Cream "Fresh Cream" (Rear View)

When you go Googling for dates, details and other snippets of information that might come in useful you'll find the odd snippet that's too good not to purloin for your own purposes.

In this case it's: Fresh Cream. It all changed here - for better or worse. Your choice, which I borrowed from here (always give credit where credit's due).

Looking back from a twenty-first century perspective, of course, it mightn’t sound all that new or radically groundbreaking, but much of that comes from the fact that it was the first of the acknowledged mid- to late-sixties guitar hero albums. Of those notional peers, Are You Experienced? came out in the U.K. on 12 May 1967, Jeff Beck’s Truth in August 1968, Led Zeppelin I on 12 January 1969.

Released on manager Robert Stigwood’s independent Reaction label, Fresh Cream, along with the band’s first single (I Feel Free) hit the market place on 9 December 1966. on that basis, if you want to go all comparative, I’d suggest giving Fresh Cream a listen alongside other expressions of the blues boom scene they were emerging from - John Mayall’s Crusade or A Hard Road or, perhaps the original Fleetwood Mac line-up’s Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac.

A couple of general observations first.

For a start, given the fact that we’re talking a notional supergroup coming out of a rather small but quite fanatical scene, Cream’s debut album was surprisingly successful, peaking at #6 on the British album charts, which is rather impressive until you note that Mayall’s A Hard Road and Crusade both went as high as #8 and Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, released in February 1968, reached #4 and stayed on the charts 37 weeks.

Those figures, on the other hand, would also suggest a niche market large enough to support a fairly vibrant subculture, with participants who were quite prepared to lay down the readies for the latest releases. On that basis, you’d also expect the releases to fit into a discernible style which, largely, they do, and Fresh Cream covers the kind of territory you might expect from three of the most respected players to have emerged from the blues/R&B boom. It also goes a bit further than that, but let’s pause for a minute to take a closer squiz at that Blues Boom.

There were, through the mid- to late sixties, any number of bands hawking their particular brand of blues and R&B across the British countryside, from the poppier end of the spectrum (The Animals, Yardbirds, Manfred Mann) through to the out and out hard core traditionalists (John Mayall) with outfits like the Graham Bond Organisation somewhere between the two.

There was, if you struck it lucky, the opportunity to rise to something approaching stardom (a la The Rolling Stones) but for most of the practitioners who were doing it for a living it was a pretty hard slog. That changed towards the end of the decade, as other outfits (most notably Led Zeppelin) followed Cream into the American market, but until that happened we’re talking a niche market that was viable but didn’t pay all that well.

Eric Clapton was, as far as such a beast existed, the only significant name on the circuit who wasn’t an actual bandleader (John Mayall, Graham Bond, Zoot Money, for example) and the whole Clapton is God graffiti bit was kicking off when drummer Ginger Baker approached him to sound him out regarding a new band. Baker, one suspects, was looking for a better share of the gig proceeds than the hired hand wages he’d been getting to date.

Clapton, after stints in The Yardbirds, which he’d left because For Your Love was far too poppy for a blues purist to associate with, and John Mayall, where he was just about on co-headline status with the nominal leader, was looking for something interesting and had noted the existence of a rather good bass player in the shape of Jack Bruce, who could also sing and also had his eye on the young Steve Winwood in the vocal and keyboards department.

Guitar, bass, drums and Hammond B3 seemed to be the default blues band lineup, aided and augmented by the odd saxophone if the finances stretched that far.

So Baker, looking for a better earner, approaches Clapton, who is coming off seeing Buddy Guy in a trio setting and learns, yes, Eric’s interested, but he’d like to see Jack Bruce on bass. That was a complication Baker wasn’t ready for. He’d worked with Bruce in the Graham Bond Organisation and the pair, regardless of how well they worked as a rhythm section, loathed and detested each other.

