Fairport Convention are an English folk rock band, formed in 1967 by guitarists Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol, bassist Ashley Hutchings and drummer Shaun Frater (with Frater replaced by Martin Lamble after their first gig). They started out influenced by American folk rock, with a set list dominated by Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell songs and a sound that earned them the nickname “the British Jefferson Airplane”.
Vocalists Judy Dyble and Iain Matthews joined them before the recording of their self-titled debut in 1968; afterwards, Dyble was replaced by Sandy Denny, with Matthews later leaving during the recording of their third album.
Denny began steering the group towards traditional British music for their next two albums, What We Did on Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking (both 1969); the latter featured fiddler Dave “Swarb” Swarbrick, most notably on the song “A Sailor’s Life”, which laid the groundwork for British folk rock by being the first time a traditional British song was combined with a rock beat.
Shortly before the album’s release, a crash on the M1 motorway killed Lamble and Jeannie Franklyn, Thompson’s girlfriend; this resulted in the group retiring most of their prior material and turning entirely towards British folk music for their seminal album Liege & Lief, released the same year. This style has been the band’s focus ever since. For this album Swarbrick joined full-time, alongside drummer Dave Mattacks. Both Denny and Hutchings left before the year’s end; the latter replaced by Dave Pegg, who has remained the group’s sole consistent member to this day; Thompson left after the recording of 1970’s Full House.
Wales has a rich musical heritage, and the next generation is ready to take centre stage.
By Vivian Lam
Wales has always had more than its fair share of great musicians. From Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey in the 1960s, to Budgie and Badfinger in the 1970s, The Alarm in the 1980s and Super Furry Animals, Catatonia and Manic Street Preachers during 1990s Britpop.
Since then, Marina, Funeral For a Friend and Bullet For My Valentine have been among the more popular recent music acts to emerge from Wales. And today’s Welsh music scene continues to feature a huge variety of artists who create a plethora of styles.
Here are four rising acts who continue the tradition set by their predecessors.
1. Cerys Hafana
Since the release of her first album Cwmwl in 2020, harpist and multi-instrumentalist Cerys Hafana has emerged as one of the most original voices in contemporary Welsh folk music. Mixing folk with more modern styles, Hafana plays the harp, Wales’ national instrument.
By subverting traditional Welsh folk songs and composing her own, sometimes minimalistic influenced music, Hafana simultaneously continues and breaks with tradition.
On her second album Edyf (2022), Havana used the National Library of Wales archive to resurrect old folk manuscripts. Recordings such as Cilgerran and Comed 1858 display a mystical emotion which somehow combines old melodies with more contemporary arrangements.
2. Minas
Fans of James Minas, or just Minas, call him a hip-hop artist. But the Cardiff-based producer and bandleader sees his work as part of a post-punk lineage that celebrates DIY creative independence and diversity. He’s happy with any number of genre labels, as long as they are meant kindly.
Minas’ music certainly uses a punk energy as a way of relating to and understanding the way the world works. For example, the song All My Love Has Failed Me is a prolonged surge of angry adrenaline, layering monotone rhythms that build into short looped riffs. It takes two minutes to change chord, but the music is constantly building and evolving up to that point.
Minas’ parents were punks so he heard this kind of music as a child. But as is clear on songs like Payday, he is also influenced by grime, and that helped him hone his production skills before taking his band and music to the stage.
Proud of his Welsh-Greek identity and having grown up around the different accents of the capital city and valleys, Minas never thinks about how to speak or sing when performing. In his discernible Cardiff accent, he won’t do more than three takes of a track when recording. He aims for the opposite of “manufactured” by keeping the live feel, even in the studio.
3. VRï
The trio VRï started in Cardiff when classical music students, Jordan Price Williams and Patrick Rimes, discovered a shared interest in their native Welsh folk music, language and traditions. Together with Aneurin Jones, they fuse the classical music approach and instrumentation of two violins and cello with Welsh folk music and energy. All three sing on tracks too.
