Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday was widely marked recently. He was not, though, the only great musician to celebrate. Martin Carthy was 80 on May 21, three days before Dylan, who has always acknowledged the influence of the older musician on his work.

In late 1959 Carthy recorded an EP for Topic Records. It is, sadly, lost. But more than 60 years later Topic is still his label and Carthy, the foremost figure in English folk music, remains one of the scene’s hardest working musicians, performing, recording and practising. “I still want to improve,” he says.

After a stint as a chorister at the Queen’s Chapel of the Savoy, Carthy began playing in coffee bars and folk clubs. In the early 60s he would often stay with the organiser after the gig. Such is his devotion to the scene and his rapport with the people involved that he still welcomes bookings from folk clubs.

In his long career Carthy has worked as a solo artist, in duos with Dave Swarbrick and John Kirkpatrick and in bands – The Albion Country Band, Band of Hope, Waterson:Carthy. He is innovative, open to ideas and musically curious. He plugged in with Steeleye Span, and played loud (“What’s the point of an electric guitar if you don’t?”). Brass Monkey, featuring trumpet, trombone and saxophone, paved the way for Bellowhead. He works with people from very different traditions – dub poetry and dhol drumming in The Imagined Village, jazz and flamenco with The Four Martins (Simpson, Taylor, Juan and Carthy).

So, where to begin an exploration of Martin Carthy’s extensive oeuvre? Look no further than the track on the covermount CD of the July 2021 issue: ‘Sovay’, from the album Life and Limb, which he made with collaborator, lifelong friend and fiddle player Dave Swarbrick, is an exhibition of his artistic virtues. He plays the guitar in a style all of his own (though now widely emulated): percussive, melodic, resonant and spare. He is in fine voice (there have been times when, in a search for authenticity his singing has, ironically, become mannered). There is spontaneity, freedom, joy and drama in the way he and Swarbrick play together. The noise they make here is as exciting as any by a rock band. Then there is the choice of the song itself. Often in folk songs young women are acted upon, and abused, by men. Sovay is the protagonist here, assertive in testing the truth of her lover’s feeling for her. She would, the listener is convinced, if he had handed over the ring, ‘have pulled the trigger and shot you dead.’ Carthy has always had an eye for a significant and singable song.

He credits Lonnie Donegan for sparking his interest in the guitar. It might come as a surprise, but the first song Carthy learned to play was ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ (which he returned to and recorded in 1998 on Signs of Life). But one night he went to Ewan MacColl’s Ballad and Blues Club where the guest was Sam Larner, a Norfolk fisherman, 80 then himself, who had been singing songs learned from his father and fishermen friends since he was a child. This was Carthy’s epiphany, and he has been finding and singing folk songs ever since.

His eponymous first album came out in 1965. With ‘High Germany’, ‘The Trees They Do Grow High’ and ‘Scarborough Fair’ this remains essential listening. Paul Simon, famously, learned ‘Scarborough Fair’, and Carthy’s version also inspired Bob Dylan’s ‘Girl from the North Country’. Carthy himself remains pleased with ‘The Wind That Shakes the Barley’. His second album, called simply Second Album (originality didn’t stretch to titles back then), is another step in this exploration, with the strange and wonderful ‘Lord Franklin’, which also informs ‘Bob Dylan’s Dream’, and ‘Lowlands of Holland’. Swarbrick joins him here and a year later they made Byker Hill, then But Two Came By and Prince Heathen, in which the duo perform traditional songs of great power, with dazzling virtuosity.

Carthy, who has worked in theatre, is open to songs from outside the traditional canon, and a vein of anti-war and politically outraged pieces runs through his work: Leon Rosselson’s ‘Palaces of Gold’, written following the Aberfan disaster; Maggie Holland’s ‘Perfumes of Arabia’, prompted by the Gulf War of 1991 and ‘Company Policy’, a response to the Falklands War, and one of very few songs written by Carthy himself.

Dylan went electric in 1965. It took a while but, as usual, the UK followed the US and by 1969 Fairport Convention were playing folk-rock. Carthy bought a bright blue Telecaster and joined Steeleye Span, having already suggested their name (that of an unfortunate character in the song ‘Horkstow Grange’, who comes off worst in a fight with a miser). In the face of the rather tedious controversy surrounding the playing of folk songs with rock instruments, Steeleye Span, with albums such as Please to See the King and Ten Man Mop, made interesting and exciting music, and were popular. More successful musically and imaginatively, if not commercially, were The Albion Country Band, bringing all this to bear on the unusual rhythms and magical melodies of Morris dance music with Battle of the Field. Shortly afterwards Carthy joined squeezebox maestro and dancer John Kirkpatrick on his album Plain Capers, an album of Cotswold Morris tunes played, as the title suggests, with no messing about.

Carthy is drawn to mysterious and monumental ballads: ‘Prince Heathen’, ‘Willie’s Lady’, the strange chronicle of a terrible spell and the ingenious breaking of it on Crown of Horn and his great achievement, ‘The Famous Flower of Serving Men’, first recorded on Shearwater and often revisited. This story of a woman whose husband and son have been murdered on the orders of her mother, and who disguises herself as a man and goes to serve the king, a magical white hind and a speaking dove, is cinematic and mesmeric. Carthy’s performance of such songs creates a kind of sonic theatre, drawing the listener into their world.

In 1970 Carthy married the great singer Norma Waterson. He performed with The Watersons, and was crucial to the making of Lal and Mike Waterson’s remarkable album Bright Phoebus. Carthy, Norma and their daughter Eliza, with Saul Rose or Tim van Eyken, have recorded several albums as Waterson:Carthy, their close-knit understanding of each other, the tradition and musicianship leading to the creation of beautiful music, for instance ‘The Bay of Biscay’ on Broken Ground.

Martin Carthy is wise. Realising that after eight decades his voice cannot do justice to some of the songs he is closely associated with – ‘Scarborough Fair’, ‘Lord Franklin’ – he no longer performs them. To hear those we must turn to the recordings. But there are plenty in his repertoire that he can give a good account of, even those such as ‘Willie’s Lady’ that are daunting. His voice has lost some of its range, but his guitar playing is as dextrous as ever.

BEST ALBUMS

Martin Carthy 

(Topic, 1965) 

Carthy’s debut announces his intention and ambition, to explore the canon of English traditional song, and sing its riches. 

Shearwater

(Pegasus, 1972)

Some brave, perhaps foolhardy, unaccompanied singing, and the wonderful drama of ‘The Famous Flower of Serving Men’, to which Carthy has returned time and again.

Albion Country Band

Battle of the Field

(Island, 1976)

The Albion Country Band play electric Morris music with great songs including Richard Thompson’s ‘New St George’. Recorded in 1973, just before the band broke up and, because of public demand, released in 1976.

Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick

Life and Limb  

(Topic, 1990)

A joyful reunion of Carthy and Swarbrick, who didn’t really arrange their material but played with spontaneity and an uncanny understanding of it and each other. 

Brass Monkey

The Complete Brass Monkey

(Topic, 1993)

Instead of electric guitars and drums, maybe brass would be a more promising innovation… it was. Brass Monkey’s first two albums on one CD. 

Waterson:Carthy

Broken Ground

(Topic, 1999)

The family band at their best. Great instrumental sets, an interesting take on ‘Raggle Taggle Gypsies’ and a sublime version of the ghostly night visiting song, ‘The Bay of Biscay’. 

This article originally appeared in the July 2021 issue of Songlines magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe today