DAVE SWARBRICK & MARTIN CARTHY

 

 

Have you ever wondered how these icons of the Folk world ever got together….it started more than 40 years ago…Swarb had spent a night at Martin Carthy’s house and Martin saw Swarb off at the station next morning. He was not expecting a rather sorry figure to turn up two days later, all plans awry and thwarted. A tour of Denmark had all gone wrong and the Danish Immigration Authorities had sent him back to Blighty.

 

As it happened, Martin was due to set off on a tour of Northern folk clubs. He asked whether Swarb would like to join him, offering to split the fee. At the time Martin’s standard club fee was £12, but most clubs passed the hat and on more than one occasion their take home pay more than doubled that amount.

This gave Swarb ideas: "What struck me was here I was tagging along for what I could get and earning more than I ever had playing with others".Out of this ad hoc arrangement grew what is still regarded as the definitive folk duo. No pair of musicians working together in the context of British folk can avoid their influence: one can trace a line through The Increds, The Dransfields, Show of Hands and countless others – not to mention Swarick and Nicol…and Hulett…and Dempsey…and Carthy (again, in the 1990’s)Magnificent as they are, the early Carthy/Swarbrick albums are a pale shadow of their on-stage brilliance (finally made available on Both Ears And The Tail).

Martin’s albums suggest they were essentially a vocal duo with fiddle accompaniment. Yet much of their live set focused on instrumentals: some of these became extended jams segueing as many as seven or eight tunes over anything up to a dozen minutes. The effect was breathtaking at the time (and remains so): it also laid groundwork for the future. Even Swarb’s debut album, Rags Reels and Airs, fails to suggest just how inspired they were as a duo. They were also intuitive players, often developing arrangements on the hoof, on stage (an influence many lesser musicians could well do without!)The definitive set of Carthy / Swarbrick recordings is yet to be compiled (sly hint to Tony Engle), but when it is, it will be one of the truly essential folk albums.