by Colin Harper
Current CD: Market Square MSM CD134
Live In Hope: The Wildlife Album 2 (Market Square, 2005)
A second volume to the above, produced by Colin Harper, with proceeds going to the WWF and Ulster Wildlife Trust. This time there was less emphasis on exclusive contributions but more on licensing in material on a specifically nature-related theme. Bert’s rare 1979 single ‘Black Birds of Brittany’ was licensed from its producer Austin John Marshall, marking its debut on CD. The album also contains rare vintage tracks from Duffy Power and Roxy Music, plus exclusive tracks from Andy Roberts, Jan Akkerman, Karine Polwart, Janet Holmes and Martyn Joseph and classic tracks from the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Jethro Tull, Bruce Cockburn, Steve Hackett, Richard Thompson, Lal Waterson and others.
Current CD: Market Square MSM CD139
Important Foreign and Archive Releases
Live At La Foret (Nippon Columbia YX 7273AK)
Released: 1980, Japan-only, credited ‘Bert Jansch & Martin Jenkins’. Personnel: Bert Jansch (guitar/vocal), Martin Jenkins (mandocello/violin/vocal). Produced: straight-from-soundboard live recording. Recorded: March 22—23 1980 at La Foret Theatre, Japan
Poormouth / Blues Run the Game / Bittern / Ask Your Daddy / Running from Home / Angie / Avocet / Let Me Sing / Alimony / Una Linea Di Dolcezza / Sweet Mother Earth
Note: Many artists released Japan-only projects through Nippon Columbia, including John Renbourn who recorded So Early in the Spring, an album’s worth of exclusive studio tracks, around the same time. Bert and Martin agreed in principle to record something for the label but were unaware that their shows at La Foret were being recorded. This, and the obviously minimal production values, would account for the rather lack-lustre feel.
Current CD: unavailable
BBC Radio One Live In Concert (Windsong WIN CD 039)
Released: September 1993 (CD only). Personnel: 1980: Bert Jansch (guitar/vocal), Martin Jenkins (mandocello/violin/vocal), Nigel Portman Smith (bass), Luce Langridge (drums). 1982: Jansch, Portman Smith and Langridge plus Albert Lee (electric guitar). Produced: Jeff Griffin (1980) / Mike Hawkes (1982) Recorded: July 1980 and April 1982 at the Paris Theatre, London.
Poormouth / Running From Home / Kingfisher / Let Me Sing / Sovay / Alimony / Love Is Lost / Fresh as a Sweet Sunday Morning / Up to the Stars / If I Were a Carpenter / Sit Down Beside Me / Is It Real? / Heartbreak Hotel
Current CD: unavailable
Young Man Blues: Live in Glasgow 1962–64 (Ace CDWIKD 182)
Released: November 1998 (CD only). Personnel: Bert Jansch (guitar/vocal). Produced: live reel-to-reel recordings made by Frank Coia. Recorded: Now believed to span 1962–65, at various clubs in Glasgow
Something’s Coming / Careless Love / Veronica / When Do I Get to Be Called Man? / Courting Blues / Angi / Tic-Tocative / Alice’s Wonderland / Meanest Man in the Town / Joint Control / Bottle Up and Go / Untitled Instrumental #1 / Train Song / Stagolee / Rocking Chair Blues / Me and My Baby Never Used To Have a Fight / Finches / Blues Run The Game / Pretty Polly / Come Back Baby / Untitled Instrumental #2 / I Am Lonely / Freedom / One Day Old / Train on the River / Hallelujah I Love Her So / Strolling Down the Highway / Gallows Tree / Betty and Dupree / Dry Land Blues
Current CD: Ace CDWIKD 182
Note: 30 of 56 available tracks were used, many of them otherwise undocumented Jansch blues covers but also the otherwise unknown Jansch originals ‘Freedom’ and ‘Meanest Man in the Town’ and the legendary ‘lost’ instrumental ‘Joint Control’. ‘One Day Old’, presented as a possible Jansch original in the notes, is in fact an Archie Fisher set of words to an American folk tune, as recorded by Bert’s friend Owen Hand on his album Something New (1965).
