^B00:00:12
>> Steve Winick: Welcome. This is the Homegrown at Home concert series for 2021 from the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. My name is Steve Winick, and I'll be here interviewing Martin Carthy who is the artist for one of our concerts, so welcome, Martin. It's great to see you again after all these years. 
>> Martin Carthy: It's great to be here. Thank you very much. 
>> Steve Winick: You're very welcome. So you are a renowned figure on the English folk scene, a guitar player and singer who has been plying your trade for many years and you are a recipient of the MBE, which is an award that we like to say that when you get that in the folk arts in Britain, it's roughly equivalent to what have here in the U.S. as the National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, so that's -- so you're one of the foremost figures in traditional English folk music and we are so delighted to have you in our series, so thank you for doing the concert and thank you for doing this interview as well.
>> Martin Carthy: It really is my pleasure Thank you.
>> Steve Winick: So let's talk about the beginnings of your career. We've had, you know, a few years ago we had Billy Bragg here talking about his book about the skiffle scene in the early days of English folk, and you of course have memories of those days, so tell us about the early days of the English folk scene as you remember them. 
>> Martin Carthy: Well, there wasn't an English folk scene when skiffle started. Skiffle was a big revelation to me and I remember being in -- actually, in a music class and it was one of my classmates, a lad called Rumsey was talking about this particular record, you know, called the Rock Island Line. I said what the hell's that? He said oh, it's fantastic. You need to buy it. So I went out the next day and I bought a 78 of The Rock Island Line by Lonnie Donegan and I was completely overwhelmed and I became a huge fan of his, because he always -- he often chose interesting songs and I remember being with -- the people in my year weren't terribly interested. The people in the year above were more interested, because they had the bloke who ran the best skiffle group in the school, and his name was Joe Lloyd and I remember he was the kind of person who spoke -- if you asked him a question, you'd get a one-word answer. 
>> Steve Winick: Mm-hm.
>> Martin Carthy: He was very unforthcoming and I went and said -- went up to him and said where do you get your songs from? And he just said my dad. And I said oh, really? What does your dad do? He's a singer. And who was he was talking about was A.L. Lloyd --
>> Steve Winick: All right.
>> Martin Carthy: -- his father, and so by complete fluke, I'm going to school with his son, and the people in the year below, there were other guitar hopefuls in the year below and one of them is called Mick Bunn [phonetic] and Mick Bunn taught me how to play an E, and from him I learned Worried Man Blues.
>> Steve Winick: All right.
>> Martin Carthy: So I mean basically, that was it. We were all scrabbling around in a room in the dark. We didn't know anything, and when we were told that what we were doing was rubbish, we would all sort of look at each other and go, you just don't get it. 
>> Steve Winick: That's right.
>> Martin Carthy: You just don't get it. We're brilliant. We really understand, and I remember going to the house of one of the blokes, a guy called Mick Baker, who was in the year below me, going to his house and that was in Bermondsey, right by London Bridge, and his dad said ah, Lonnie Donegan's rubbish and I sort of bridled, you know, as we all did when -- said no, no, no, no. He says a lot of that stuff he sings is Irish. I said what do you mean? He said well, that Gambling Man that he sings. That's an Irish song. It's called The Beggar Man in Ireland but none of you people know that, and I just -- I mean, that really struck home, and I realized that these songs had a history. There was more of a story behind them then the simple facts as related and from -- I just found myself drifting towards -- I looked at Folk Songs for Schools. The Cecil Sharpe publication and didn't find it terribly interesting but that was the -- that was all there was. But what happened to me a couple years later was that there was a chap called Roy Guest who was -- he was an odd figure, very good at self-promotion and he came up to me one day and he said do you want to come to the Ballads and Blues with me? And this was the very first folk club in the country. It had been put together at Alan Lomax's -- it was Lomax's idea, and he wanted to get these two people together who he thought didn't know one another and the two people he wanted to get together were Ewan MacColl and Bert Lloyd, A.L. Lloyd and they came together and they started this club and so of this Roy Guest fellow said to me oh, I managed to get myself on the bill. I told -- I rang Ewan MacColl and I told him that I was -- that I'd been collecting folks songs in Canada for the previous five years and perhaps I could come along and sing a couple of songs, and of course, Ewan hearing this, he went oh boy, this is a great chance. So oh, and you must come this week, this Saturday, because that was the night of the club and we have this wonderful English, Old English singer called Sam Larner and Roy affected to know what he was talking about but had no idea who Sam Larner was, because when he came to me, he just said oh, it's some old geezer from Yarmouth who's going to sing a few songs. He's about 80 so he's probably hopeless. He can't sing in tune probably, and so I said well, no. I'll come along and I went along with him and he blotted his copy book immediately by singing his first song which was John Henry, which was a fairly un-Canadian [inaudible] and that was his -- and Ewan never flinched. He let him have his four or five songs and then he just introduced Sam Larner, and he never sang a song the whole night. What he did was he -- I'm sure that he had Sam staying with him a few days beforehand and they'd -- he plotted what Sam would do, and it was -- I was absolutely blown away because I thought I knew some of the songs because of Folk Songs for Schools. Oh, No, John, and he sang a version of that and he said he was going to sing that and I thought ooh, I know that one, and he started singing it and got to a couple of risqué verses and looked at Ewan and said, am I go to on? And Ewan said oh yes, you can go on. And the audience went ha ha ha ha ha and he sang the entire song and it was wonderful and there were quite a few songs like that where I thought I knew the song and I didn't because it was wildly different.
