Martin Carthy

[mandocrucian]

One of my favorite guitar players is Martin Carthy, a true original. #I also find his occasional mandolin playing very interesting, because it has that same approach. I don't have any of the Waterson-Carthy discs so I don't know if he's playing any mandolin on those.

Here is the Carthy mando-discography I've assembled with so far:

<span style='color:brown'>Carthy & Swarbrick - Life And Limb
Bows Of London

Carthy & Swarbrick - Skin & Bone
The Ride In The Creel

Martin Carthy - The Collection
Old Horse

Brass Monkey - The Complete Brass Monkey
Waterman's Hornpipe
The Maid And The Palmer
Jolly Bold Robber
George's Son
Da Floo'er O' Taft / The Lass O' Paties Mill
The Rose Lawn Quadrille</span>

<span style='color:green'>Martin Carthy - Out Of The Cut
The Friar In The Well
Old Horse

Martin Carthy - Because It's There
Jolly Tinker</span>

Do you know of other Carthy mandolin tracks? (Give name of source recording)

Niles Hokkanen

[RolandTumble]

Hmmm.... Seems that "The Complete Brass Monkey" doesn't live up to its name (though it may have when issued, I dunnow...).

Carthy also plays mandolin (sort of buried in the mix, but there), on:

Brass Monkey - Going & Staying
The Pigeon on the Gate/The Primrose Lass

[John Ritchhart]

Hey Niles you're right he's great. I saw him in Ca. in a small venue so I got a good look at some of the things he does on the neck. really great. 40 different ways to tune a guitar.

[Martin Jonas]

Hmmm.... Seems that "The Complete Brass Monkey" doesn't live up to its name (though it may have when issued, I dunnow...).
Brass Monkey released two albums on Topic in the mid 1980s, when they were first formed. These two were released on one CD in the early 1990s under the "Complete" title, which was accurate then. In the late 1990s, they reformed and have since released two further albums. Indeed, the liner notes to the Carthy box set say that the "Complete Brass Monkey" CD no longer complies with the Trades Descriptions Act...

I'll have to look into the question of Carthy mando tracks; I can't think of any others, but there are several where he accompanies Dave Swarbrick's lovely Gibson A on guitar(check out their version of The Irish Washerwoman on "Rags, Reels and Airs") and he plays banjo(!) on several tracks on the Steeleye reunion album "The Journey", where he stands in for Terry Woods.

Martin

[mandocrucian]

Dave Swarbrick played some really great mandolin, especially as accompaniment to songs, on the early Martin Carthy, and Carthy & Swarbrick albums. I also started burning a Swarb mandolin compilation(s) onto CDR from those early LPs in addition to assembling all his Fairport mando tracks on another disc(s).

Early Dave Swarbrick (Carthy/Swarbrick duo) mandolin discography:

<span style='color:green'>Martin Carthy - Martin Carthy (first album)
Broomfield Hill
Lovely Joan
And A Begging I Will Go

Martin Carthy (w/Dave Swarbrick) - Second Album
Two Butchers

Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick - But Two Came By
The Wife Of The Soldier
Brass Band Music

Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick - Byker Hill
Poor Murdered Woman

Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick - Selections
The Irish Washerwoman/The Ash Plant (*instrumental)
The Banks (*)</span>

Dave Swarbrick - Rags, Reels & Airs
half the tracks on this instrumental album are on mandolin while the other half are on fiddle.

Niles Hokkanen

[AndrewP]

For recent recordings of Swarb mandolin accompaniment, I can recommend two recordings he's done with Alasdair Hulett - 'The Cold Grey Light of Dawn' and 'Saturday Johnny and Jimmy the Rat'. He plays mandolin about half the time, and compliments Hulett's fantastic songwriting very well indeed.

[Martin Jonas]

I have been tranferring some of my old Fairport videos to DVD recently, and there are two wonderful mandolin tracks on these:

Flatback Caper, filmed live at Maidstone 1970, Swarbrick and Pegg on mandolin, Thompson on guitar, Nicol on bass.

Sir Charles Coote / Smith's Hornpipe, filmed live at Broughton Castle 1981, an all-mandolin trio played by Swarbrick, Pegg and Thompson (Swarbrick also plays mandolin on Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman and on Country Pie on that 1981 video).

Sorry, no Carthy in this message (topic drift strikes again).

Martin
[Speaking of topic drift, I think I finally have got the mandolin part from Poor Will And The Jolly Hangman sorted out; nice little figure]

[mandocrucian]

Of all the Fairport albums (w/Swarbrick), the two with the most mandolin playing are "Babbacombe" Lee and Angel Delight. #Mandos all over "Babbacombe" Lee; Swarb probably plays as much mando as fiddle, plus Pegg also is playing mando at times.