The River Sessions (River Records RIVERCD006)
Released: 2004. Personnel: Bert Jansch (guitar/vocal). Recorded: Glasgow City Hall, 18 November 1974 Produced: BBC Radio Clyde
Build Another Band / I’ve Got a Feeling / One for Jo / The Blacksmith / Travellin’ Man / Lady Nothynge’s Toye Puffe / Fresh as a Sweet Sunday Morning / Angi / Stone Monkey / Dance Lady Dance / When I Get Home / In the Bleak Mid-Winter / Key to the Highway / Chambertin
Current CD: River Records RIVERCD006
Note: River Records, established by Scottish Radio Holdings to exploit the Radio Clyde archive, contacted Bert with a view to releasing this extraordinary 1974 solo performance – beautifully recorded, superbly performed, and representing an era and repertoire otherwise poorly served by currently available product. Even Bert was blown away when he heard it, and he was very happy for it to be released. Aside from material from the long-unavailable Charisma albums LA Turnaround and Santa Barbara Honeymoon (here performed solo), the set also included the Big Bill Broonzy number ‘Key To The Highway’ which here makes its debut on a Bert Jansch release. (The first pressing of the CD mislabelled this track ‘Running From Home’ – corrected on subsequent pressings.)
Guest Appearances
Rory Gallagher
Wheels Within Wheels (BMG / Capo 703)
Released: March 2003. Recorded: 1970s—1990s. Produced: Donal Gallagher. Track: Bert contributes second guitar, recorded at his home studio in 2002, to a demo of ‘She Moved Through the Fair / Ann Cran Ull’, which he had been sent by the late Irish guitarist in the early ‘90s, with a view to a collaboration on an acoustic album. Wheels Within Wheels was brother Donal Gallagher’s reconstruction of how that album might have sounded, insofar as was possible, with further contributions from Martin Carthy, Bela Fleck, Lonnie Donegan, The Dubliners and others.
Current CD: BMG / Capo 703
Johnny ‘Guitar’ Hodge:
La Luna (Zetluice 01)
Released: 2003, privately distributed. Recorded: c.1996–98 at Bert Jansch’s home studio. Tracks: Bert produced the album – a multi-layered retro-rock extravaganza – and contributes acoustic guitar throughout. The characterful Mr Hodge has appeared with Bert at concerts since the mid 1990s.
Note: One track – a cover of Bert’s ‘Step Back’, with Bert apparently on light percussion – appears on the Jansch tribute double album People on the Highway: A Bert Jansch Encomium (Market Square Records, 2000).
Candidate
Nuada (Snowstorm STORM017CD)
Released: 2002. Track: Bert contributes guitar to one track, ‘Burrowhead’, on this the third album by London-based acoustic four-piece, Candidate, on a label owned by Loren Jansch’s brother-in-law. Candidate are passionately interested in acoustic music, and Nuada is an album of music inspired by the 1970s film The Wicker Man.
Current CD: Snowstorm STORM017CD
Janie Romer
Darkest Before Dawn (Terrapin TWACD031)
Released: 2002 Recorded: Glebe Studios, Hertfordshire. Produced: Janie Romer & Wes McGhee Tracks: Bert contributes guitar to two tracks, ‘Limbo’ and ‘No One Around’, a Romer composition he covered on When the Circus Comes to Town (1995). Janie occasionally guested at Bert’s live shows during the mid-1990s and her partner Jay Burnett was involved in the recording of both Circus and Toy Balloon (1998)
Current CD: Terrapin TWACD031
Gordon Giltrap
Under This Blue Sky (La Cooka Ratcha LCVP150CD)
Released: 2002. Recorded: 2001 at both Gordon and Bert’s home studios. Track: Having recorded the track solo for his fabulous tribute album Janschology, Gordon offers another arrangement of ‘Chambertin’, using an Armstrong Baritone guitar (hence in a different key), with Bert adding second guitar.
Current CD: La Cooka Ratcha LCVP150CD
Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions:
Bavarian Fruit Bread (Rough Trade RTRADE-CD031)
Released: October 2001. Recorded: Bert’s contributions were recorded in Oslo, Norway, in May 2000. Tracks: A long-time fan of Bert, Hope – singer with Mazzy Star – asked Bert to play on her solo album. Two of the four tracks recorded, ‘Charlotte’ and ‘Butterfly Mornings’, appear on the finished product.
Current CD: Rough Trade RTRADE-CD031
&n
bsp; Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions:
At the Doorway Again (Rough Trade RTRADE-SCD008)
Released: September 2000
An EP, At the Doorway Again, was released in September 2000 containing four tracks from Bavarian Fruit Bread (see above), including ‘Charlotte’, one of the tracks on which Bert plays.
Current CD: unavailable
Dave Sutherland
The Navigator
Released: As yet unreleased. Recorded: c.1996–98 at Bert Jansch’s home studio.
Tracks: Bert produced the album, an impressively arranged singer-songwriter effort reminiscent of Ralph McTell with numerous musicians guesting. Bert adds second guitar on some tracks.
Peter Kirtley
Peter Kirtley (Ariola ARIS 883 839–907/Hypertension HYCD200119)
Released: Autumn 1992 [German-only release]. Recorded: January 1992 at Korner Recorders, London. Tracks: ‘I Won’t Ask You Anymore’ and ‘Afterwards’ – Bert plays second guitar on these two Kirtley compositions, the latter a remake of the instrumental first heard on Bert’s Sketches (1990).