There was the odd rehearsal/jam here and there through 1966, basically, one gathers, when everyone was in the same London neighbourhood, but each of the trio had a gig elsewhere until Baker let the cat out of the bag in a newspaper interview. At that point Clapton got the bullet from Mayall’s Bluesbreakers (though he seems to have been ready for a change and looking for a way out) and Bruce was ejected from Manfred Mann, so the trio had little choice but to see whether they could actually make a go of it.

Which, in turn brings us to Fresh Cream and the two singles that preceded the band’s second album, Disraeli Gears. The first thing to note here is the importance of the Top 40 when it came to getting exposure in a market where there weren’t many outlets. We’re talking the pirate radio era here, with very limited avenues to get your music heard on the official broadcaster, so Wrapping Paper and I Feel Free were important elements in getting the name out there and spreading the word, even if they weren’t particularly representative of what the band was actually doing.

Released the same day as Fresh Cream, Wrapping Paper could possibly have been less like what you’d expect from an electric blues-based power trio, but it’s hard to think how. Lightweight jazzy piano rather than heavy electric guitar, Beatles rather than Blues, a Jack Bruce vocal with accompanying harmonies, the song started as a four way co-operative effort but the published version is credited to Bruce/Brown (that’s Pete Brown, as in Pete Brown & His Battered Ornaments) much to Ginger Baker’s continuing disgust.

The highly poppy I Feel Free, once the bom bom vocal introduction is out of the way, is a bit more like what you’d expect from a blues-based outfit, though it’s sitting in the realm of pop music innovation rather than the maintenance and continuation of tradition. It is, to me at least, catchy as hell, a classic piece of hook- and harmony-laden pop-rock psychedelia complete with concise Clapton solo. On that basis, even tacked on to the front of Fresh Cream as it was on the American version of the album, it works pretty well.

And it’s at this point, I guess, that we start to disavow ourselves of the notion of Cream as a heavy blues based outfit, though subsequent developments would tend to reinforce the misconception. There was, from my reading of the situation anyway, a conscious move to get away from the limitations and restrictions imposed by blues orthodoxy alongside a definite awareness of which side of the bread had the butter.

So the direction might have been towards pop, but there was still going to be something for the Clapton is God crowd as the trio worked the virtuoso end of the ability spectrum. I’ve contrasted this approach with the American approach to the blues, which was, insofar as anyone was paying attention at all, to emphasise authenticity rather than improvisation or invention.

The best example of that, to me at least, lies in my reaction to Fresh Cream lined up against The Paul Butterfield Blues Band (discussed here). The Butterfield is genuine, authentic harp-driven Chicago blues. Cream, while starting from the same roots, are obviously an outfit that are interested in exploring their individual capabilities. Interestingly, it seems that both bands experienced a seismic shift when they encountered the auditoriums of San Francisco, with Butterfield heading off into East/West’s exploration and improvisation and Cream developing the lengthy extrapolations of a couple of tracks from Fresh Cream, Disraeli Gears and Wheels of Fire that have become the basis of an ongoing reputation.

When they recorded Fresh Cream, of course, all that lay in the future, and while things in the second half of 1966 were heading towards the psychedelic explosion that exploded the following year, there were a number of things that hadn’t quite coagulated when Cream ventured into the studio to cut their first album.

The writing, in particular, hadn’t settled into regular collaborations, and that’s obvious when you look at the credits for the original tracks. Bruce gets the sole credit for N.S.U. which gets things off to a fine start thanks to some pounding from Baker, a driving solo from Clapton and some pretty basic words from Bruce that don’t deliver an over-elaborate portrait of the sexually active young muso’s lifestyle, N.S.U. being non-specific urethritis which might not sit in the same league of venereal diseases but is still something you’d best be avoiding if at all possible.

Not, in other words, the sort of thing you’d be discussing with the missus, and the other half of the writing credit for Sleepy Time Time goes to Mrs Bruce (Janet Godfrey). It’s a slow blues, again nothing too flash in the lyrics but plenty of sting in Clapton’s solo that went on to become one of the mainstays of the band’s live set.