Partial Fairport Convention mando discography:

Fairport Convention - Unhalfbricking
Million Dollar Bash

Fairport Convention - Full House (reissue with bonus tracks*)
<span style='color:brown'><s>Dirty Linen</s></span>
Flatback Caper
Poor Will & The Jolly Hangman*

Fairport Convention - Angel Delight
Sir William Gower
Sickness & Diseases
Angel Delight
The Cuckoo's Nest/Hardiman The Fiddler/Papa Stoor
The Bonny Black Hare
<span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>(I probably learned all the mando breaks of this one; I can still remember about half the Angel Delight solo. #They're all tabbed out somewhere in some 25 year old notebooks!)</span>

Fairport Convention - Rosie
Peggy's Pub (Swarb & Pegg on twin mandos)

Fairport Convention - "Babbacombe" Lee
<span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>I just made an LP to CD transfer of this (and Rosie) but haven't edited out the "dust on the needle" and "needle skip" track burns. I'd forgotten how prevalent mandos were on this one as I hadn't played it in a long, long time. The original "Lee" albums wasn't broken down in specific songs/tracks, so I can't remember the names of all the selections (as listed at the Expletive Delighted (http://www.fcfansite.fsnet.co.uk/) website.)</span>

Fairport Convention - Nine
Big William
The Brilliancy Medley/Cherokee Shuffle

NH

[RolandTumble]

Add to the Swarb/Carthy list:

Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick - Both Ears and the Tail
High Germany
Porcupine Rag
The Broomfield Hill
Dill Pickles Rag


Both the Rags are "Joplin Arr. Carthy / Swarbrick", and very cool indeed. "High Germany" is another song accompaniment. The CD tracking is a bit odd: The MC's intro, a set of reels (Swarb on fiddle), some more stage chatter (highly amusing though), and "High Germany", all together as track one! It's pretty normal after that, though....

If we're going to drift away from Carthy, I can list the mando track on Smiddyburn/Flittin' later tonight if nobody beats me to it....

[Martin Jonas]

If we're going to drift away from Carthy, I can list the mando track on Smiddyburn/Flittin' later tonight if nobody beats me to it....
Niles (mostly) and I did that in a thread in the Folk/Rock forum a couple of months ago, but as it seems no longer to be in the archive, you may just as well.

I love those mandolin trios on Smiddyburn and Flittin'!

(And a quick correction to Niles' list of Fairport mando: I don't think Dirty Linen from the Full House album has got mandolin, but Flatback Caper from that album certainly does, two of them).

Martin

[RolandTumble]

Okay, here goes:

Smiddyburn
Wat Ye Wha I Met on the Screen / The Ribbons of the Redheaded Girl / Ril Gan Ainm
Sir Charles Coote / Smiths
When the Battle is Over
Sean O'Dwyer of the Glen / The Hag With the Money / Sleepy Maggie
It Suits Me Well

Flittin'
Grey Daylight / The Hawk / The Ten Pound Fiddle
The Rakes of Sollohad

He switches to fiddle midway in some of the sets, (must be courtesy of the miracles of modern recording, he does it so fast...), but I can't pull which tunes are which out of my head at the moment.

The trios that martinjonas mentioned are Sir Charles..., When the Battle... & The Rakes.... The other players on those are Dave Pegg, mandolin & Richard Thompson (Mandolin on Sir Charles..., mandocello on the others).

For those who don't know, these were two separate hunks o' vinyl that are now together on a single CD--fitting, since the liner notes say that bothe were recorded in the same two weeks. Wow. Both credited to Swarb solo.

[Martin Jonas]

One of my favorite guitar players is Martin Carthy, a true original. #I also find his occasional mandolin playing very interesting, because it has that same approach. I don't have any of the Waterson-Carthy discs so I don't know if he's playing any mandolin on those.

[SNIP]

Do you know of other Carthy mandolin tracks? (Give name of source recording)

Niles Hokkanen
This is a really old thread that I am reviving, as I have just listened for the first time in about three years to the album "Leviathan!" by A.L. (Bert) Lloyd. It's an album of whaling songs, originally released in 1967 on the Topic label, who re-released it on CD in 1998. The instrumental credits are:

A.L. Lloyd with
Dave Swarbrick -- fiddle
Martin Carthy -- mandolin
Alf Edwards -- English concertina & ocarina
Trevor Lucas & Martyn Windham-Reade: chorus

Carthy plays mandolin on about a third of the fifteen tracks, and Bert Lloyd's liner notes say (reminiscing about the time when he himself sailed on a whaler in the 1930s):

"It turned out that besides Albert's sqeezebox we had with us a fiddle, an ocarina, and a mandolin (not played tremolo or tearaway, but with a rather innocent and absorbed deliberation, much as Martin plays here)."

The mandolin playing is indeed much as described by Bert: a mixture of individual chords and notes scattered into the arrangements at intervals, not played as runs, riffs, nor even as cohesive rhythm. It works, somehow, though it shouldn't.

Martin