>> Steve Winick: So it had been bowdlerized a bit for the book is --
>> Martin Carthy: Well, yeah. For Folk Songs for Schools --
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy -- it has been very seriously bowdlerized but in order to get to the versions that Cecil Sharp had collected, you would have to get through the librarian who was -- as I discovered to my cost, they were so against these young scruffs coming and asking about the -- I want the original version of this song, and they -- and their attitude was -- and I've said this a million times -- we are the guardians of the English tradition and we're guarding it from you. That was the attitude, and when the librarian changed and it became a woman called Mrs. Ruth Noyes, she would welcome us with open arms but this is going on a couple of years. It was a hopeless notion to -- but sorry, I'm digressing. The fact is that Ewan saved the best thing for last and what he had Sam sing for his last song was a thing called Lofty Tall Ship which is his version of Henry Martin, as you probably know, and I'd never heard a tune like that in my life. He sang this song and just kept varying. It had an opening verse which was different from anything else that he was then going to sing, and what he sang after that had variations galore, and I was thunderstruck, and I'm walking away thinking he can't sing a tune like that and I'd be la, la, la, a bit to myself and I never got the joke and [inaudible] no, you can't sing a song like that. 
^M00:09:54
No, no, no, no, no, you can't sing that, and but what that did, that whole -- because my friend who got me to come along and sung his first songs and then disappeared --
>> Steve Winick: Right.
>> Martin Carthy: -- and I just stayed and was completely enthralled by this old man whose energy was astounding and his passion was just -- it just rocked you back on your seat every time and certainly a wonderful performance. It really was. And I decided then and there obviously well, this is it. This is what I'm going to follow. It took me a long time to be able to sing a lot of those songs, partly because -- and I had to do a bit of owning up later on -- I didn't want to sing them until I could play them, and I had to learn how to play As We Were Gone Sailing, you know, Lofty Tall Ship. I had to learn how to play it and it took me a long time to figure that one out, and when I did, I felt a great sense of triumph, and I was -- I'm a late developer as far as guitar playing is concerned. I had a reputation back in the '60s but it was -- nobody was really any good, you know. If you were a bit better than not much good, then you were really -- people looked up to you, and I don't know. I could play a bit, but it was only when I started playing around with tunings that things began to make sense and I did that because of a visit by an old timey band, all from Harvard University, called the Charles River Valley Boys --
>> Steve Winick: Sure.
>> Martin Carthy: -- and they were -- they consisted of Ethan Signer, Bob Siggins, and Clay Jackson playing fiddle and mandolin was Ethan. Banjo was Bob Siggins and guitar in various different tunings from Clay Jackson, and I was just fascinated by what they were doing, you know, and just what are you doing? What are you doing there? Oh, it's just like this, and they would show me what they were doing, and it was just -- it was the beginning of something, and I wasn't the only one who was messing with tuning. There were lots and lots of us doing just that. I mean the one who actually invented the tuning that made a difference was Danny Graham when he came up with DADGAD and I was absolutely ecstatic about that and I started doing it and then I found it really frustrating because you had to -- I had to move the capo up and down the -- I could only play in D in DADGAD and I'm sure you could -- I could have played in other keys as well. I'm sure I could have if I'd have tried but I wanted -- I just -- it was satisfactory. And the great thing I came up with the tuning that derived from DADGAD which Davy started using which I --
>> Steve Winick: That's nice.
>> Martin Carthy: -- went thank you, Davy, and no he said, no, thank you. No, I said -- we were always great mates until basically until the day he died.
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: He's a good man.
>> Steve Winick: So you had mentioned Sam Larner and you know, the fact that he was sort of 80 years old at that time and you were a young lad who was --
>> Martin Carthy: Seventeen.
>> Steve Winick: -- attending the folk [inaudible] and enthralled, and not to put too fine a point on it but now you're in that position of being something of the elder statesman, and I guess the question I have is are there any Sam Larner-type figures anymore in the British tradition, or is everyone to some extent a revivalist now?
>> Martin Carthy: Well, the last major singer to be discovered in England was Walter Pardon, and Peter Bellamy always called him the man who collected himself --
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: -- because that's what he did. He knew a bloke who had taught Peter Bellamy at school -- so he was related to this man whose name I cannot remember who was -- who had taught Peter Bellamy at school, so this lad went to Walter and said well, there's a cassette recorder. There's some cassettes. Why don't you record some of your songs and I'll send them to -- I'll send them to someone who I think would love to hear them? So that's what Walter did, and he hadn't sung in public or to anybody for over 30 years.
>> Steve Winick: Right.
