My earliest memories of folk music are dancing around our sitting room when I was probably about three, to Skip to my Lou, performed by Pete and Peggy Seeger. My mother had an album of theirs, but the only other song I can remember on there was Froggy Went a Courting I wish I could remember some of the others ....as I grew older, and started buying records myself, the very first album I bought was Gather Me by Melanie Safka...I loved that record ( and still have it) In fact the one song on it I don't like so much is Brand New Key, her hit from the early 70s. I heard this album when I was in Greece with my family- my cousins, about 10 years older than me used to play it on their car 8 track cassette player as we drove to and from beaches from Athens for the day...not sure if it's exactly folk music, but what is the definition of that anyway-it had a folky feel to it. My cousins were very fashionable and cool in my eyes, I had to keep this record a bit secret from my dad, who hated pop music- we were, however, allowed to listen to stuff my mum liked and so then I began to buy Simon and Garfunkel records-wonderful, with intense, serious and clever lyrics...and beautiful voices singing lovely tunes. I was about 14 by then, and bought all of their albums...learning to play some of the melodies by ear. I still love Simon and Garfunkel-they sound fresh and relevant even 30 or so years on; I then abandoned folky sounding stuff for a few years while I listened to the Beatles, Stones and Velvets Underground, but then I found a strange way back- my friend Penny at school had an older brother Tom, who had a vast record collection- he was away at Oxford while we were 14-16, and some evenings I'd stay at Penny's and we'd go up to his room in the attic and riffle through the records...lots of 60s and 70s goodies; we tended to listen to the ones with the covers we liked, so there was Wake of the Flood - Grateful Dead, Little Feat, Genesis...we liked Lindisfarne and used to dance around the room to Fog on the Tyne-particularly Penny who used to demonstrate moves she'd learned as a child catwalk model!
A major event for local teenagers who went to St Margaret's church youth group in Putney in the 70s, was the Harvest Barn Dance- wonderful, and so much better than a disco; to do the dances properly, one had to actually touch and hold onto a member of the opposite sex and here was folk music! energetic and frantic at times...beat discos and disco music anyday. Somewhere along the line, maybe when I was about 17, I got friendly with the curate at our church- David Lee- he ran the youth group, and I helped him! He really loved the purer, more traditional folk music, and I can't remember which groups or singers in particular, but I used to go to Putney record library and borrow anything that looked serious! This music really chimed with an earlier (and abiding) love for traditional church music like plainsong, Tallis or Byrd-I found the music haunting somehow-got into my soul. This being Putney, home to the Half Moon pub, I also discovered Pentangle and Fairport Convention....Pentangle became an enduring obsession- and Bert Jansch as a solo artist- saw him again a couple of years ago at the South Bank more powerful if anything as a result of the passed years. Wierdly there was a bit of a co-incidence with him- I had a friend at primary and secondary schools, Charlotte who was born on the same day as me- our mothers had been friends back in the day- she ended up with Bert Jansch, possibly still together, who knows! Their son, who must be about 25 now, played at the South Bank gig...so if together, it's been a long time!
I also really liked American folk music; Bob Dylan, before and after the electrics, and Woody Guthrie
I am so lucky as I've always loved music, I always wanted to have a boyfriend who was in a band, and now I have a whole husband who is a musician-I remember when we were first going out, he thought I was pretending to like folk music to impress him, as he plays the fiddle... he was never as keen on folk music as me, although since we discovered Whitby we've both been learning a lot more about it-he's having occasional lessons with Pete Cooper...
Just watched Bruce Springsteen, the Seeger Sessions on DVD, he sums up various things about folk music in a way that makes sense- some of it is to do with it being people's music with none of the edges polished off as in the more anodyne offerings.
