Nic Jones - Penguin Eggs (1980)

I was first introduced to Nic Jones through Peter Bellamy's Transports, an album that I shared on this blog once before. Needless to say I was hooked from the very moment I heard him sing "Us Poor Fellows". I thought he had one of the most angelic voices I had heard, and I had yet to learn about his guitar style. This album is truly a masterpiece of any sort of folk-traditional-acoustic-singer-songwriter style of music.

Margaret Barry - I Sang Through the Fairs (1953, 1998)

Life has been drastically changing in Ireland. Over the past two centuries, a land once stricken with famine and poverty had eventually turned into a center of technological achievement. This sort of revolution signaled the end of the traditional ways of life in rural, and as well as urban areas of Ireland. One such example is the diminishing number of a race of people in Ireland known as "tinkers", otherwise known as "gypsies" or "travelling people". These nomadic people would wander through Ireland in horse-drawn caravans, finding work by mending pots and pans, trading, various odd jobs that could help them survive get on their way. As modernization occurred  these bands of tinkers would be split up by law enforcement and/or taken in for vagrancy. Their lines of work could not compare to the new industrious world they were living in; factories took over everything they were able to do. Before the end of the 20th century, the race of the tinker had died out.

Peter Bellamy with Various Artists - The Transports (1977)

Peter Bellamy was a prominent figure during the English traditional music revival of the 1960s and 1970s. He dropped out of college in 1965, at the suggestion of friend and fellow traditional musician Anne Briggs, to pursue a career in music. He formed The Young Tradition, an a capella traditional English singing trio, with members Royston Wood and Heather Wood. This group took influence from family singing groups the Watersons and the Copper Family, as well as traditional singer Ewan MacColl. The group disbanded in the early 1970s and Bellamy took on a solo career, performing traditional English songs a capella or with his Anglo concertina. Sadly, his life took a tragic end after he committed suicide in 1991. The Transports is Peter Bellamy's masterwork, a folk opera consisting of traditional songs re-worded by Bellamy that tell the true story of Henry Cabell and Susannah Holmes, two convicts that fall in love, have a child and are both separated after being transported to prison colonies in Australia. Several other prominent English folk revival figures join Bellamy, each playing a specific character in the story line. Collaborators include: Nic Jones, A.L. Lloyd, Martin Carthy, Dave Swarbrick, June Tabor, Mike & Norma Waterson, Cyril Tawney and more. Arrangements are by Dolly Collins, sister of traditional musician Shirley Collins. Complete with period instrumentation, this album is a striking and powerful blend of English traditional music and history. Hopefully this album will leave you feeling a bit different.

The Transports