>> Martin Carthy: He was -- he discovered himself when he was 63. Well, you know, that's what Peter says, how Peter described him and he was right. He presented himself to the world, and he was just extraordinary, had this huge repertoire of trad songs from his uncle, Uncle Billy Gee and he had songs that his father sang which was he kept as a separate repertoire and songs that his mother sang, which he didn't sing very often because they always made him cry. He was a big -- he was a wonderfully powerful character but he was, in many ways, soft as anything. He was a lovely, lovely man, and he was -- he sang at -- we met him when we were all sent over to -- for the bicentennial in '76 and we flew over together and Walter and I sat next to each other on the plane and he just chatted all the time. He was so happy to be singing again, and he told me the story of the first time he sang in public was at Norwich Folk Club. He said there were all people there, all listening, because his family used to tell him to shut up, so he stopped singing --
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: -- then, but he said I sang to this audience in the folk club and they all listened and they call clapped hurrah and then I sang - he said and then I sang at the Norwich Folk Festival and there were hundreds of people there and I stood up on the stage and I sang and everybody was quiet as anything in there and they listened like -- they listened, and listened and listened and at the end, they all stood up and applauded and I cried, you know cried his eyes out --
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: -- because he was so happy that he was actually singing to people who wanted to hear what he had to sing. Fabulous man. 
>> Steve Winick: Yup. So that's a lov -- yeah, a lovely story and it sort of shows how the folk scene took up the being the audience for this last generation of singers whose own families had kind of given up on the folk tradition. Amazing.
>> Martin Carthy: Yeah. There are gypsy singers around who still sing. There's a lad called Thomas McCarthy. He's an Irish Traveler and he's extraordinary, so there are still odd people. I can't think of a person of with a repertoire of the size of Walter, Walter Pardon.
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: I can't. Maybe they're out there. There are still people singing songs and they're still being recorded and a lot of them are gypsies and they have a different attitude towards melody.
>> Steve Winick: Right.
>> Martin Carthy: Just gorgeous. It's gorgeous.
>> Steve Winick: It's striking, yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: It's not easy. It's weird sometimes but --
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: -- just trust them. Trust them. They're not messing about. They're singing the tune as they know it. Get your head around it. Wonderful.
>> Steve Winick: Well, to talk a bit, you know, more about your early career, again, you had a big birthday recently and within a few days of your birthday, another person who was a friend of yours back in those days had a birthday too, and that was Bob Dylan, so you both turned 80 within a few days of one another.
>> Martin Carthy: Absolutely. He's three days younger than me, so he's a baby.
>> Steve Winick: And yeah, so explain your association with Bob Dylan from those early days.
>> Martin Carthy: Well, the folk record shop -- well, there were a couple but the major folk record shop in London was Collet's Record Shop on New Oxford Street and the man who ran that was a lad called Hans Fried, and when I -- was I still in? No, I was still in London at that time. One -- if you wanted to meet up with other folkies from out of town or whatever, local pe -- you know, local folkies to you, you would go down to Collet's Record Shop and, you know, I went down to Collet's Record Shop and there, you know, on the counter was this copy of Sing Out, which was red and on the front of it was the picture of this bloke and they were all raving about this Bob Dylan who was absolutely -- he's taking up the cudgels on behalf of Woody Guthrie who, you know, an important figure, so I read the article and there were a couple of interesting songs there and I thought wow, that's interesting, and I was in a group. We called them groups then, not bands. I was in a group called The Thamesiders, had been The Thameside Four and then somebody left so we became the -ers, Thamesiders.
^M00:19:58
>> Steve Winick: That way you wouldn't have to change every time you added or lost a member, yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: Yeah. We could add or subtract --
>> Steve Winick: Right.
>> Martin Carthy: -- up to a point. And we ran a club at this pub called the King and Queen which was just behind Goodge Street Tube Station next to the Middlesex Hospital and the King and Queen itself is still there. It's on Foley Street, F-O-L-E-Y and we were singing there doing our Friday night gig there and we were playing away and I happened to look up and straight into the face of the cover of Sing Out. I went ooh, and so we sang a couple more songs and I just went over to him, said excuse me to Marian, Marian Gray who was -- she was the other singer. The third member was a bass player, Pete Maynard. He didn't sing. I said just going to go. I'll be back in sec, and I went over to him and I said you're Bob Dylan, aren't you? And he said yeah. And he said how do you know that? I said you were on the front of Sing Out. And he said ooh, okay. I said, would you like to sing? He said ask me later, so I went okay, and it may very well have been an interview -- sorry, it may very well have been an interval shortly after that and at one point I just looked at him like that and he went -- and smiled, so I introduced him and he got up and sang three songs and he just -- he blew people away. He was absolutely wonderful, and he came down to The Troubadour the next night, which was the other place where I would sing. I was a resident at The Troubadour in Earl's Court. It was a late night place, started about 10:30 and he came along to that and it became a thing. He came -- he would come to the King and Queen, and then he would come to The Troubadour. He went to other places as well but I didn't frequent those other places --
>> Steve Winick: Right.
>> Martin Carthy: -- but he basically got himself around because he'd been invited over by the BBC to do a play which was at the time I just didn't get it. It was a thing called Mad House on Castle Street and it was basically the story was of immigrants in London trying to get -- in fact, they would all be people from the West Indies but they were -- the -- everybody in the cast was white, but it was basically, the man who wrote it was from -- was a Jamaican and Castle Street was represented England because it was a place full of castles so and it was a very, very odd play indeed. The director, whose name has now escaped me completely, damn it. I'll remember in a minute. Was very good director. I can see his face now. Bugger, I can't -- old memory. Memory, memory, come back. It was -- the BBC had the temerity to wipe that particular play. It was a pretty important statement to have made at the time --
>> Steve Winick: Yeah. The BBC wiped a lot of old films and tapes, unfortunately.
