Even posthumously DAVY GRAHAM casts a long shadow. Initially one of the biggest names of the 1960s British folk revival, his breathtakingly fluid finger-picking style influenced everyone from fellow trailblazing folkies like Bert Jansch and John Renbourn through to Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and his reputation has continued to flourish since his death from lung cancer in December 2008. In recent times, no less a figure than Johnny Marr has admitted his own style owes a large debt to Graham’s dextrous fretboard technique.
Graham had a seismic 1960s. His classic 1962 instrumental ‘Anji’ was picked out by every sensitive soul with an acoustic guitar up and down the land, while his critical standing was cemented by seminal album releases like 1964’s ‘Folk, Blues & Beyond’. It’s also a pretty safe bet that fellow UK folk-rock pioneers Fairport Convention first discovered both ‘Nottamun Town’ and ‘Reynardine’ from listening to Graham and Shirley Collins’ landmark LP ‘Folk Roots, New Routes’ from 1965.
In later years, the fiercely anti-commercial Graham lapsed into obscurity akin to Syd Barrett and Peter Green, with dark rumours of drugs and misadventure fuelling the myth. His instinctive love of performance sporadically lured him out of the shadows, but from the mid-70s on, his recorded output slowed to a trickle.
1991’s ‘Playing in Traffic’ proved to be his penultimate ‘official’ album and it was laid down over two low-key sessions in London and on the Wirral during the summer of the same year, with ex-Teardrop Explodes/ Dalek I Love You guitarist Alan Gill overseeing the latter sessions. It’s a little gem too: the sound of Graham alone with his guitar, playfully exploring music drawn from four continents and crafting an album that’s as much world music as it is folk. Exotic stuff, for sure, but then Graham was the product of a Guyanese mother and a Scottish father.
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Most of the tracks are brief, charming and full of soul. West African sailor’s song ‘Jinaco’ kicks us off in style, while source material as arcane as eerie Moroccan oud workouts (‘Majuun’), haunting Hindustani ragas (‘Ramkali’) and delicate transpositions of Bach concertos (‘Arioso’) fuel Graham’s questing imagination.
Elsewhere, Graham stays closer to home. ‘Kitty’s Rambles’ and ‘The Ram in the Thicket’ are fine examples of Celtic jigs and hornpipes. The warm, sparse ‘Joy of My Heart’ is inspired by Isle of Mull folkie Rae Fisher and the rolling, pastoral ‘Rain and Snow’ comes straight from the depths of Cecil Sharp House. A live recording of Marc O’Sullivan’s ‘Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down’ is about as close to straight folk-rock as it gets, although his adaptions of jazzy standards from the Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakey songbooks sound staggeringly natural despite being presented in such a stripped down form.
‘Playing in Traffic’, then, may never come with the hip cachet of Davy Graham’s venerable early work, but it’s a masterfully-crafted record made with soul and love and will delight any discerning folk and world music head. All credit to Probe Plus for giving it a second chance.
Probe Plus Records online
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