This massive chunk of English music history covers eight years and ten albums of THE IAN CAMPBELL FOLK GROUP's active recording history.
Between 1962 (when they released a live album on Topic that isn’t represented here) and the 1972 "Something to Sing About" everything had changed.
By then, Ian's sons Robin and Ali had had the cradle rocked enough to inspire their later reggae expeditions with UB40. By then, the English folk revival had blended into mainstream rock and roll, or retreated into smaller folk song clubs and specialist festivals. BOB DYLAN had torn up the innocent-sounding acoustic accompaniments and let the Hawks and the Butterfield Blues Band loose on traditional material and turned it into savage music that literate people could still enjoy as much as they had enjoyed jazz and traditional folk.
THE IAN CAMPBELL FOLK GROUP, moving to the new Transatlantic label in 1964, had also moved towards an international audience and started adding Campbell's own songs and covering work by the likes of JONI MITCHELL, TIM HARDIN and LEON ROSSELSON. The Newport Folk Festival, The Albert Hall and television spread their name into mainstream consciousness and away from the roots that they had planted. But The Ian Campbell Folk Group, as elders among the young tearaways like BERT JANSCH and the sharp, well researched soloists like MARTIN CARTHY and JUNE TABOR saw their style lagging behind, where once they had led.
Nevertheless, listening through the first album in this collection makes me realise just how important their work had been. Anyone in the mid sixties who was getting involved in folk music will have spent well refreshed evenings in pub back rooms roaring along with local singers whose repertoire was more or less lifted straight from the Campbell's early albums. For that generation these first 35 songs will be a reminder of that intoxicating mix of beer, grand tunes and a romantic proletarianism that quickly attached itself to anti-war demonstrations, going to University and deciding to change the world.. We might not have been miners or gasworks fitters (or even engravers like Campbell) but the songs THE IAN CAMPBELL FOLK GROUP taught us and wrote for us made it feel like we were all one world.
Ian, his sister Lorna and John Dunkerley (banjo, guitar and accordion) were the constant members, more or less from beginning to end. Dave Swarbrick was a stalwart in the most prolific days, Dave Pegg, (latterly a FAIRPORT CONVENTION and JETHRO TULL bass player) also did time. So too Brian Clark who married Lorna Campbell. Over the full sweep the instrumentation varies from single banjo to fairly elaborate orchestrations and a wide selection of interesting sounds (like the Appalachian dulcimer on "The Cutty Wren"). Ian and Lorna's voices are outstanding throughout.
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But all that is nothing without the songs. It is really as a collection of wonderful songs that this CD set is such a treat. Almost every tune will be familiar in haunted and "where have I heard that before?" ways. You won’t be as old as me, but these tunes are in your musical DNA (one way or another). The traditional ones are the unshakable foundations: the likes of "New York Girls", "The Unquiet Grave" and "Rockin' the Cradle" are well done. But there are a lot of traditional sounding modern songs (EWAN MACCOLL's especially) that connect the old tradition with newer themes. I admit that I never realised "The Apprentices Song", a supple tune about being apprenticed in a gas works, was one of Campbell's. I assumed it had "always been there" I suppose. Like Hovis. No song writer could have a stronger recommendation than that their work should have acquired a life of its own. Two songs from Liverpool's STAN KELLY are worth a mention. "Liverpool Lullaby" (hi Cilla!) and "Four Pounds a Day" are belters.
Fine versions of "Guantanemera" and "Cho Cho Losa" (gloriously unaccompanied) predate the World Music movement by a full decade. And there's the Dylan song of course.
The sound quality varies. No problems for me, but just now and again the unmistakable sound of pitted vinyl intrudes. I guess the earliest original tapes will with have decayed or been destroyed. Songs "Man in Black" (rather excellent) and "A Stranger I Came" (with harmonica) were originally left off the progressive sounding "New Impressions" album (the band wear ties on the cover). They sit very well in this remarkable collection.
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