>> Martin Carthy: Yeah, they did and they certainly did -- I wish they hadn't done that one because it was really -- it really was groundbreaking stuff and I simply did not get it at the time.
>> Steve Winick: So was Dylan in the play or was he --
>> Martin Carthy: Oh, yeah.
>> Steve Winick: -- doing music or -- ?
>> Martin Carthy: He'd been brought over by the director who'd seen him do a show. Maybe he was at the Town Hall concert which actually sort of raised Bob Dylan to another level on the New York folk scene, and he was a kid, you know, 20, 21 years old. It was yeah he decided that he had to have him in the play and he brought him over and he handed him the script and on the first rehearsal, Bob Dylan said I can't do this. I can't do -- I'm not an actor. Why am I here? And so the -- he didn't argue. Come along. Remember the man's name. Ethan something. He yeah he I'm so cross that I can't remember his name. Anyway, he went and hired David -- ah, I can't remember his name. He just had a massive hit at the World Shakespeare Company doing Hamlet and he was the future of British acting, stage acting, and eventually film acting because he spent a lot of the time over here and has done all sorts of things here and he's very, very good indeed, very powerful, very, very powerful actor. David --
>> Steve Winick: Not Derek Jacoby.
>> Martin Carthy: No, not Derek Jacoby, no, no, no. 
>> Steve Winick: Okay.
>> Martin Carthy: This was a very tall leading man, sort of --
>> Steve Winick: Ah, got you.
>> Martin Carthy: -- actor, you know, six foot something. David --
>> Steve Winick: Well, anyway, yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: I'm cross. I -- the trouble with being 80 is you lose all this. Anyway, so Bob had to stay there and he sang Blowin' In The Wind in the play and he sang a song called The Ballad of the Gliding Swan which is had some very rude verses for later on which he'd sing to us. 
>> Steve Winick: I see.
>> Martin Carthy: He never sang them in the play. I fancied that he'd sung them in the play but he didn't, but he's -- Bob was -- he was really very naughty when he sang songs because he would suddenly chuck in an improvisation. He was talking about -- at The Troubadour talking about making his first album and for him it was a playground, and he was doing all sorts of things which he would never do normally and apparently the engineer said to him one time you're supposed to be a folk singer. Sing a folk song, so he said -- so Bob being Bob said well, what's a folk song? And he said oh, something like Pretty Peggy-O, so he sang a Pretty Peggy-O and sort of ran out of verses and started improvising and he sang his version of the -- and he got, you know, the lieutenant, he's gone. He's long gone. He's riding down in Texas with the rodeo, Pretty Peggy-O. Everything had to rhyme, so --
>> Steve Winick: Right.
>> Martin Carthy: -- down in Texas with the rodeo, and when he sang it at The Troubadour, he suddenly threw in another improvisation that made him laugh, which was, you know, the General, he's gone. He's long gone. He's a fightin' with the wild man out in Borneo, but that's the sort of thing -- the sort of mischief he would get up to. It's brilliant, absolutely wonderful.
>> Martin Carthy: It is brilliant, yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: Tremendous, tremendous stuff, and he sang some fabulous stuff. I mean he -- this is 19 -- this is the beginning of 1963 by the time he -- because he came over in mid to late December, 1962 or in mid-December 1962 for the rehearsals for the play and he would always end up at The Troubadour or the King and Queen or other clubs that were around at the time, you know? He went to the Singers Club and had a mixed reception there. He -- I can never forget the time he sang at The Troubadour and he sang Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall, that, you know and only one he'd sung. What's that song? To the tune of Pretty Polly -- Hollis Brown, Hollis Brown.
>> Steve Winick: Hollis Brown, yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: What a song.
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: He sang this particular evening at The Troubadour he sang Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall and you thought well, he started to sing it and I thought ooh, is he going to do Lord Randall? And very quickly it became clear that this wasn't Lord Randall at all.
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: Well, it was a fabulous piece of work. I don't know whether he'd just finished it or he'd written it while he was here or whether it was -- whether he had it in his repertoire when he was -- when he arrived in England, but it was very new and there was that little pause when he finished the song and the place just exploded in applause. He sang some fabulous stuff and he would just experiment with -- just experiment on his audience and he would just experiment with -- just experiment on his audience. Wonderful.
>> Steve Winick: Yeah, and now he has the Nobel Prize, so.
>> Martin Carthy: And now he has the Nobel Prize. He changed everything, I think.
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: Everything. He changed The Beatles.
>> Steve Winick: Yeah, sure. So another fellow that you -- an American fellow that you hung out with at that time and then later sang with again was Paul Simon, who the library has given our Gershwin Award for Popular Song, so we're fans of Paul Simon but we know that you were old friends with him, so explain your association with him as well.
^M00:30:02
>> Martin Carthy: Well, the thing I remember about Paul is he was -- he hardly even spoke. He -- you'd come and sit next to him. Hi, and that was all you'd get out of him but he learned Scarborough Fair and he learned Scarborough Fair which, you know, became a court case which --
>> Steve Winick: Right.