Live, the band helps its fans feel a sense of ownership over the music. They’ve released two albums to date, Tŷ Ein Tadau in 2019 and 2022’s Islais A Genir. The song Cainc Sain Tathan is typical of their style, with its clever arrangements and blend of voices and instruments, song and extemporisation.
The music they play has been through the hands of Welsh people for hundreds of years and is the product of those who have cared for, curated and celebrated it for centuries. The energy and precision of their arrangements and performances put it in safe hands and carry it forward for the next generation.
4. Nogood Boyo
The track One Day says a lot about the band Nogood Boyo, named after a character in Dylan Thomas’ play Under Milk Wood. It’s bilingual with alternating lines in Welsh and English, but the lines are not straight translations and bilingual listeners will experience something different from it. The track fuses electronic dance and rock music with folk-style fiddle and accordion playing. It’s also in an oddly lilting 6/4 beat that catches out the incautious or inebriated dancer.
The video tips a Welsh hat to folk-horror and the supposedly strange stuff that rural people get up to – such as speaking a language that has survived almost 750 years of oppression, reputedly by only being spoken when an English person enters the room.
Live, the band fizzes with energy and galvanises a loyal audience into an energetic dancing mass who hang on, and sing along to, every word of each song. Nogood Boyo has coined itself the label “trash-trad” but this disguises the subtlety of the material. And the band’s commitment to fusing traditional music with contemporary forms neatly sums up the more rap influenced songs such as Not My King. Let’s just say Nogood Boyo is not looking to be on any forthcoming honours lists.
AT THE BARBERSHOP: Cliff Edwards, aka “Ukelele Ike” was the voice of Disney’s beloved character Jiminy Cricket
By Michael Stevenson
The most memorable song from Walt Disney’s Pinocchio, “When You Wish Upon a Star” was the very first Disney song to win an Academy Award in 1940. The song, written by Leigh Harline with lyrics by Ned Washington, is performed in the film by a cute and acutely conscientious top hat-wearing insect named “Jiminy Cricket.”
“Like a bolt out of the blue
Fate steps in and sees you through
When you wish upon a star
Your dreams come true”
Jiminy’s warm, reassuring voice (with just the hint of Midwestern drawl) was supplied by singer/actor Cliff Edwards. Edwards was the possessor of high natural tenor voice with a three-octave range. The purity of his final note of “When You Wish Upon a Star” (appropriately landing on the word “true”) is nothing short of sublime.
On the record and in the film’s credits, Cliff Edwards isn’t noted as singer, but rather Jiminy Cricket
Cliff Edwards was born June 14, 1895 in Hannibal, Missouri – the birthplace of Mark Twain, whom Edwards remembered once passing on a city street. Edward’s professional life didn’t so much resemble a story of Twain’s, but more a chapter from Nathaniel West’s nightmarish depiction of 1930’s Hollywood “The Day of the Locust.”
Not long after the successes of Pinocchio, Edwards found himself in financial ruin due to unpaid taxes, gambling losses, multiple bankruptcies, cocaine and alcohol addictions, and three failed marriages. Today, a resume like this might belong to a GOP presidential candidate, but the 1940s were not as forgiving a time. “Cliff made millions,” said famed Disney animator Ward Kimball , “and he lost it all.”
When you get in trouble and you don’t know right from wrong, Give a little whistle! Give a little whistle! When you meet temptation and the urge is very strong, Give a little whistle! Give a little whistle! – “Give a Little Whistle” (Leigh Harline and Ned Washington)
BEGINNINGS
Cliff “Ukelele Ike” Edward’s fans once included both Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Decades after his death, both James Taylor and Paul McCartney covered his ukelele songs on their records. According to Van Dyke Parks, the brilliant Harry Nilsson (who knew a little about self-destructive behavior himself), regarded Cliff Edwards as “his favorite singer.” The man and legend had humble beginnings.
Growing up in the Midwest, Cliff Edwards worked as a youngster in a Hannibal, Missouri shoe factory. He ran away from home before finishing school. By age 16, he was singing in St. Louis saloons where he learned to play the ukulele to provide his own accompaniment since many of the bars had no piano. He acquired the nickname “Ukelele Ike” when a barkeeper couldn’t remember his name.
