ZEROSOUNDS
Presents
ANNE BRIGGS
I have been wanting to post some Anne Briggs for an age and she is a justifiably mythic figure in British folk music and like many a myth has left a truly larger than life legend behind her. At the time of her re-release of her remastered album The Time Has Come in 2021 Alexis Petridis interviewed her for The Guardian (see below) notoriously shy in front of an audience she had not sung for over 34 years.*
Few legends loom larger than Anne Briggs in the history of British folk; she was a dazzlingly gifted young prodigy who was discovered by Ewan MacColl in 1962 and sporadically performed and recorded until 1973, when she decided she didn't care for the sound of her voice on record and walked away from her career, presumably for good.
Briggs had recorded a pair of EPs and contributed to some compilation albums in the 1960s but didn't recorded a full LP until 1971, when she cut her full-length debut for the well-respected British folk label Topic Records. Of Briggs' three albums, "Anne Briggs" is easily the purest and most austere; Briggs sings a cappella on six of the ten songs, and on the rest she's accompanied only by an acoustic guitar or bouzouki, and the production is clean and straightforward, as if a microphone was placed in the room with Briggs and the results were put to tape with no further filtering or manipulation. Briggs' voice is stunning in its clarity and her command of her instrument is complete on these ten selections, but what makes this album a lasting classic is Briggs' gift as an interpreter. There's precious little in the way of forced drama in these performances, but Briggs inhabits these songs the way a truly gifted actor can slip completely into a character, and with the simplest tools at her disposal she turns these age-old melodies (with two Briggs originals for seasoning) into stories that draw the listener in, holding them breathless through the full ten minutes of "Young Tambling." Briggs draws from the classic repertoire of British folk on this album (two of the same songs would later appear on Fairport Convention's ground-breaking "Liege & Lief"), but she was willing to embrace idiosyncratic versions of these songs (most notably "Young Tambling," better known as "Tam Lin," and "The Cuckoo") and her interpretations are singular in their beauty and eloquence.
In the liner notes that accompany the 2008 reissue of this album, Ken Hunt points out that many of the stories that circulate about Briggs' wild, nomadic life are myth rather than reality. But one has only to listen to Anne Briggs to realize that the legends of her gifts as a singer are rooted firmly in fact, with these recordings as proof.
Tracklist:
"Blackwater Side"
"The Snow It Melts The Soonest"
"Willie O'Winsbury"
"Go Your Way"
"Thorneymoor Woods"
"The Cuckoo"
"Reynardine"
"Young Tambling"
"Living By The Water"
"Ma Bonny Lad"
Anne Briggs - 1971 - Zerosounds here
Classic Anne Briggs (1990) - Zero G Sounds here
A painfully shy person in front of an audience, Anne's singing was hypnotic and from all accounts had a profound influence on other UK folk notables such as June Tabor, Maddy Prior and Sandy Denny. Sandy's song The Pond and the Stream (track 7, Fotheringay album) was inspired by Anne Briggs:
Annie wanders on the land
She loves the freedom of the air....
Anne was shy of her own recordings. She "delayed" the release of her 1974 recordings with the impromptu group Ragged Robin for a mere 22 years. (Sing a Song For You - 1996).
"Classic Anne Briggs" is the Anne Briggs motherlode, encompassing her four original 1963-1971 EPs and sole LP recorded for the Topic label. This music is mainly a capella, though some tracks have sparse instrumental arrangements.
Tracks
Tracks
1 The Recruited Collier
2 The Doffing Mistress
3 Lowlands Away
4 My Bonny Boy
5 Polly Vaughan
6 Rosemary Lane
7 Gathering Rushes
8 The Whirly Whorl
9 The Stonecutter Boy
10 Martinmas Time
11 Blackwaterside
12 The Snow It Melts the Soonest
13 Willie O' Winsbury
14 Go Your Way
15 Thorneymoor Woods
16 The Cuckoo
17 Reynardine
18 Young Tambling
19 Living by the Water
20 My Bonny Lad
Here is the link to a rare interview, in which Anne Briggs talks to Alexis Petridis about her 'lost classic' folk album - and why she has hardly sung a note for 34 years*
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/aug/03/folk.shopping1
This 1971 album is a genuine piece of British folk history. Anne Briggs' first album collected largely unaccompanied traditional songs, but this, her second LP, features her debut ventures into the realm of songwriting, the title track being her first ever composition.
An astoundingly accomplished piece of music, 'The Time Has Come' (later covered by Pentangle) gives a taster not only of Briggs' writing skills but also manages to place that effortless, timeless vocal of hers within a very personal framework. Singing self-penned material was a fairly unusual practice (in the folk community at least) back when Briggs first started writing alongside her then-partner Bert Jansch, in the '60s, so to hear such a remarkable folk voice bringing new music to life must have had quite some impact.
Then there's the guitar playing: Briggs has said herself that Bert Jansch's fingerpicking was a revelation to her, a liberation from the Woody Guthrie-style chord strumming the folk scene was so used to. This album features Briggs' own considerable picking skills, with the complexity of the guitar arrangements making for a perfect counterbalance to her uncommonly even voice. Utterly beautiful, breathtakingly pure British folk. A classic.
Tracks:
1. Sandman's Song
2. Highlodge Hare
3. Fire and Wine
4. Step Right Up
5. Ride, Ride
6. The Time Has Come
7. Clea Caught a Rabbit
8. Tangled Man
9. Wishing Well
10. Standing on the Shore
11. Tidewave
12. Everytime
13. Fine Horseman
Thanks so much to Zero over at ZeroGSounds as he has posted links to this. The previous albums contain mostly accapella work and the album The Time has Come is the closest she cam to updating her work and playing with a full band. It is fine fine work and perhaps my favourite!