>> Martin Carthy: -- wasn't my doing. It was the -- I had a publisher who was -- he was a publisher and he -- they just thought that this is an opportunity and what one of the things I did was sign over the -- there was a court case and at the end of the court case, one of the things I did when I went to see the publisher said there's all these bits of paper, things you need to sign in the aftermath of the court case and I said yeah, all right, and I signed various things and he said oh, that one says you have no further claim on Scarborough Fair. I said oh, that's fine by me. What I was doing was actually saying that Scarborough Fair was mine and I was handing over the ownership of it to them, not to Paul Simon, but to them, to the company, you know, never been had. Hello.
>> Steve Winick: So.
>> Martin Carthy: I mean I didn't own the bloody thing but I signed it over. What an idiot, you know? 
>> Steve Winick: So but the -- I mean the thing for --
>> Martin Carthy: The lovely thing was --
>> Steve Winick: Yeah, go on.
>> Martin Carthy: The great thing was that many years later, Paul was going -- doing a European tour and I got a phone call from him and I think he was in Stockholm and he said I'm coming to London and I'm doing three days at the Hammersmith Apollo and which is a big -- it's a big gig, and it's a lovely hall. It was a cinema but it's got a great stage and he said and I want you to come and sing on one of the nights. Can you make it? And I looked in the diary and I could do the third night, and I said well, I'm free on that day and I'm close by, and said good, put it in the book. Come and sing. Come and say hello on stage, and that's what I did, and we sang Scarborough Fair together. He said you really want to do that? And I said yeah, oh yeah. I think it's important to do that, and so we did Scarborough Fair and he was really, really so attentive. Shall I -- which guitar shall I use? And I said you use any one you want. You choose. I'm at your disposal. And he said okay. This one okay? I said yeah. You like that one, play that one. And that's what he did and odd thing I remember most about that was that having known him for three years in more or less in the '60s and I can never remember him saying anything more than half a dozen words. There was one time where he tried to teach me and my mate to do some doo wop outside where I had been living and he took over my -- I had a little flat there, a little apartment and he took it over, and when that fell flat, when we couldn't do it for the giggles, he said oh, can you help me put this top on. it's a Sunbeam Alpine car. He'd bought this car, and we struggled to get the top but we finally managed to it. We got the top on the car, and that was it. Shortly afterwards, I think Art Garfunkel was in town shortly after that and they came around to -- yeah, I'd moved. I was in a different apartment just up the road and he and Art Garfunkel came round and Art Garfunkel didn't say a word but his head was in the air and he was trying to wor -- I think he was probably working out The Canticle and I had a lovely chat with Paul and but again, it was single words. He probably said more than he'd ever said in three years, introducing Art Garfunkel to me -- 
>> Steve Winick: Right.
>> Martin Carthy: -- and he was -- Art Garfunkel was equally silent, you know?
>> Steve Winick: Well, great singers, so.
>> Martin Carthy: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: And Paul wrote all those songs for Art to sing, you know?
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: Because he could write to suit somebody and he knew Art's -- Art Garfunkel's voice and he wrote for it. Gave him fabulous stuff to sing.
>> Steve Winick: Right. So just to be clear in case it didn't come through for the audience, the one of the points there was that Paul Simon actually learned Scarborough Fair from you --
>> Martin Carthy: Yeah.
>> Steve Winick: -- and that was what the court case ultimately was about was --
>> Martin Carthy: Well, yeah.
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: And what he did -- he didn't steal my arrangement at all. He just -- he sort of honored it by doing something like it, which --
>> Steve Winick: Right.
>> Martin Carthy: -- you know, and it's a traditional song. It doesn't belong to me at all.
>> Steve Winick: Right.
>> Martin Carthy: But I was -- I got very -- I was very -- I was really quite upset by the whole nonsense, because that's what it was.
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: But the thing that I remember most was that after we sang together on the stage at the Hammersmith Apollo, we went -- we sat down together and he talked nonstop for an hour.
>> Steve Winick: The most you'd ever heard him speak, right?
>> Martin Carthy: Absolutely, and he was absolutely fascinating and he was talking about all -- then he said this tour has been about reconnecting with people I may well have fallen out with -- and I'm really trying hard to -- he said were you mad at me? And I said yeah, briefly but then I just thought you know, it's -- it became the interviews. It became what I was about to describe then as the trudge through the grudge because --
>> Steve Winick: Right.
>> Martin Carthy: -- it seems it was nonsense. It was just stupid nonsense and I said that to him. I said it's just silly. It's a traditional song. It's yours as much as it's mine --
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: -- for God's sake, and he, especially because of The Canticle --
>> Steve Winick: Right.
>> Martin Carthy: -- made a lot of money, but not for him. The person -- the only person who made money out of that song would be Art Garfunkel because he wrote The Canticle. 
>> Steve Winick: Got you. That's interesting.
>> Martin Carthy: You know? And yeah, and one of the things he said to me was at the time I mean later on that was sorted out but one of the things he said, one person I would really, really, really love to connect with again and I can't seem to be able to do it, I want to connect with Artie again.