Moving from St. Louis, to Chicago, and eventually New York, in 1924 he graduated from carnivals and vaudeville shows to Broadway when George Gershwin picked him to join the cast of Lady, Be Good. Sharing the bill were a young Fred and Adele Astaire. Lady, Be Good was a Broadway success and Astaire later recalled it was Cliff Edwards who regularly “stopped the show” with his rendition of Gershwin’s “Fascinating Rythym.”
After his Broadway success, Edwards had his first recording success with “It’s Only a Paper Moon.” The song later was recorded by all the greats, Crosby, Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole, but Cliff Edwards’ record, with his trademark sweetness and vulnerability, remains the gold standard version of the song.
Music critic Imogen Sara Smith observed: “No one has ever sung “Paper Moon” more beautifully . Edwards (backed by the exquisitely spare guitar of Dick McDonough) brings a pitch-perfect blend of wistful longing and rueful world-weariness to this great Yip Harburg-Harold Arlen song about searching for something real amid the phony dazzle of stage scenery, lighting effects, circus ballyhoo, parades, jingles, penny arcades and honky-tonks.”
Some 40 years after Edward’s recording, director Peter Bogdanovich changed the name of his 1973 film (originally titled Addie Prays) to Paper Moon, while choosing music for his film.
Along with pop songs of the “crooner” variety, Edwards recorded a number of novelty-jazz hits such as “Ja Da,” which included the irresistible lyric I myself sing nearly every time good fortune comes my way:
“Here’s a funny little melody It’s so soothing and appealing to me It goes Ja-Da, Ja-Da, Ja-Da, Ja-Da, Jing, Jing, Jing”
There was also “Hard Headed Hannah,” “I Want to Call You ‘Sweet Mama,” and the delightful “Hang On To Me,” (below) from the 1935 short film Starlit Days at the Lido. In this colorized scene from the film, Cliff plays his uke and mugs alongside “slight of hand artist” Suzy Wandas. If you knew Suzy like I knew Suzy, indeed
Edwards left New York and headed west for The Hollywood Revue of 1929, one of MGM’s earliest sound films. The film marks the debut of the song “Singin’ in the Rain”, performed by Cliff Edwards as “Ukulele Ike.” When not credited as himself, Edward’ gathered over a hundred acting credits; mostly small “character” parts with names such as Froggy, Owly, Pooch, Snipe, Bumpy, Screwy, Sleepy, Shorty, Runty, Speed, Tips, Hogie, Handy, Happy, Minstrel Joe, Banjo Page, Bones Malloy, and (… wait for it …) “Squid Watkins.”
On stage and on record, Edwards performed one of the earliest examples of scat singing, or as Edwards called it, his “Effus.” He imitated the wa-wa trumpet with growls and purrs, sounding like a cross between Louis Armstrong and Baby Snooks. No one has ever sounded quite like it, before or since.
BUSTER KEATON AND A BEAR IN A LADIES’ BOUDOIR
Between 1923 and 1933, Edwards recorded more than 120 sides for records, and one account claims that during his career, he sold more than 74 million records, including what was then described as “party” records with suggestive titles such “Bear in a Ladies’ Boudoir” and “I’m Gonna Give It To Mary With Love.” Had he lived long enough to work with the Coen Brothers, I can imagine Ukele Ike singinging “How Ya Gonna Keep ’em Down Once They’ve Seen Karl Hungus?”
One of my favorite clips of Edwards “efussing” was in the film Doughboys a 1930 talkie-comedy film starring Buster Keaton, who was a close friend of Edwards’ and fellow hell-raiser in the hills of Hollywood. In Doughboys Edwards beats the strings of a ukelele with drumsticks while a deadpanned Keaton frets the chords on the song “You Never Did That Before.” It is a hilarious and extraordinary musical performance by both actors, and one can imagine the two pals developing their schtick over a drink or seven.
Keaton recalls in his autobiography, My Wonderful World of Slapstick (1960), “all my weekends were lost weekends. … I had as much fun with my land yacht as a man can whose purpose is to forget his whole private world has fallen apart.”
