Davy Graham - A Scholar And A Gentleman [2 Discs] - (2009) -[MP3] @ 320kbps - [_24_]

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- Davy Graham - A Scholar And A Gentleman [2 Disc] -

07/01/15 :...... Our Release .. Format ..........: MP3 @ 320kbps
2 :.......... Discs .. Genre ........: Guitar / Folk


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Review By: Andy Fyfe

You never know what you’ve got until it’s gone, and when folk
guitarist Davy Graham died in 2008, relatively unknown compared to the
likes of Bert Jansch, Jimmy Page and Johnny Marr, who all owed him a
debt of influence, it was too late for most. This two-CD collection
helps rectify the balance, cherry picking from the eight albums he
recorded before or during 1970, by which time drugs had all but ended
his career, after which he largely made a living teaching guitar.

What made Graham such an unknown giant? Well, the giant part is easy:
although the jury is out on whether he actually invented it, Graham
certainly popularised the DADGAD guitar tuning that became the default
setting for any finger-picking guitarist; plus he wrote Anji, his first
ever composition, aged just 19, which went on to become a folk standard
recorded by Simon & Garfunkel, Jansch and Chicken Shack, and performed
by myriad others. The unknown part is harder to fathom. Never having an
American recording contract didn’t help, but Graham was too eclectic
for some, able to cross from jazz to folk to rock to raga to blues to
ragtime in a heartbeat. Towards the end of the 60s (his first album, The
Guitar Player, came out in 1963) his behaviour was eccentric at best,
reflected in the music, rather like a folk Syd Barrett. But that
doesn’t mean he’s difficult. There’s no mistaking how effortlessly
smooth his playing was, and while Graham never claimed to be much of a
singer, one listen to his limp voice on Dylan’s Don’t Think Twice,
It’s Alright or his struggle with The Beatles’ Getting Better
confirms why he mostly recorded instrumentals. Even so, the tracks here
from his 1964 album with doyen Shirley Collins, Folk Roots, New Routes,
are among his best.

Over these 36 tracks, his abilities and vision can be breathtaking.
From the first flourish of Anji through his introduction of jazz and
blues to folk traditions, not to mention bringing far more exotic
influences to the Brit folk scene – on Maajun (A Taste of Tangier) you
can almost smell the ground cumin years before Page, Brian Jones or Jimi
Hendrix ventured to Morocco – he was as instrumental in bringing world
music to the West as Peter Gabriel was over a decade later.

To ‘scholar’ and ‘gentleman’, for once the word ‘pioneer’
can be added without fear of contradiction.


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With Thanks To:
- Shark


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[_24_] - Release #003

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