3/20/2020 Shirley Collins No Roses Rar
No Roses is an album by Shirley Collins and the Albion Country Band. It was recorded at Sound Techniques, and Air Studios in London, in the.
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No Roses is an album by Shirley Collins and the Albion Country Band. It was recorded at Sound Techniques, and Air Studios in London, in the summer of 1971. It was produced by Sandy Roberton and Ashley Hutchings (Shirley Collins' husband at the time). It was released in October 1971 on the Pegasus label.
It is very unusual to have 27 musicians and singers on an album of traditional folk songs. It happened because people simply dropped in during recording sessions and were asked to join in. 'The Murder of Maria Marten', a lengthy song about the Red Barn Murder, is broken into segments, with parts of British folk rock alternating with more traditional parts featuring Shirley Collins' voice and a hurdy-gurdy drone. Shirley Collins had used a similar technique on 'One Night As I Lay on My Bed' on 'Adieu to Old England'.
Some songs, for instance Poor Murdered Woman and Murder of Maria Marten, feature large parts of the Fairport Convention line-up of late 1969 (Liege and Lief). In fact, Fairport Convention member Ashley Hutchings appears on all, Simon Nicol and Richard Thompson on eight, and Dave Mattacks on three of the nine songs on this album.
Claudy Banks includes a composed duo performance by Alan Cave on bassoon and British free jazz saxophonist Lol Coxhill – his only performance ever in the context of British folk music. Hal-An-Tow features members of the two acclaimed folk vocal groups The Watersons (Lal and Mike Waterson) and The Young Tradition (Royston Wood). Both drummer Roger Powell and pianist Ian Whiteman previously played together in the band Mighty Baby.
The album title No Roses are the last words of the first verse of the folk song The False Bride (I went down to the forest to gather fine flowers, but the forest won't yield me no roses.), which Shirley Collins sang on her EP Heroes in Love in 1963.
Track listing[edit]
All the tracks are arrangements of traditional folk songs. Claudy Banks stems from Ron and Bob Copper. The line-up is according to the folk database Mainly Norfolk.[2]
References[edit]
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=No_Roses&oldid=905254858'
Love, Death and the Lady is an album by Shirley and Dolly Collins.
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This is a companion-piece to Anthems In Eden (1969), but with a darker tone to it. She attributes the 'melancholy' mood of the album to her own personal loneliness at that time.[1] Many of the instrumentalists of Anthems In Eden are present ('Musica Reservata'), but they contributed sparser accompaniments. The figure of Death appears as a character in the title track. 'The Oxford Girl', sung unaccompanied, is about an apparently motiveless murder of a woman by her erstwhile lover. The long instrumental sections which were such a feature of Anthems In Eden, are absent, apart from the start and end of 'Plains of Waterloo'. The male chorus is present on only one track, 'The Bold Fisherman'. The thematic unity of the album centres on murder, class conflict and betrayal. 'The Outlandish Knight' concerns a serial killer. The album was produced by Austin John Marshall, Shirley's husband at the time. Rejected love plays a part in some songs, and this might echo the fact that Shirley and Austin were on the verge of divorcing each other.
Arrangements are provided by Dolly Collins (Shirley's sister), who plays flute-organ and piano, and gives a minor key accompaniment to some songs. It is almost as if the singer and the instrumentalists are in different worlds. On the tracks which have harpsichord accompaniment (Christopher Hogwood), the contrast lies in the intricacy of the instrumental line, compared to the straightforward vocal presentation of tragic events.
The most cheerful of the songs is 'Fair Maid of Islington', where a female cellar-keeper gets the better of a treacherous vintner. It is sung to the dance tune of Sellenger's Round.[2] It was the only one of the songs which found its way into the repertoire of Ashley Hutchings' and Shirley Collins' Albion Country Band, as testified by performances in 1976.[3]Terry Cox, who was a member of Pentangle at this time, plays understated percussion on three songs.
The last four tracks were recorded at the original studio sessions, but were excluded by reasons of time constraints on long-playing records. The album was chosen as 'Folk Album of the Month' by Melody Maker, and was short-listed for album of the year. Shirley comments, 'It wasn't easy music to listen to, I'm surprised anybody bought any of it at all'.
The album, which was recorded in 1970, has a running time 65 minutes 21 seconds (including the bonus tracks).
Track listing[edit]
All tracks are traditional.
(* Bonus tracks not available on the original LP. They were recorded during the original studio sessions)
Personnel[edit]
Personnel according to Mainly Norfolk: English Folk and Other Good Music[4]
References[edit]
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Love,_Death_and_the_Lady&oldid=913531771'
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