PINOCCHIO AND DUMBO
Edwards continued partying hard while gambling away his earnings. A case can be made that the success of Pinocchio served only to accelerate Edward’s eventual decline. Along with his drinking and cocaine binges, he was now using heroin.
He managed to stay afloat with his novelty and “party” songs” while taking dozens of small parts in Hollywood films, including his portrayal of a “Reminiscent Soldier” in Gone With the Wind.
In 1941, Edwards again landed a memorable role in a Disney animated classic Dumbo, portraying the regrettably-named “Jim Crow” who sings in ‘hokum’-style, “When I See an Elephant Fly.”
It was Disney animator Ward Kimball cast Edwards as Jim Crow in Dumbo: “We were recording the track for the Black Crows, and we got Hall Johnson’s Black Choir from the Methodist church in Los Angeles for it. Cliff was the only white guy among them. He actually sounded more black than the blacks we had backing him up.” (The tremor you just felt is Hall Johnson rolling in his grave.) But let us remember – this was 1941, when even Left-Wing lion Woody Guthrie was performing Amos n’ Andy-style ebonics on his Pasadena KFVD radio show. (Woody eventually abandoned the hokum and offered an on-air apology.)
MICKEY MOUSE CLUB and UKELELE IKE’S DECLINE
By the 1950s, the Disney Studio used Edwards as the voice of Jiminy Cricket on several animated short segments on the original Mickey Mouse Club show and aging actor appeared in person several times to entertain the Mouseketeers, including Annette Funicello, the teenage actress soon to appear in the idiotic Beach Blanket Bingo (1965) which sadly featured a cameo by Edward’s drinking buddy, Buster Keaton (somebody cue broadcaster Raymond Morrison, “Oh, the humanity!”)
Micky Mouse Club, November 20, 1956 (Guest Star Day) Guest Starring Cliff Edwards (A.K.A. Ukulele Ike) Featuring Lonnie Burr, Margene Storey, Charley Laney, Doreen Tracey, Dennis Day, and Annette Funicello.
As Jimmy Johnson, the man in charge of Disneyland Records remembered:
“Cliff was declining right before our eyes—I made some work for him on records which we really didn’t need. Toward the end, royalties from records were his only source of income. The last time he came into my office, he didn’t seem to know where he was or who I was. It brought tears to my eyes. He was a warm and wonderful man with never a sour word about anything or anybody. I cherish my memories of him.”
“Ukulele Ike Sings Again” was a 1956 Disneyland record, suggested by Walt himself, to remind the public of Edwards’ musical legacy. I’m one of the proud owners of this album, which I pulled from the bargain bin of my local record shop, along with Procol Harum’s “A Salty Dog,” for a dollar apiece! “Ja-Da, Ja-Da, Jing, Jing, Jing!“
“We recorded the whole album in six straight hours on one night,” remembered Disney producer Jimmy Johnson. “There were no written arrangements. With an assist of ‘John Barleycorn’ (booze), we made one of the most spontaneous and musical albums I have ever been associated with … We cut ‘Singin’ In The Rain’, Darktown Strutters Ball’, ‘Ja Da’ … we had a ball! Unfortunately, the album didn’t sell well and there wasn’t much in the way of royalties for Cliff.”
“I’ll See You In My Dreams” – a favorite of Beatle George Harrison
ONLY CRICKETS HEARD UPON HIS PASSING
Cliff Edwards was no longer officially employed by Disney when he entered a nursing home in Hollywood in 1969 as a charity patient supported by the Actor’s Fund. At the time of his death from a heart attack on July 17, 1971, at the age of 76, Edwards’ passing wasn’t reported to the public for several days because hospital officials didn’t consider it newsworthy since they didn’t know he had ever been famous.
His body was initially unclaimed and donated to the UCLA medical school. When Walt Disney Productions eventually discovered news of his passing, they offered to pay for the burial. Instead, the Actors Fund of America and the Motion Picture and Television Relief Fund paid for the burial.