If you were going to label anything on the set as filler, the most obvious candidate would be Bruce’s Dreaming, which definitely points towards a need for someone with a bit of a gift in the lyrics department. The vocals (Clapton and Bruce) are nicely layered, pleasant enough listening but nothing that’s going to excite.

Sweet Wine, on the other hand, credited to Ginger Baker and Janet Godfrey, mightn’t have the greatest set of lyrics you’ve ever run across but provides a perfect platform for extended improvisation and exploration (the Live at Winterland version elsewhere in the Those Were the Days box runs to fifteen minutes). Here, at 3:17 it’s a clear hint of what was to come, something that was equally obvious to the Townsville outfit named Vintage, who were inclined to spin it out to great lengths well before Live Cream appeared on the market.  Great song in the studio version, considerably better than what’s come before and one of the highlights of the album.

Side One of the vinyl version winds up with Willie Dixon’s Spoonful, another candidate for the lengthy workout in a live setting. At six and a half minutes cut live in the studio with Bruce’s harp introduction overdubbed later you can definitely see where they were headed. Sweet Wine roared along nicely as a slice of pop rock, but here we’re talking blues. Bruce’s impassioned, spine-tingling vocal and the swirling three way instrumental interaction combine to deliver a definite pointer towards a future where Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Led Zeppelin and company would evolve towards heavy metal thunder.

Spoonful is the point where you can take that earlier comment: Fresh Cream. It all changed here - for better or worse and stand and point to an actual spot where the change occurred. There’d been hints earlier, but Spoonful, I reckon, marked the actual turning point, and it’s just as well it was right at the end of Side One of the vinyl because following it was always going to be tricky.

Still, a three minute instrumental take on Dr Ross’ Cat's Squirrel (credited as Traditional, arr. Sam Splurge) actually does that pretty well, with a rolling riff from Clapton, blasts of harp following the riff and Baker thrashing away underneath. A flurry of scatty alrights from Bruce lead straight into a Clapton solo that in turn brings the harp back in. The whole thing twists and rolls quite magnificently, and it’s one of the overlooked gems on the album.

That’s not a description you’d be inclined to apply to Clapton’s vocal take on Robert Johnson’s Four Until Late. Fortunately Bruce does his stuff quite tastily on the harp solo, but along with Dreaming this is the album’s weak point. The harp extravaganza continues on Muddy Waters’ Rollin' and Tumblin' and here is where the difference in approach between American authenticity and British adaption comes into focus. This one’s right in Yardbirds style rave-up territory and leads into another often overlooked gem in their take on Skip James’ I'm So Glad, the other overlooked gem on the album.

On the surface there’s not much there in the lyric department, practically nothing beyond I’m so glad / I’m so glad / I’m glad I’m glad I’m glad but there’s a great riff and a sort of Sufi twirler Holy Roller vibe (it was, apparently, a spiritual in its original incarnation). The combination of riff, Claptonic solo, funky bass line and pounding drums works a treat and it’s probably my personal favourite on the album.

Given my rating of N.S.U, Sweet Wine, Spoonful, Cat’s Squirrel and Rollin’ and Tumblin’ (all of which will find themselves into Hughesy’s Top 1500 Most Played eventually) that’s a pretty big wrap.

The years have made me slightly more tolerant of drum solos, but repeated exposure to the monster that spawned hundreds of imitations has me inclined to reach for the shuffle button when the distinctive riff that leads into Ginger Baker’s solo extravaganza on Toad rears its ugly head.

As stated, I’ve mellowed a bit and as a drum solo this is better than most, but still...

They've remastered it and whacked it back out on iTunes for $10.99 with I Feel Free tacked onto the front, so what we’re looking at (or would be if some skinflint hadn’t gone for the Those Were The Days box set for $31.99 is the American version of the album with Spoonful restored to its rightful slot at the end of Side One.

So, after the track by track, back to the significance, which isn’t, I suspect, obvious to someone who wasn’t on the ground and listening at the time.

