8 October : Ballads and Songs

Ballads and Songs was Nic Jones’s debut solo album and the start of a run of massively influential releases from one of British folk music’s great innovators and stylists.

Given the material Jones put out later in his career, before his accident effectively ended it, this album sounds a bit stiff, as if he’s on his best behaviour, but all of his talents are on display: his guitar playing, the phrasing of his light baritone voice, his setting of traditional songs to tunes that please him more than the ‘originals’.

It’s fair to say that The Noah’s Ark Trap (1977), From The Devil To A Stranger (1978) and Penguin Eggs (1980) are a better representation of what he became when everything came together. But, in a year that was a good one for British folk music, Ballads and Songs is right up there with the best of them. Together with the directions taken Martin Carthy, this album was important and influential on a generation of performers.

Unfortunately, this is another one, like The Rout of The Blues, that is the subject of a rights argument, and for the same reason. I am not going to rehearse the argument here, it has been done to death elsewhere. If you don’t know of it and you’re curious, this old Mudcat thread covers the ground, sometimes vituperatively. Some years ago, on Dick Gaughan’s now defunct forum, Dick commented that he’d remastered Ballads and Songs and the original tapes were in poor condition. That remaster has never seen the light of day.

The album is not available on Spotify–I listened on my MP3 player (derived from a legit. source). Remarkably, it is all on YouTube and hasn’t been taken down.