Thirteen years after Edwards’ death, Disney provided a marker for the performer’s grave when the lack of a proper headstone was reportedly brought to the company’s attention by the Ukulele Society of America. In addition to his name and years of life, the marker simply reads, “In loving memory of Ukulele Ike.”
“It is hard to laugh at the need for beauty and romance, no matter how tasteless, even horrible, the results of that are. But it is easy to sigh.”
― Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust
Listen to Cliff Edwards’ music, and more music from Disney’s Golden Era of Animation at WRIU‘ Radio’s Picture This, hosted by friend of The Hobbledehoy, Wayne Cresser.
Rufous Nightjar, a harmonious trio comprising Branwen Kavanagh, Anna Bishop, and Zoé Basha, release their inaugural album, “Songs for Three Voices”. The group’s journey traces back to a serendipitous encounter within Dublin’s underground traditional and folk music scene. After years of intersecting musical endeavours, the trio solidified their collaboration during a transformative exploration of Eastern European folk melodies in 2018.
The genesis of their debut album, “Songs for Three Voices”, finds its roots in the creative energy fostered during the pandemic-induced lockdown. Branwen Kavanagh, the creative force behind the compositions, delved into themes of mythology, folklore, and the ethereal realms, crafting a collection of a cappella melodies. Collaborating with Anna and Zoé, the trio embarked on an artistic odyssey, culminating in a tapestry of harmonies rich in tradition and emotion.
Their musical odyssey garnered widespread acclaim, with notable appearances on esteemed platforms such as Other Voices and the National Concert Hall. Rufous Nightjar’s performances captivated audiences across Ireland, leading to two sold-out tours and recognition on prominent media outlets, including Donal Dineen’s “Make me an Island” Podcast and RTE Radio 1’s Arena. Renowned Irish videographer Myles O Reilly further immortalized their artistry with a visually stunning creation filmed at Kilruddery house.
With an ethos rooted in communal expression, Rufous Nightjar extends an invitation to embrace and share their music. They envision their songs echoing through kitchens, pubs, and firesides, fostering connection and celebration of folk traditions. To commemorate this album, the trio released a limited run of 100 vinyl records of “Songs for Three Voices”, available now exclusively via Bandcamp.
As Rufous Nightjar takes flight with the debut album, “Songs for Three Voices”, their harmonious melodies promise to enchant listeners and leave an indelible mark on the rich tapestry of folk music.
The cover versions on Dream From The Deep Well include “I Know Who is Sick,” most familiar from the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Maken interpretation, and “Down by the Glenside,” which The Dubliners incorporated into their repertoire. The first opens the album, the second closes it. Between, amongst the original compositions, there is also an adaptation of Tim Buckley’s “I Must Have Been Blind.”
Taking these as a way in to the fourth studio album from the UK-born but Irish singer-songwriter Brigid Mae Power is an understandable path to follow, but after Dream From The Deep Well concludes it becomes clear it’s a dead end. These are not up-front tributes, like her recent EP featuring the songs of Patsy Cline, Bob Dylan, Jason Molina, Townes Van Zandt and more. Here, other people’s songs are so totally reframed they may as well be original compositions by Power.
Equally, the presence of a couple of popular folk songs does not make this a folk album. An autoharp and pedal steel bring a country flavour, similar to what colours Mazzy Star’s She Hangs Brightly. Odd stabs of distant trumpet suggest the coming and going of a New Orléans procession band. Power’s accordion appears on “Some Life You’ve Known.” Life experiences are drawn from: the motivation for writing “Lightning” came from the refugees she opened her home to; “Ashling” honours the murdered Irish schoolteacher and musician Ashling Murphy; lyrics expose an ambivalance about her life as a musician. Ultimately, Dream From The Deep Well is about the whole not its constituent parts.
Largely absent is the gauzy, wraithlike feel of her previous records. The songs are also more linear, underpinned by acoustic guitar. The themes are as impassioned as ever, but the setting is more direct. Perhaps this is the album to bring Brigid Mae Power her widest audience so far.
The HOBBLEDEHOY 