1966 and the first half of 1967 were definitely interesting times as far as pop music was concerned, though we’re still in the realm of the 45 rpm single rather than the album. A glimpse at the listing here will reveal some very interesting items. Take a gander at the equivalent for 1967 and you’ll see the flood gates opening.

And it’s the sequencing that’s the key issue here, a sense of chronology and influence. Look at Fresh Cream alongside Disraeli Gears and the studio half of Wheels of Fire and we’re talking substantially different ball parks. Look at Fresh Cream alongside albums that came out in December 1966 (notably Buffalo Springfield and The Who’s A Quick One), January and February 1967 (The Doors and The Rolling Stones Between the Buttons, The Byrds Younger Than Yesterday, Mayall’s A Hard Road and the Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow) and the contrast isn’t quite as marked.

Cream didn’t quite have things together at this point. There were things that needed to be sorted, particularly in the writing. It was obvious that they needed someone who could provide a decent lyric and the recording facilities in England, though they were quite capable of turning out quality product, didn’t have the sophistication of eight- or sixteen track recording. Get to New York, which they did for Disraeli Gears and you’re looking at the wherewithal to indulge in overdubbing and sonic possibilities that didn’t exist at home.

So while they weren’t the first electric blues band to come out of the British blues boom, they were the first to emphasise virtuosity over authenticity. They weren’t the first guitar bass drums power trio but they were on the ground ahead of most of the opposition, including the Jimi Hendrix Experience (Hendrix landed in London on 23 September 1966).

Actually, in that regard, with Bruce in the band they were the equivalent of the power trio plus singer outfits like The Who (contemporaries) and the likes of the Jeff Beck Group (with Rod Stewart out the front) and Led Zeppelin and given the chronology they were operating in largely unmapped territory, and doing it before some of the features of the emerging musical landscape, including what I’ve seen described as lengthy improvisations during which mighty civilisations might rise and fall became de rigeur.

As one of the instances where blues, pop and rock elements started to coalesce and settle out as something totally new Fresh Cream delivers a certain degree of virtuosity for its own sake. Take the jazz roots (Bruce and Baker cut their teeth in that sphere) and Clapton’s wailing blues guitar and you’re probably always headed down that path, but at the same time while it might be virtuosity for its own sake you can’t deny the fact that you’re looking at three players who were widely regarded as the very best going around on the English blues circuit.

In some cases those who came after went on to greater heights (in musical terms, let’s leave minor details like chart positions and sales figures out of the equation) and had the chops to surpass one or more of Cream’s trio. There’s no denying the significance of the big names in the pantheon of late sixties guitar heroes, names who are so well known that they don’t need enumerating, but they weren’t all able to sit on top of a rhythm section as good as this one.

Whether you see Fresh Cream as the beginning of a golden age of virtuoso improvisation or the first signs of the emergence of the dinosaurs of heavy metal that needed to be swept away a decade later, there’s no doubt Fresh Cream was one of the key landmarks in the development of late sixties rock music and while what followed often sounded sharper, rocked harder and delivered innovations that may well have happened without it, those things wouldn’t, I suspect, have panned out in quite the same way if Ginger Baker hadn’t sidled up to Eric Clapton and inquired if he was interested in getting a new group together as a slightly better earner.

Fresh Cream was the result, and while it has its share of weaknesses it’s a remarkably complete and consistent effort, and a harbinger of what was lurking just over the horizon,

Frank Zappa/Mothers of Invention "Freak Out!" (4.5*)

Here’s one that’ll have anyone who’s heard of Frank Zappa without having heard much of his actual output scratching their heads, I think, and, in the wake of a massive re-release program (the Zappa Family Trust are in the process of releasing the back catalogue in a couple of fairly massive tranches) there are likely to be a few folks out there wondering what the expletive deleted is going on here.

The answer to that question, of course, lies in the fact that the item under consideration here is the first album in an extensive discography, and it’s worth looking back to where we were in 1966 if we’re trying to make sense of what’s on offer.