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: He was really upset that he couldn't -- it wouldn't happen, well it did happen later on.
>> Steve Winick: Eventually, yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: I'm sure they fell out again and then made up again, because you know, when you've been living in each other's pockets for all that time --
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: -- you're going to have rows and stupid rows and then make up, you know? Love you, man. You know?
>> Steve Winick: Right.
>> Martin Carthy: It's going to happen. I had that with Swarb, so I know.
>> Steve Winick: Yeah, yeah. Well, let's talk about Swarb a bit because that was, you know, sort of chronologically, that would be one of the next stages in your career was being a duo with Dave Swarbrick. 
>> Martin Carthy: Yeah, and I was never forgiven by certain parts of the Ian Campbell Group who said I basically kidnapped him. I didn't. He got fed up with being -- well, because he was bullied and he's a -- he plays the clow -- he used to play the clown a lot, Swarb, and you know, it's sometimes when your enemies -- if you've made your enemy laugh, then that's all right, but they --
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: -- everybody in the Campbells wasn't on his case, but there was one person who was. I won't mention any names, and it was -- it became hard work and he was fed up with it and he said -- he rang me up and he said I'm going to go to Denmark. I'm going to go to Denmark to live and I'm never coming back, so can I come and stay at yours because I get the train from Liverpool Street Station to the ferry to Harwich and that takes me on the ferry to -- aw, I can't remember the name of the town there, the port -- Esbjerg, Esbjerg.
>> Steve Winick: Mm-hm. Right, yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: Yeah. I remembered something, yippee. Yeah, so we talking we chatted and we chatted for ages that night. Went to bed, got up in the morning because he had, you know, I've got to go, got to. Come to Liverpool Street Station with me. 
^M00:39:59
I went to Liverpool Street. I and my wife Dorothy went to the station with him and we waved him off and said aw, what a shame. Best musician in the country and he's going to blooming Denmark. He'll have a lovely time. I mean there was a woman involved of course but and he was madly in love but that was -- that's it. Bye, Dave. Bye, Dave. And we went home feeling a bit glum and two days later, or was it next day? -- I suppose it was an overnight journey to Esbjerg, though he didn't know. He didn't -- he went to Rotterdam. Yeah, that's what he did. Yeah, he went to Rotterdam and they, the Dutch customs said where are you going? He said I'm leaving England and I'm going to Denmark and I'm going to live there for the rest of my life and I've got this lovely girlfriend there and we're going to make babies and we're going to have a wonderful time. And they said oh, do you have a work permit? And he said nah, I don't need a work permit. They said oh, I'm afraid you do. You have to have a work permit. Is there any chance you will get a work permit? He said oh well, I'll get it easy as anything. Says no, you haven't got one have you? No. Then you can't go any further. We have to send you back. So they sent him on the next boat back to Harwich. Am I allowed to swear? I will swear once and you can bleep it later on.
>> Steve Winick: Right.
>> Martin Carthy: And the phone rang the next day or the day after, whenever it was. It was probably the day after we said goodbye to him and I picked up the phone and I said -- I can remember [inaudible] Swiss cottage. I can't remember that the number was. Oh, 183. Yeah, that was it. Hampstead 0183 and he said -- and the voice came down the phone, I could fucking weep. I said what do you mean? He said bloody Dutch people, they sent me back. I said what for? And he said I haven't got a work permit. What's it got to do with them? You're going to Denmark. Yeah, but they just stopped me. They just stopped me. They're not allowed to send someone through to another destination when they haven't got a work permit for that other destination. They're not allowed to do that, so they sent me back. I said oh, bloody hell. Well you might as well -- you'd' better come here, haven't you? And he said yeah, and you know, grumble, grumble, grumble. He said you know, said the same words as I just repeated for you a few more times and he came back, came over to where we were, Dorothy and I, and he sat down feeling really glum and I said well, I'm going away on an eight-day tour tomorrow and it's in eight days. Do you want to come? And we'll just split what I make down the middle and we'll just ask people if they'll pay your train fares? And he said yeah, all right. I'd done my first album just the year before and he'd been fined because he hadn't actually asked permission of directly of the record company, so they fined him a third of his wages which was 15 pounds a week so he they fined him a fiver of his wages and he wasn't very happy about that as you can imagine, so I said so he said yeah, all right. I'm come with you and next time I'll go over on the direct boat. So we went on this tour and it was -- we -- everywhere we just went there and said -- we knew either three or four songs which had been on my first album, The Two Magicians, Sovay, Broomfield Hill, Lovely Joan. There was another one. I can't remember what it was.
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: I said Two Magicians, didn't I? Yeah.
>> Steve Winick: Yeah, yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: I can't remember what the other one was but anyway, there were four or five songs that we could do straightaway and other ones, Dave who's the ace improviser --
>> Steve Winick: Yeah, that's right.
>> Martin Carthy: -- he knew the repertoire inside and out. He's, you know, one of the things I sang was -- it's not the Boston Burglar. It's -- what's it called? I can't remember what it's called. It's one of those -- damn it. It was from Harry Cox, anyway. It was an Irish -- a song very well known in Ireland but it was Harry Cox's version and Harry Cox is another one of the very great English traditional singers and he was in his 80s by that time, if he was still alive. I think he was still alive.