Current CD: Hypertension HYCD200119 (1999).
Maggie Boyle
Reaching Out (Run River RR A003)
Released: 1987 (vinyl and cassette) Recorded: c.1986 at Heartbeat Sound, London. Tracks: Not specified on the album sleeve, though Maggie recalls Bert playing on two tracks. Bert shares the guitar playing credit with Maggie’s then partner Steve Tilston, whose style is more obvious throughout. Most noticeably, it is Bert adding delicate picking to ‘Lowlands of Holland’. Bert subsequently covered ‘The Mountain Streams’ on his own The Ornament Tree (1990), although the version here is sung unaccompanied.
Current CD: unavailable
Loren Auerbach/Bert Jansch with Presence
After the Long Night (Christabel CRL 001)
Released: March 1985 (vinyl and cassette). Recorded: late 1984 at Heartbeat Sound, London & Spaceward Studio, Cambridge Tracks: Bert plays first or second guitar (alongside Richard Newman) on all five tracks, which are all Newman compositions: ‘The Rainbow Man’, ‘Frozen Beauty’, ‘Christabel’, ‘So Lonely’ and ‘The Miller’ (the latter originally credited as ‘The Journey of the Moon Through Sorrow’).
Current CD:. After the Long Night/Playing The Game Castle Music CMRCD168 (2001) credited ‘Loren Auerbach & Bert Jansch’. The two Auerbach/Jansch albums packaged together. Digitally remastered and beautifully packaged, with new artwork, new sleeve-notes and full lyrics.
Loren Auerbach with Richard Newman and Special Guests
Playing the Game (Christabel CRL 002)
Released: October 1985 (vinyl and cassette). Recorded: 1985 at Heartbeat Sound, London. Tracks: Bert plays guitar on nine of the ten tracks and shares lead vocals with Loren on Richard Newman’s ‘I Can’t Go Back’. The arrangements for two traditional songs, ‘Yarrow’ and ‘Weeping Willow’, are credited to Bert. Songwriting-wise he contributes two otherwise unrecorded compositions: ‘Carousel’ and ‘Give Me Love’ as well as ‘Is It Real?’ from Heartbreak (1982).
Current CD: After the Long Night/Playing the Game Castle Music CMRCD168 (2001), credited ‘Loren Auerbach & Bert Jansch’. The two Auerbach/Jansch albums packaged together. Digitally remastered and beautifully packaged, with new artwork, new sleeve-notes and full lyrics.
Cliff Aungier
Full Moon (Aries ALP 001)
Released: 1984. Recorded: 1984? Tracks: Not specified on the album sleeve.
Current CD: unavailable
Jenny Beeching
No More Sad Goodbyes (Appaloosa AP029)
Released: 1983. Recorded: August 1982 at Gateway Studios, London Produced: Dave Peabody Track: ‘No More Sad Goodbyes’ – Bert adds second guitar, with distinctive flourishes, to this mid-tempo original from the London based singer-songwriter. Curiously, Bert’s wife Heather designed the sleeve of a previous Beeching LP, A Right Song and Dance (1979).
Current CD: unavailable
Erik Grip
Blidt Forsvinder Natten (Ex Libris)
Released: September 1977 [Denmark only]. Recorded: 1977. Track: Bert and Martin Jenkins both appear on one Danish-language track, ‘Langt Inde I Morgenen’, persuaded to do so while in Denmark by Ex Libris owner and Bert’s Danish agent, Peter Abramson. Along with 1978’s ‘Blackbirds of Brittany’ single, this is a rare example of Bert overdubbing a lead line on guitar.
Current CD: apparently available in Denmark
Ralph McTell
Easy (Reprise K54013)
Released: 1974. Recorded: 1973 at John Kongos Studio & Marquee Studios, London. Tracks: ‘Run Johnny Run’ – Bert took apparently two weeks to learn his largely background guitar part for this track, which also featured past and future collaborators Danny Thompson and Gerry Conway.
Current CD: Leola TPGCD17 (2000).
Wizz Jones
When I Leave Berlin (Village Thing VTS 24)
Released: 1974. Recorded: 1973. Track: ‘Freudian Slip’ – Bert was enticed from a period of seclusion in Wales to add typically sinuous second guitar to this quirky gem.
Current CD: Bert’s track can be found on The Village Thing Tapes (Wundertute, 1992) – a German compilation spanning 1969–76, also containing the splendid Alan Tunbridge song ‘Dazzling Stranger’.