There’s a fairly extensive body of writing on FZ and his work, most of which hasn’t lobbed on my bookshelves, but I’ve read a fair bit of it over the years and I do have a copy of Barry Miles’ magisterial Frank Zappa (Atlantic Books, 2004), which seems to have most of the bases covered after fairly exhaustive research and a reasonably close personal acquaintance with his subject, and Miles describes Freak Out! as the Bildungsalbum that summed up his entire life to that point (pp.49-50).

Up to that point Zappa had been playing rock, doo wop and R&B, as well as indulging his experimental predilections, so it’s hardly surprising there’s a heavy R&B doo wop influence in Freak Out! There’s also the not inconsiderable point that while the album was cut over a couple of days at Hollywood’s Sunset Highland Studios between 9 and 12 March 1966 and released in July, much of the material was written two to three years earlier (p. 101). Interestingly, the sessions started just over a week after they’d been signed.

So we’re not quite headed off into the further fringes of wayoutness, and, indeed, what you could get away with in a scatological sense in 1966 was an entirely different kettle of fish to what you could do, say, five years later. So if you’re looking for Billy the Mountain or the groupie related content that featured on Fillmore East - June 1971 this won’t be your favoured destination.

It’s also worth taking a look at the back story, since from the beginnings of Hungry Freaks, Daddy, we’re straight into some pretty straightforward rock’n’roll (although it comes with additional kazoo enhancement). It’s a background that runs away from the trendier areas of Los Angeles, the likes of Sunset Strip, the Hollywood Hills and Laurel Canyon (though that’s where Zappa was based for most of the next thirty-five years).

The urban sprawl extends well east of downtown LA, and out in the boondocks around San Bernardino (more specifically, a locale called Rancho Cucamonga) an aspiring composer, studio owner and guitarist was invited to join a local R&B outfit known as the Soul Giants after a disagreement between singer Ray Collins and guitarist Ray Hunt, who was duly shown (or chose to find) the door.

Zappa’s suggestion that the band switch to original material rather than the standard cover version fare they’d been dishing up didn’t go down well with original leader and saxophonist Davy Coronado, who reckoned they’d lose gigs and quit. Renaming the ensemble, Zappa took over the leader’s role. By late 1965 the band was playing Sunset Strip clubs, where MGM staff producer Tom Wilson offered them a recording contract on the strength of Trouble Every Day, under the impression he was signing a white blues band similar to Chicago’s Paul Butterfield Blues Band and New York City’s Blues Project. Wilson’s production credits included Simon and Garfunkel, Sun Ra, The Velvet Underground, Eric Burdon and The Animals and Bob Dylan (three albums and Like a Rolling Stone).

It was soon obvious what he was getting wasn’t quite what he expected, but Wilson was impressed enough to wangle a hefty recording budget and authorise Zappa to rent $500 worth of percussion instruments for a session with all the freaks from Sunset Boulevard on the Friday night. The results formed a substantial chunk of the unfinished The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet which occupied Side Four of the resulting double album.

By this point, thanks to their gigs on Sunset Strip, Zappa was a leading player in the Los Angeles freak fraternity, alongside Carl Franzoni and Vito Paulekas, the effective role models for Hungry Freaks, Daddy which may have sounded like fairly standard mid-sixties rock until the vibes and kazoo chimed in but was, in effect a nonconformist call to arms, and fair enough, that’s what the package suggested was coming.

Following it with I Ain't Got No Heart might seem like a step back from the brink, given the fact that it’s reasonably straightforward in the lyrical department, but it’s a rather clever bit of sequencing in a double album that gradually departs from the mainstream over its four sides, culminating in the twelve and a bit minutes of The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet.

Side one of the vinyl version went along a one bent, one straight formula, with I Ain't Got No Heart being followed by a posting from the edge in Who Are the Brain Police? which is, in turn succeeded by the three part doo wop harmonising by Zappa, Collins and bassist Roy Estrada on Go Cry on Somebody Else's Shoulder. Zappa was, of course, a major doo wop fan with a collection of more than 7,000 doo wop and R&B singles but his take on the genre, however affectionate it might have been, was cynically satirical (You cheated me baby/and told some dirty lies about me/Fooled around with all those other guys/That's why I had to get my khakis pressed).

