[JPL] Davy Graham RIP

[Nou Dadoun]

Sitting around the breakfast table this morning reading yesterday's NYT, my
wife turned to me and said, "Davy Graham?"  I  was surprised to hear that he
had passed away after a short illness, masterful guitar player whose musical
career in many ways ran roughly parallel to the late John Fahey in that they
both hugely influenced a whole school of guitarists which barely
acknowledged their existence.  Fahey got his balladry influence filtered
through Appalachia but Graham was tapped into the original vein of Child
Ballads and the British stand up and sing pub influences.  But both also had
roots in the blues, jazz and the modal improvisation of Indian and eastern
musics.

Although not as well known as his peers Bert Jansch and John Renbourn,
ironically more people know his song Anji though Paul Simon's version than
would be able to identify any one of the three.  In recent years, the
Fledg'ling label (see http://www.thebeesknees.com/?cat=10), the folks
responsible for the Chris McGregor, Brotherhood of Breath and Joe
Boyd-associated productions, have undertaken a comprehensive reissue program
of his sporadic releases including his 1965 acknowledged masterpiece "Folk,
Blues and Beyond".

http://www.daveygraham.moonfruit.com/

---

New York Times obit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/arts/music/21graham.html?_r=1
Davy Graham, Widely Influential British Guitarist, Dies at 68 By JON PARELES
Published: December 19, 2008

Davy Graham, a British guitarist whose musical fusions, technique and tuning
shaped generations of musicians, died on Monday at his home in London. He
was 68.

His Web site confirmed the death, saying it was caused by a seizure. Mr.
Graham had been battling lung cancer.

To many American listeners Mr. Graham's best-known piece of music is "Anji,"
a guitar solo that Paul
Simon<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/paul_simon/index.html?inline=nyt-per>performed
on Simon
and Garfunkel<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/simon_and_garfunkel/index.html?inline=nyt-org>'s
1966 album "Sounds of Silence." But Mr. Graham's blend of Celtic music with
blues, jazz, spiky syncopations and Eastern modes — he called it
folk-Baroque — has been widely influential since the early 1960s,
particularly with musicians who sought to revitalize and extend British folk
traditions. Among them were the members of Pentangle and Fairport Convention
as well as John Martyn, Martin Carthy and the guitarist Jimmy Page of Led
Zeppelin<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/l/led_zeppelin/index.html?inline=nyt-org>.


Mr. Graham popularized what guitarists call the DADGAD tuning, named for the
notes on the six strings from lowest to highest. (The standard tuning is
EADGBE.) The DADGAD tuning, introduced on recordings by Mr. Graham's 1962
version of the traditional song "She Moved Through the Fair," facilitates
modal chords with the resonance of open strings. It has been used
extensively in traditionalist music as well as in rock by Led Zeppelin and
others.

David Michael Gordon Graham was born in Hinckley, Leicestershire, England,
and grew up in London. His mother was Guyanese, his father Scottish. He took
classical-guitar lessons and also learned from a Moroccan-influenced
guitarist, Steve Benbow.

At the same time he was drawn to the blues of Leadbelly and Big Bill Broonzy
and to the traditional jazz of the skiffle movement in England. During
summers he visited Paris, performing on the streets. He played in British
folk and blues clubs, and was part of an early-1963 lineup of John Mayall's
Bluesbreakers. He wrote "Angi" as a teenager for a girlfriend, and in
various spellings the piece spread across the English folk scene. (Mr. Simon
discovered it during his time in England in the mid-'60s.)

For "The Guitar Player," in 1963, Mr. Graham performed duets with a
percussionist on jazz and classical tunes. In 1964 he released the
wide-ranging "Folk, Blues & Beyond" and the collaboration "Folk Roots, New
Routes," which included innovative duets on folk songs with the traditional
singer Shirley Collins. There were Middle Eastern and Indian elements in his
music, slipped into a repertory that encompassed the
Beatles<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/b/beatles_the/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,
Thelonious Monk<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/thelonious_monk/index.html?inline=nyt-per>and
his own compositions like "Blue Raga."

Mr. Graham, who at times in his career was billed as Davey Graham, remained
better known to musicians than to the broader pop audience. The British
newspaper The Guardian reported that he had been a registered heroin addict
in Britain.

After releasing two albums in 1970, "The Holly Kaleidoscope" and "Godington
Boundry," Mr. Graham recorded and performed more sporadically, preferring to
travel and study languages (Arabic, Turkish, Greek) and instruments (Arabic
oud, Indian sarod).

"I'm a traveler really," he once said. "I would die as a person if I stayed
in place for more than a year."

Mr. Graham's 1970s albums included "All That Moody," in 1976, and "Dance for
Two People," in 1979. In 1993 he made "Playing in Traffic." He performed on
the PBS<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/p/public_broadcasting_service/index.html?inline=nyt-org>series
"The Blues" in 2003, and a 2005 BBC Radio interview, "Whatever
Happened to Davey Graham?," revived interest in his work, spurring reissues
of his early albums.

Soon afterward he returned to regular performing, and in 2007 he recorded
his final album, "Broken Biscuits."

This year the C. F. Martin guitar company made a commemorative version of
the OM 000-18 guitar, with which Mr. Graham forged his 1960s style.

He is survived by two daughters, Kim and Mercy.
Reprinted from Friday's early editions.


-- 
====
Nou Dadoun
The A-Trane on the air since 1986 | CFRO 102.7 FM, Vancouver BC
Fri 2:30-5:30 pm PST | http://www.coopradio.org/stream.html