Led Zep - Prog Side - Complilation

^And where did Davy Jones, Jansch, McTell, John Renbourn et al, aside from Moroccan style tunings, get their influences from? Let it go now, Greg. This could go on  until we reveal who actually invented the drum.


Edited by SteveG - September 20 2014 at 14:34

The Dark Elf wrote: SteveG wrote: ^And where did Davy Jones, Jansch, McTell, John Renbourn et al, aside from Moroccan style tunings, get their influences from? Let it go now, Greg. This could go on  until we reveal who actually invented the drum. Surprisingly enough, Moroccan tuning came from Morocco, and was brought over from Africa by Brit Davey Graham, who was inspired by the tuning of an oud player. That's what inspired Jansch, Richard Thompson and even Page. What that has to do with American folk escapes me. You as well, obviously. But that really has nothing to do with direct influence on Stormcock, which I maintain has far more Brit folk and prog influence. Again, not saying Leadbelly and Guthrie were not early Harper influences, but his direct influences had radically changed by 1971. P.S. Steve, again, it's rather like saying Liege & Lief was influenced by Bob Dylan because Fairport was indebted to Dylan on their first two albums. But the influence for the album lies elsewhere. Harper himself said that he wanted to take contemporary folk to places it had never been. If you look where and who he was with in the period prior to Stormcock, his manager also managed Pentangle, he was discussing co-writing a rock opera with Pink Floyd, etc. His mind certainly wasn't on composing an American folk album as you assert.

Well to start off lets get a few things straight. I never said that Harper was out to intentionally make an American Folk music album, only that the music on it is American folk based.

I left my last question to you as leading. You supplied the exposition that I do not have to, but I will expand on it a bit.

The 11 stringed Moroccan oud (al-oud) does not have true corresponding tuning notes to those of an acoustic guitar (perfect fourths and fifths vs. equal temperment), so Graham used alternate tunings that fit more closely with an oud so he could jam with Moroccan players when he lived there at the time.
Obviously DADGAD worked the best but he also used others.

I not sure why I refered to him as Jones in my last post, probably due to aggravation, but all things pass.

Any how, Graham's style included diverse souces such as American folk and blues records, Celtic music, the live music of American blues and folk artists such as Big Bill Broonzy, Gary Davis and Guthrie clone and disciple Rambling Jack Elliot, all who regularly toured the U.K. in the early sixties. On Graham's breakthrough EP titled 3/4 AD, the title track was a thinly disguised version of Miles Davis' song "All Blues".

After Jansch and Renbourn figured out Graham's alternate open tunings, Both made solo albums in 1965 that were based on the standard American folk and blues forms either in original form or in their own compositions. Their exploration of incorporating jazz into the folk and blues stew would come in their joint 1966 album titled Bert And John, with their duel guitar renditon of Charles Mingus' Pork Pie Hat, as well their own syncopated fusion style improvosations like Tic-Tockative. Pentangle and history would soon follow when they would combine all these elements with traditional British folk songs. No small feat as Trad. British folk was sung acapella.

As for Roy Harper, his connection with all of this was actually playing at the same London folk venues such as the famous Les Cousins club in Soho. Aside from picking up alternate tunings, Double Dropped D and Open C were his favorites, Harper, not surprisingly, was not interested in following Jansch and Renbourn's path and went the Topical Protest Song based route. An American form of folk music that was popularised by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, The Alamanac Singers and his contempories like Dylan, Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton.

Subsequently, Harper also employed other folk music forms like ballads and others that were that were a part of the American folk song canon.

The easiest example of this is Harper's take on the "I'm leaving but don't you grieve" American style folk song on his 1970 album Flat, Baroque and Beserk. The lead off song (Judas) Don't you Grieve was a parody of the 1940 Woody Guthrie folk song Sally Don't You Grieve. Musically different but lyrically similar in it's intention.



Simply, Harper, unlike his British contemporaries like the ones stated above, along with Michael Chapman who took Arabic scales raga to its end conclusion on the album Rain Maker, was simply not treading the path of other 60's artists of the British Folk Scene.

Stormcock may be the natural end conclusion of Harper's American folk style of music with its elaborate long suite like songs but that to me is an evolutionary growth, not a progression. If you feel that it is, as I've said many posts ago, is fine with me. I simply don't agree.

BTW, studying something that you love on and off for 20 plus years does not give one a credential or a free bus ride.

It gives one the ablity to construct an informed opinion and the right to express it.


Edited by SteveG - September 23 2014 at 09:09