You might be inclined to dismiss Motherly Love as a lightweight affair, at least until the groupie references kick in, by which stage it’s obvious the Mothers are out for as much of the old horizontal mambo action as can be arranged, and I have to admit the Kazoo choruses have a particular charm when lined up beside the lascivious intent being expressed in the lyrics.

And you can imagine them delivering How Could I Be Such a Fool? as a fairly straight ballad in a club setting, though in this setting it’s a fairly obvious send up, as is the absurdist semi-bubblegum Wowie Zowie, coming a good two years before the Ohio Express and the 1910 Fruitgum Company.

The affectionate yet mocking take on the doo wop R&B ballad continues through You Didn't Try to Call Me and Any Way the Wind Blows, one of the first tracks cut for the album (the other one, Who Are the Brain Police? was probably the one that had producer Wilson on the phone to headquarters) and there’s a darker touch to I'm Not Satisfied before things start to take a consistent turn away from the mainstream.

There’s still a bit of the mainstream in You're Probably Wondering Why I'm Here but it’s being firmly pushed aside as Zappa’s lyrics set about mocking the straight elements in the Mothers‘ nightclub audiences. At least that’s the way I read it.

Things get really serious with Trouble Every Day. Close to fifty years later you might tend to forget just how ugly things were getting in the black ghettoes right across the States. A perceptive take on 1965’s race riots in South Central Los Angeles and the police response to them is delivered in a Dylanesque rap with the crunch lines You know something people, I’m not black/But there’s a lotsa times I wish I could say I’m not white around half way through the close to six minutes.

From there, eight and a half minutes of Help, I'm a Rock meander along in a manner best experienced on headphones, but probably won’t make a great deal of lyrical sense in that environment either. I’m inclined to think of this one as a freak ‘em out performance piece, though they’d moved on from there by the time the album hit the racks (if the setlist from June 1966 here is any indication).

After that, the acapella ramble through It Can't Happen Here (who, indeed would’ve imagined they’d freak out in Minnesota, though one suspects that in March 1966 freak outs in that part of the country would have been few and far between) leads fairly seamlessly into The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet which sets out as a cross country percussive ramble through a couple of twists and turns and, as previously mentioned, covers the entire fourth side of the vinyl double album.

Given the vagaries of record company releases in Australia and the difficulty of laying your hands on some of this stuff, my high school acquaintances and I had a much closer relationship with Absolutely Free and We’re Only In It For The Money, and by that time Zappa was far more inclined to experiment in the studio but the remastered and re-released Freak Out with its blend of straight rock, doo-wop, experimentation and a razor sharp analysis of the straight/freak divide has aged remarkably well.

And, of course, as a precursor of what was to come it’s probably the best place to start a re-examination of Zappa and his work, and an obvious starting point for the Zappa neophyte.

The Mothers Of Invention (the initial recorded incarnation):
Frank Zappa – Guitars, Vocals
Ray Collins – Harmonica, Cymbals, Tambourine, Vocals, Finger Cymbals
Elliot Ingber – Guitars
Roy Estrada – Bass, Vocals
Jimmy Carl Black – Drums, Percussion, Vocals

Bert Jansch Jack Orion (4.5*, assuming you're trad folk fingerpicking tolerant)

Bert Jansch and It Don't Bother Me were, looking back from the perspective of a bloke who hadn't paid much attention at the time and is now engaged in a catch up mission, interesting enough exercises in fingerpicked guitar and vocals, but having heard that sort of thing from time to time over forty-something years there wasn't anything that made me stop, sit up and pay attention. This one, however, is different.

In any emerging scene you're going to get a degree of reconnaissance and quiet checking out before you hit the real groundbreaking territory, and Jack Orion was a large enough quantum leap from Bert Jansch and It Don't Bother Me to have me surfing over to iTunes to check what might be the missing piece in the jigsaw, Bert and John, Jansch's 1966 collaboration with John Renbourn.