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: But he was a fabulous singer with a fabulous repertoire and he's a very beautiful singer. I mean Sam Larner was rough and ready. Harry Cox was wonderfully musical, you know? Beautiful lyrical voice he had, even in his 80s. Oh, boy. And yes, why have I gone off? I keep going off track. 
>> Steve Winick: Well, we were talking about your duo with Dave on your first tour.
>> Martin Carthy: Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, so went and did the first gig was in Sheffield and the last gig was in Sheffield and pretty -- by the time we finished the tour, he knew half of my repertoire and he would always play a couple of slow airs. He'd play a couple of slow airs. Play a slow air. Well, you sure? Yeah, play a slow air. You like playing slow airs, don't you? Yeah, I do. I love them. And he'd play a slow air and really show what he could do and people absolutely loved it. He didn't get much of a chance to do it except on special occasions, but he really was a mighty player even then.
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: And he took the most fabulous risks and Burt Lloyd used to use him all the time because he could follow. Burt loved to go all over the place in his songs and if he had Dave accompanying him, Dave was always there like that, you know? He had his tooth clamped onto his shirttails and went everywhere with him, never missed a beat, never missed a, you know -- he was quite remarkable and he stayed that way. He could do -- you could just toss a song at him and by the end of the song, he had it and say you going to do that again tomorrow? Yes. Okay, I'll remember, and he would. Ooh, wonderful. And there are some people liked it and other people didn't but the thing that is remarkable is that everybody contributed Dave's fares. Some of the places doubled our money.
>> Steve Winick: Oh, that's very nice.
>> Martin Carthy: Oh, it was fabulous.
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: By the end of the week, I was walking around with all this money in my pocket and we'd done the last gig, and I said well, I've got all this money. We should share it out, and he said oh, don't worry about me. And I said no, come on. We've got a lot of money here for goodness sake, and I pulled it out and I just shared it all equally, you know? One for you, one for me, like that, and he just went very, very quiet and he just picked up this money and I looked at him and he was staring at the money and I said you all right? And he said I've never had this much money in me life. And I said well, that's half of what we made, and it was either 70 or 75 quid, which then was a lot of money.
>> Steve Winick: Sure.
>> Martin Carthy: I was being paid, I think I was being paid 12 quid a night and I was going to have get around best I could.
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: So I was going to be making -- eight gigs, I was going to be making eighty quid or something --
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: -- maybe up to 90 --
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: -- for the week which was -- and it was eight gigs on the chart and that was hard. And he just said I've never -- and I said well, have you counted? And he said yeah, I've counted it all right. There's 75 quid there. It was either 70 or 75. Let's say 75. Said oh, no. And he looked at me and he said, I'm making 15 quid a week with the Campbells -- 
>> Steve Winick: Wow.
>> Martin Carthy: -- and I'm on top money. 
>> Steve Winick: Right.
>> Martin Carthy: Because they paid more than anybody else because he asked for it actually.
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: And he was going back. He then went back to Denmark with his money and I said well, you coming back? I've got another tour going at the beginning of next month, beginning of April in the northeast, starting off in Darlington. He said I don't know if I'm coming back. I don't know if I'm -- I'm going over as a visitor, you know? He's going to lie his way through it, and because he was going to stay. 
^M00:50:03
He was going to stay and get married and then he came back. So we went on the road together and we stayed together for three and a half years --
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: -- four and a half years? That was sixty -- oh, blimey, '66 -- '66, '67, '68, '69 up until the middle of August, so that's three and a half years because this was March.
>> Steve Winick: And you toured pretty much throughout the country, right?
>> Martin Carthy: Oh, yeah.
>> Steve Winick: With Dave? Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: All through England and Wales and Scotland. We didn't get -- I don't think we ever got to Ireland.
>> Steve Winick: Interesting.
>> Martin Carthy: We went to Ireland later on and he was always very nervous about playing Ireland because he always -- he loved to play Carolan tunes but he was very sure that people wouldn't like what he did with them because --
>> Steve Winick: His --
>> Martin Carthy: -- he has a way with a tune. 
>> Steve Winick: His style, yeah. Exactly.
>> Martin Carthy: Yeah, absolutely.
>> Steve Winick: Not exactly the Irish style, so yes.
>> Martin Carthy: No, no. 
>> Steve Winick: Yeah. So soon after that you did something musically that's very different from what you'd done before and that was, of course, Steeleye Span. Talk about how that happened.
>> Martin Carthy: Well, by that time I was living out in -- I'd come back from Denmark with enough money to put a deposit on a house, because we were very, very well paid and we were there from middle of March through until New Year, following year, and at the time I was living in Warminster which is in Wiltshire. It's a very, very lovely part of the world. It's on Salisbury plain basically. It's very nice and it's a little sort of cottage place that was not brilliantly appointed but it was home and it was lovely. We were really, really pleased to have it and people would come visiting on their way through and regular visitors were Tim Hart and Maddy Prior, and they turned up one day and sat there and I can't remember who said it first, Tim or Maddy. Could be Maddy. No, I think it was Tim. Well, I don't know really. He said we're going electric, and I said really? Wow. He said very strongly, we're trying to find a name, and I'd just been reading some of the songbooks that had been printed by Lincolnshire Society and they contained the songs which Percy Grainger had recorded in the first years of the 1900s, first years of the 20th century, recorded on wax cylinders.
