"If the English folk revival of the 1960s had a single "father" and guiding spirit, then Martin Carthy was it."

Martin Carthy is regarded as one of the finest singers and interpreters of British traditional music and an innovative and highly influential guitar player. He was born on 21st May 1941, at Hatfield in Hertfordshire. A school chorister, his early musical adventures with piano and trombone were soon abandoned in favour of guitar, an instrument that he used to smuggle out of the house disguised as the school's trombone.

Upon leaving school, he served as an assistant stage manager for a number of theatrical companies, and only gradually drifted into performing in the coffee house scene around London during the late '50s and early '60s. Like thousands of others skiffle music attracted him to this scene but a seminal moment occurred when Martin heard Sam Larner perform in a London club. Martin was drawn towards the traditional music of the British Isles. He joined Redd Sullivan, Marion Gray, and Pete Maynard in a group called the Thameside Four, and sang with them for three years. By the early 1960's he was resident at The Troubadour Folk Club in Earl's Court, London, where his playing and singing had a significant effect on all sorts of musicians, including Bob Dylan and Paul Simon who, respectively, adapted Lord Franklin and Scarborough Fair for their own records. Martin was also active around that time on a TV programme called Hallelujah! with Sydney Carter and Nadia Cattouse, amongst others.

Martin made his first solo recording on the collection Hootenanny in London (1963), singing Your Baby 'as Gone Down the Plug Hole, a song with which he opened his 60th Birthday Concert at The Oxford Apollo in 2001. With Leon Rosselson, Ralph Trayner and Marian MacKenzie, Martin recorded as the Three City Four, before making his first solo album Martin Carthy for Fontana Records in 1965. He recorded this and his second album with Dave Swarbrick (Swarb). This trailblazing musical partnership had been formed by accident when the Swarb found himself turned back by Dutch customs officials while travelling to Denmark. Martin offered to team up with Swarbrick on an upcoming tour with a 50/50 split of the proceeds. The duo began regular touring of the folk clubs that were springing up throughout Britain. Their recording situation was complicated by the fact that Martin was signed to Fontana as a solo artist, and the record company wouldn't modify the contract. It was not until Byker Hill (1967) that both got equal billing. The two ended up recording six albums and an extended-play single between 1966 and 1969.

From 1970-72, Martin was a member of Steeleye Span with whom he first played electric guitar. In 1972, he left Steeleye and began recording on his own again. That same year, he married Norma Waterson and became a member of her family's folk-singing group the Watersons, of which he has remained an active member. He also became a member of the Albion Band, the group formed by Ashley Hutchings in the early 1970s, working with them on the album Battle of the Field. Between and during group ventures, Martin maintained a busy solo career, recording such acclaimed albums as Crown of Horn (1976) and Because It's There (1979). During the 1970s, Martin also began doing theatre work, which led to the formation of the quintessentially English folk band, Brass Monkey in the early '80s. Two albums were recorded but overcrowded schedules stopped the band touring 1987. However, they have periodically regrouped for brief tours and recorded Sound and Rumour in 1998 and Flame Of Fire in 2004.

In the early nineties Martin renewed his partnership with Dave Swarbrick, producing two more fine albums: Life and Limb and Skin and Bone. By then Martin was working alongside his wife and daughter, Norma Waterson and Eliza Carthy (both Mercury Music Prize nominees and successful artists in their own right) as Waterson:Carthy. Waterson:Carthy (1994) and Common Tongue were both released to showers of superlatives, both capturing the unique musical empathy that lies between members of this exceptional family. Three more albums have followed, the latest being the critically acclaimed Fishes and Fine Yellow Sand (2004).

In June 1998, Martin was awarded an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours for services to English folk music, and he subsequently released the acclaimed Signs Of Life, his first solo release in almost 10 years. He also teamed up with Roger Wilson and Chris Wood to form the folk "supergroup" Wood, Wilson and Carthy. His new solo album Waiting for Angels is now available on Topic Records.