To fill in a bit of backstory (simplified in the interests of not throwing everything out of whack by halting proceedings in order to reread Dazzling Stranger and Electric Eden) Jansch arrived in London in the mid-sixties as a close to complete virtuoso after a musical apprenticeship in  the folk clubs of Edinburgh and a couple of years busking and hitchhiking around Britain and across the continent, travelling as far afield as Tangier before being repatriated with dysentery.

Back in London he'd fallen in with, among others, John Renbourn, Davey Graham, Roy Harper, Wizz Jones and Paul Simon, who was in between the original recording of Sounds of Silence and the percussion added version that became the hit single.

In such circumstances there's bound to be a degree of jamming and cross-fertilisation, and Jansch seems to have hit it off with Renbourn to the extent that he appeared on It Don't Bother Me (as did Harper) and the results were first heard on Bert and John, which was quickly followed by Jack Orion, the album that (in the words of Colin Harper in Dazzling Stranger (p. 3) all but defined a new brand of music - British fingerstyle or folk-baroque or whatever it may be called.

From the opening notes of The Waggoner's Lad with Jansch on banjo while Renbourn picks out the guitar part we’re looking at traditional material and traditional-sounding facsimiles being given a reinterpretation by two gifted musicians who were, by this stage, sharing a flat with the opportunities for collaboration and exploration such an arrangement delivers.

If you know Ewan MacColl’s The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face from the Roberta Flack version you mightn’t pick it up here, but at 1:45 it’s a prelude to the album’s centrepiece, Jack Orion, a ten-minute adaptation of a traditional ballad where king's son who’s a harper plays before another king, arranges to meet his daughter, and is betrayed by his servant who is supposed to wake his master but goes in his place and rapes the princess, who subsequently kills herself. The harper then kills the servant and then either goes mad or kills himself. There was, apparently, a lot of that sort of thing going around at the time.

In the ballad, Glasgerion was a harper, but while the words had survived in print the tune had disappeared until British folk revivalist A.L. (‘Bert’) Lloyd fitted a tune to the words and changed the lead character into a fiddler. Lloyd had recorded the new version in 1965, and the Jansch/Renbourn interpretation went on to become one of the centrepieces of Pentangle’s concert setlist before appearing on 1970’s Cruel Sister.

From there we stay in traditional territory for the duration, with The Gardener, Nottamun Town (the traditional tune Dylan appropriated for Masters of War that subsequently turned up on Fairport Convention’s What We Did On Our Holidays) and Henry Martin.

The album’s other highlight is Black Water Side, thought to have originated in Northern Ireland, also covered by, among others Anne Briggs, Sandy Denny and any number of Irish performers from the Clancy Brothers down.

This story of a woman who has her heart broken when a suitor breaks his promise of marriage, although she hopes he will change his mind one day came into Jansch’s repertoire by way of folklorists Peter Kennedy and Sean O'Boyle, A.L. Lloyd, and Anne Briggs.  Briggs and Jansch often performed together in folk clubs and around the beginning of 1965 were spending most of the daytime at a friend's flat, working on new material and adapting traditional material to fit Jansch’s guitar work.

Jansch had been playing Black Water Side live well before the Jack Orion sessions and Al Stewart, who’d been following Jansch's gigs closely, had figured out what he thought was Jansch's take on the track, though he used the wrong tuning. Stewart was in the middle of recording his first album, with Jimmy Page playing the sessions and during a tea break Stewart taught Page his version, which subsequently appeared on Led Zeppelin as Black Mountain Side.

After that, the traditional Pretty Polly rounds out an album that might have been light on for original material (though Jansch’s original material drew heavily on traditional sources anyway) but set the groundwork in place for Pentangle’s exploration of the same themes and set things up (at least that’s the way it looks with the benefit of hindsight) for the traditional goes electric approach taken by Fairport Convention, Ashley Hutchings’ various projects along the same lines and much of what followed through to the present.

Hugely influential and required listening for anyone interested in the field.