Records Ltd; except track 5 trad. arr. Eliza Carthy, Martin Carthy, Ben Ivitsky, Norma Waterson pub. Topic Records Ltd;</div> <div> Track 6 Jerry Garcia, Robert Hunter pub. Ice Nine Publishing</div> <div> Track 9 trad. arr. Martin Carthy, Tim van Eyken pub. Topic Records Ltd</div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>Track Notes & extra details by Martin Carthy</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Goodbye Fare You Well</B></div> <div> The album is topped and tailed by Goodbye Fare You Well and Twenty One Years on Dartmoor. Liza put the former together from the mountain of verses to be found in Stan Hugill's master collection Shanties from the Seven Seas and had to leave out some beautiful verses otherwise we would have been at it all night. It's the one song on this CD which has no baddies in it and instead has singing fishes. Who needs Walt bloody Disney I say. (OK, Finding Nemo was fun).</div> <bR> <div> <B>The Oxford Girl</B></div> <div> With Liza's lead we sort of made up the melody for The Oxford Girl for Norma so sing from bits and pieces and personally I think that the result is rather good. In some sets of the song the words, towards the end, portray a full scale vision of the fires of hell at his bed foot, but it loses nothing by being ever so slightly more subdued.</div> <bR> <div> <B>The Galopede / Walter Bulwer's No. 2 / Walter Bulwer's No. 1</B></div> <div> The three tune sets are from different places. The George Tills tunes come from the South West by way of Paul Burgess and are from the repertoire of the same George Tills. The two Walter Bulwer tunes come from the man himself and were a part of a truly ground breaking record first put out as a limited edition in the early 1960s by Bob Davenport and Reg Hall from recordings which they had made of country musicians Walter and Daisy Bulwer and friends,now available on English Country Music (Topic TSCD607). The latter two are joined by the Galopede which has been part of the general dance band repertoire for as long as Norma and I can remember and I feel bound to say that familiarity breeds nothing like contempt. From the previously mentioned book Folk Songs of Old New England by Eloise Hubbard Linscott and the repertoire of one Edson Cole, a fiddle player and dancing master from New Hampshire, come the three tunes The Quadrille, The Tempest, and The Portland Fancy</div> <bR> <div> <B>Newry Town</B></div> <div> The songs here, with one exception, are about people who, whether or not they were born under a Bad Sign, certainly come - one way or another - under the Bad heading. Therefore it's almost a given that the songs about them are far more interesting if only because I don't believe anybody ever managed to write a song convincing anyone that the Stepford life was the life to live. Well not someone who lived out their life this side of imbecelic. Therefore welcome to the land where baddies rule. And to the story of the tragic Good Time Boy from Newry Town who just robbed a few people who had far too much of everything. Did them a favour really. Less for them to worry their pretty little heads about. And one does what one has to for one's girl friend who so likes shopping. Sooo likes it. The song is featured on the Voice of the People series of CDs coming from the repertoire of the great Suffolk singer Jumbo Brightwell and is to be found under a wealth of titles from Adieu Adieu (or Willow Day), to The Flash Lad, to the title here. These songs of terminal regret were literally two a penny in the 17th to 19th centuries. The ballad writers of the time would sell the sungs under the gallows just as the unfortunate crim was getting his or her deserts - just or otherwise - right there and right then. Here in its cradle is the modern music industry. And let us not imagine that this infant would need any lessons in ruthlessness from its modern descendants/offspring, for then, as now, another day was another dollar.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Farewell Lovely Nancy</B></div> <div> Several years ago Vic Gammon handed me a cassette of dubbings of cylinder recordings made by Cecil Sharp and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Through all the static could be heard some occasionally very odd but always beautiful performances of some songs from the original singers which, for the most part, had subsequently been published in the Journal of the Folk Song Society. Among them was this version of Farewell Lovely Nancy sung to the latter early in 1909 by a very old man called George Lovett in Winchester. Lovely Stuff.</div> <bR> <div> <B> <A NAME="black_muddy_river"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></B><B>Black Muddy River</B></div> <div> Somebody - and neither Norma nor I knows why - sent us a ninety minute tape with just one song on it. Black Muddy River. Norma found the tape when she was hunting around for songs to put on her first solo CD for Ryko in 1996. Every gig we do we say that someone unknown person sent it and as yet no one has come forward to claim it as their gift. Whoever you are, thank you very much. She didn't recognise the band at the time nor did she recognise the singer, neither did Liza nor did I. It was John Chelew - who produced the CD - who identified the band as the Grateful Dead and the singer as Jerry Garcia, who wrote the song along with Robert Hunter. I think it sums up, but in uniquely American terms, what we all do and what it feels like.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Napoleon's Death</B></div> <div> Tim also sings Napoleon's Death, the last verse of which a gent called Joseph Laver sang to Cecil Sharp in Bridgewater in 1905. The rest of the words - ahd there are a lot of them - are in the Journal of the Folk Song Society, sung by Henry Burstow under the title The Deeds of Napoleon which boasts some spectacularly descriptive passages like that of the fight “at Bazacco Hill / Where the blood would turn a mill.” It's a wonderful addition to that formidable cycle of English songs (and they are English) which make such a hero of Napoleon Bonaparte. Wish some historians with a lick of sense would one day explore the love which ordinary people here had for the man instead of dismissing the notion out of hand as they so often do.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Green Broom</B></div> <div> Green Broom comes from an early 1950s recording of the Connemara singer Sean MacDonagh. It is intriguing to hear English country songs which have found their way into the repertoire of a man such as Sean MacDonagh, who, I believe, spoke Irish as his day to day language and (apparently) hardly any English. Intriguing and a pleasant footnote the the generally noisome history of the British in Ireland. Such a cracking old fashioned tune too. The rest of the words come from Cecil Sharp who found the song several times in Somerset.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Captain Kidd</B></div> <div> ...Also repenting at length on the gallows (if we are to believe the song), we have Captain Kidd, hanged at Execution Dock in 1701, whose song sold well and spread far and wide. He started off straight and in the Royal Navy but having picked up all the tips in bad behavior necessary for the job, moved into piracy - largely in what are now American waters. A pirate's life for me. People have always been fancied their chances of finding his supposed treasure which, according to that same supposition, is for certain buried in any one of a dozen locations. This according to Eloise Hubbard Linscott in her Folk Songs of Old New England.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Twenty One Years on Dartmoor</B></div> <div> Tim learned this song from a recording of the lovely London born, Sussex dwelling singer Louie Fuller who sadly died just this year. It's great to come upon an old American song which has made the crossing the other way for a change and this is one which has been given a real working over into an English vernacular. Louie can be heard on When May Is in Full Bloom, one of John Howson's Veteran series of tapes and CDs.</div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="albums.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Albums"><U>Back</U></A></div> <bR> <div> Many thanks to Garry Gillard and Reinhard Zierke (and friends) for use of their album information. Check their site on the weblinks for more Waterson:Carthy history.</div> </td> </tr></table></body>