>> Steve Winick: Wax cylinders, yeah. 
>> Martin Carthy: And I had a tape. It was a copy of a copy of copy of a copy of a copy of a tape of some of those cylinders and I was absolutely blown away by it. [inaudible] because this is Joseph Taylor. It was a revelation, this wonderful, wonderful singer. And it was just very exciting to have and one of the songs -- as I say, I had some of the books that the Lincolnshire Society had published and one of them contained a song called Horkstow Grange and the actual story of who's the goody and who's the baddy had been reversed in the song and the hero of the song was this character called John Span whose nickname was Steeleye and Tim said oh, God. That's a fabulous -- Steeleye Span. What a fabulous name. Was that really his name? I said obviously it was a nickname and you know, he must have been a nasty bloke or maybe he was a nice bloke who just was very mean, but Steeleye Span, that was his -- I don't know. And had this really unfortunate chorus, pity them who see him suffer, pity poor old Steeleye Span.
>> Steve Winick: Right.
>> Martin Carthy: And I sang that bit to him and he said all right, never mind that, never mind. Steeleye Span. God, we're going to be voting next week and next week they had a vote on it and everybody had different names for it and he rang me up and he said thanks very much. The band is called Steeleye Span now, and I said oh, great. And he said yeah, I voted twice. He always maintained that voted twice and nobody noticed, you know? Come on. But it was very funny and they became Steeleye Span. The other one -- the other names, they liked the idea that village bands were called waits in those -- back in those -- you know, back in the 19th century. W-A-I-T-S, waits, and there were two versions of waits. One of them came from Ashley Hutchings and the other one came from Terry and Gay Woods and they were coming to Wiltshire to do their recording. They'd found -- people at that time used to go and you know, rock bands would find a country cottage and go and get --
>> Steve Winick: Right.
>> Martin Carthy: -- it together in the country cottage. That was the big deal and they found this country cottage not very far from where Dorothy and I lived in Warminster and of course I can't remember the name of the place. Goddamn it. Anyway, they'd found this place and the next thing I heard was that they'd made the album and I heard the album and it was okay. There was some nice stuff on it but some of it was sort of strangely bare and I said oh, maybe that's -- maybe they're doing a bit of variation just not having the whole band in this bit, all right, mutter, mutter, mutter, and then Tim rang up and said do you want to join Steeleye Span? And I said what? And he said do you want to join Steeleye Span? And I said yeah, what happened? He said oh, Terry and Gay left. Well, Terry and Gay left hadn't realized that they'd left as I found out later on. 
>> Steve Winick: Uh-oh.
>> Martin Carthy: I mean they were very nice about it but they, you know, they took it on the chin. It [inaudible].
>> Steve Winick: Right, right.
>> Martin Carthy: -- and Ashley had, because Terry and Gay had gone back to Ireland, Ashley had decided that it was all over and he'd gone and chummed up with Bob Pegg, Bob and Carole Pegg in Stevillage they lived, Stevenage Newtown and he was so presenting himself as the bass player for Mr. Fox which --
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: -- was their band and it was good stuff and they had a drummer which Ashley liked and but Bob was really quite stern about the way the drummer should play, you know? You know, because he didn't like the idea of a hefty backbeat. It just sort of forces the music into a corner --
>> Steve Winick: Right.
>> Martin Carthy: -- so he had this bloke playing with beaters a lot and some of the stuff was bloody good, I must say. Oh, excuse my language, but it -- but he then came hot foot and rejoined Steeleye.
>> Steve Winick: Right.
>> Martin Carthy: So we were working as a four piece to begin with and rehearsing in the vicar -- sorry, rehearsing in the church hall which was next to the church where Tim's dad was the Vicar, so we had this big hall and we were just cranking up and they had all this fabulous equipment, you know? Dual showman heads, great big four and half foot, five foot high speakers and you could play really loud.
>> Steve Winick: Yeah, so you were playing loud rock music.
>> Martin Carthy: Well, I went -- well, I just played loud guitar. I didn't know about rock music. I just played loud guitar and I really -- well, the first thing I did when I -- I said this is an electric band. I better go get a guitar and I talked to Ashley briefly and he recommended I get a Telecaster because he had a thing about Telecasters, basically because of Robbie Robertson. He's a huge a Robbie Robertson fan and he was a Telecaster player, and he said it's a very different sound. It's not a smooth sound like a Stratocaster. It's a very, very down to earth and I just -- he said I like it, so I went and bought this bright blue Telecaster for 110 quid and just plugged into this giant amp and had a wonderful time, thank you very much, and had a few things to, you know, a few things to offer, and it was very exciting and singing harmony with Maddie was a revelation. She's a -- she can be a fabulous harmony singer. One of the things we did which I still listen to with great pleasure is Cold, Haily, Windy Night --
>> Steve Winick: Yeah.
>> Martin Carthy: -- and I listen to that harmony that she dreamed up. What a clever woman, my God. Yup.
>> Steve Winick: Yup, and you made --
>> Martin Carthy: I had great fun.
>> Steve Winick: -- some great music with them.
^E01:00:34