Shirley Collins & Davy Graham [coming soon]

Davy or Davey Graham, depending on where you look, rewrote folk history, brought world music into perspective, changed how guitars are tuned and inspired guitarists from Bert Jansch to Jimmy Page. First spotted on a Ken Russell-directed documentary on guitar enthusiasts in 1959, Graham recorded for Topic before being signed to Decca for astring of solo albums that mixed traditional folk sounds with contemporary singer/songwriter material from Paul Simon, The Beatles, etc, and added some jazz inflections and his mystical Morrocan-inspired style of playing. Along with John Fahey in the States, Graham was responsible for stretching the boundaries of playing and developing the raga style which has, in turn, inspired the likes of modern freak folk and the solo guitar movement, Guitar Soli. Meanwhile, Shirley Collins was a folk traditionalist who, along with her sister Dolly, was retracing English folk music. Shirley had also undertaken a lengthy US soujourn where she witnessed Alan Lomax’s recordings of the blues and Appalachian folk music. With such heritage and with Graham travelling into Nigeria, Greece and delving into Irish folk traditions, Austin John Marshall invited the duo to record together for Topic and to see if this multitude of influences could be fused. On the sleevenotes to the subsequent album, Folk Roots, New Routes, which came out in 1965, he explains how Graham was invited to do an Indian raga interpretation of Collins’ version of the Appalachain folk song Pretty Saro. The recording was revolutionary and the album a treasure trove. It freed Collins to pursue her love of English music and also Graham to move into a more experimental mix of styles and gave us one truly monumental album too.