Donovan
The Hurdy Gurdy Man (Epic BN 26420)
Released: October 1968 [USA only]. Recorded: Olympic Studios, London 1968? Tracks: ‘Tangier’ – Bert adds typically Jansch-esque guitar flourishes over eastern drones, completely baffling producer Mickie Most.
Current CD: EMI 2735682 (2005). Digitally remastered with bonus tracks.
John Renbourn
John Renbourn (Transatlantic, TRA 135)
Released: March 1966. Recorded: early 1965 at an unknown studio in Denmark Street, London. Tracks: ‘Noah and Rabbit’ and ‘Blue Bones’ – two improvised duets, purportedly capturing the very first time Bert and John had played together.
Current CD: Castle Music CMRCD359 (2001). Digitally remastered with three bonus tracks.
Tribute Songs and Tribute Albums
Donovan was first off the mark with Bert Jansch tributes, penning and recording cap-doffing tracks in the sixties called ‘House Of Jansch’ and ‘Bert’s Blues’, as well as recording ‘Do You Hear Me Now’ from Bert’s first album and the otherwise unrecorded Jansch original ‘Oh, Deed I Do’ – the latter being covered more recently, on their eponymous January 2006 album, by neo-folk rock group Eighteenth Day of May, in the vanguard of the much heralded 2006 revival-of-the-folk-revival (NWOBFR anyone?). Roy Harper has also said that his 1966 non-album B-side ‘Pretty Baby’ is in honour of Bert, although as it’s so rare we’ll just have to take his word for it. Some may have heard Neil Young’s ‘Ambulance Blues’, and I guess we’ve all heard Led Zeppelin’s ‘Black Mountain Side’. But until the two albums below (arriving like buses), Jansch covers on record were few and far between. Two other tributes of note – more specifically, intentional homages to the master’s instrumental style – are Johnny Marr’s ‘A To Zee’ (performed as a duet with Bert on his November 2003 60th Birthday concert at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall), which should appear, in a Marr solo version, on a Johnny Marr single B-side in 2007, and Colin Harper’s ‘Blues For A Green Earth’, recorded with Bert on The Wildlife Album (Market Square, 2004).
Various Artists
People on the Highway: A Bert Jansch Encomium (Market Square Records MSMCD106)
Released: September 2000. Tracks: Chris Smither Strolling Down the Highway / Rab Noakes: Dreams of Love / Ralph McTell: Running from Home / Donovan: Do you Hear Me Now? / Roy Harper: Needle of Death / Steve Ashley: It Don’t Bother Me / Al Stewart: Soho / Kelly Joe Phelps: Blackwater Side / Steve Benbow: Love Is Teasing / Johnny Marr: Healers Love Is Teasing / Duffy Power: I Am Lonely / John Challis: Nineteen Sixty-Five / Maggie Boyle: Bird Song / Legends of Tomorrow People: On the Highway / Bernard Butler: When I Get Home / Brooks Williams: Tell Me What Is True Love? /
Steve Tilston: Moonshine / Wizz Jones: Fresh As a Sweet Sunday Morning / Bird Dog: In My Mind / Martin Jenkins: Sweet Mother Earth / Eleanor McEvoy Where Did My Life Go? / Polly Bolton: Blackwater Side / James Devlin & Helen McGurk: Is It Real? / Johnny ‘Guitar’ Hodge: Step Back / Adam Jansch: Morning Brings Peace of Mind
Note: Pulled together by Colin Harper, this album intentionally features – like director Matthew Quinn’s Channel 4 documentary Dreamweaver, made in the same period – many of those interviewed for this book, which was originally published in the same month. Almost all of the tracks were especially recorded for the album during early 2000, except for those by Wizz Jones (from his 1980s album The Grapes of Life) and Johnny Hodge (from his then-unreleased La Luna). John Challis’ contribution is an arresting, oblique memoir of his time shared with Bert in 1965. Eleanor McEvoy subsequently re-recorded ‘Where did My Life Go?’ for inclusion on her solo album Early Hours (Market Square, 2004) while the Legends of Tomorrow’s crack at ‘People On The Highway’ (a supposedly one-off assemblage of Irish musicians brought together by Colin Harper and fronted by vocalist Janet Holmes) led directly to the Janet Holmes album The Road to the West (Market Square, 2004) where the track appears in remixed form.
Current CD: Market Square Records MSMCD106
Gordon Giltrap
Janschology (La Cooka Ratcha LCVP124CD)
Released: June 2000. Tracks: The First Time Ever I Saw Her Face / Angie / Running From Home / Chambertin / Blackwaterside / Roots
Note: A beautiful, sincere mini-album tribute to Bert by one of his biggest fans, and a legendary guitar stylist in his own right. ‘Roots’ is a Giltrap composition inspired by Bert while the rest are interpretations of tracks recorded by Bert.
