Davy Graham

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by NormanKliman

I've read that Skip James used a weird tuning, too, so it seems the idea was around before the folk players of the 60s.

Absolutely - 100 years before that!

There was a popular "Hawaiian" style of playing around the turn of the 20thC, well before audio recording, which was a kind of slide using the tunings that came from those Worrall pieces, as I understand it.

What I'm not clear on is whether the Hawaiian style (not unlike country pedal steel) was influenced by very early blues players (late 19thC) or it was vice versa. Certainly blues singers were playing slide in open tunings by 1903, which is when W C Handy first came across "the weirdest music I ever heard" in Tutwiler, Mississippi (he likened it to Hawaiian guitar, while noting that the singing style was different).

There are three youtube clips I know of Skip James:
In this one, he's in standard tuning, down a whole step - DGCFAD:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytVww5r4Nk0
(He looks like he's in E, but it sounds as D.)
In this one, he's in an open C# minor tuning: C# G# C# E G# C# (DADFAD a half-step down):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYALBzfY5QY
In this one, he's in EADGBE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYk4MTSq6uA

A real expert on 19thC styles of parlour guitar was John Renbourn, but I don't think he managed to publish any survey of it before he died. I've been told by people who knew him that he left a huge library of study material.

[FrankHudson]

Originally Posted by NormanKliman

Whoa, JonPR, that is a seriously cool post. You guys know what you're talking about around here!

I've read that Skip James used a weird tuning, too, so it seems the idea was around before the folk players of the 60s.

Skip James was a very appealing mystery to many of the folks in the Fahey circle because his tuning was so individual. They were so interested that he was "rediscovered" though the personal efforts of Fahey and two other guitarists who were able to find him in 1964.

There's a fascinating documentary on the search for Skip James and Son House in 1964 called "Two Trains Running" that emphasizes other aspects of the search, particularly the context of a bunch of young, white, blues enthusiasts searching for their heroes in the south of the "Freedom Summer" civil rights and violent backlash era. But you do get a sense of the mystery of the recordings and techniques that attracted the enthusiasts.

[FrankHudson]

Originally Posted by JonPR

Interesting question. The practice certainly seems to have ballooned in the 1960s.


In America there's Joni Mitchell, who invented an extraordinary range of alternative tunings - while she was teaching herself guitar as a teenager, because polio had weakened her left hand.
https://jonimitchell.com/music/tuningpatterns.cfm

Mitchell, besides being a songwriting genius, is indeed important in helping bring the idea of multiple alternate tunings into the pop mainstream on this side of the Atlantic in the 70s. Stephen Stills and David Crosby also seemed intent on writing in alternate tunings.

I've heard the "she devised them when a child learning guitar" presumably of her own device, story somewhere too, but I'm not sure if that's been confirmed in some way. What early "Joni Anderson" performances and songs that I've seen don't seem as tied to the open tunings as her work just year or so later are. While that story could be true, I'm not sure if she didn't pick up the germ of it or have an idea she'd already experimented with reinforced by the Stills/Crosby use of alternate tunings, which she then took to extraordinary heights as a songwriter.

It's dark humor in these Covid-19 days perhaps, but I've often wondered about mapping this just an epidemiologist would as to "who infected who" before all the American Sixties principals are dead and gone. Because the UK is a smaller scene in a tighter island geography, it's pretty clear that Graham was something like "patient zero" there.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by FrankHudson

Mitchell, besides being a songwriting genius, is indeed important in helping bring the idea of multiple alternate tunings into the pop mainstream on this side of the Atlantic in the 70s. Stephen Stills and David Crosby also seemed intent on writing in alternate tunings.

I've heard the "she devised them when a child learning guitar" presumably of her own device, story somewhere too, but I'm not sure if that's been confirmed in some way.

According to her biog, she had polio as a child, which weakened her left hand. I think she was also in her early teens when she began learning, so her hands may not have been fully grown anyway. As I understand it, she knew full well what the "right" way to play guitar was, she just wanted to make it easier.
And of course, once you discover all those amazing sonorities you get ... who'd want to go back to EADGBE? At least if you're writing your own songs and not having to play other people's...

[NormanKliman]

Originally Posted by FrankHudson

...it's pretty clear that Graham was something like "patient zero" there.

Yeah. A little bolder, and a little older, too, which probably played a part in his influence. What most impresses me is how some of his playing remains so sophisticated, even by today’s standards.

About Joni Mitchell, she said about harmonics, “You should be able to get them to bloom like jewels.” Bloom like jewels. I haven’t listened to her much, but I thought I learned something about her when I read that.

Thanks for those Skip James videos. First time I’ve seen them.

Looks like there aren’t going to be any more comments about Davy Graham in this thread, so I’ll let it go for now, at least until something relevant is posted, because I’m sure there are more of you who play his material.

I haven’t seen anyone on YouTube play Lashtal’s Room right. Like everyone else, I played my own arrangement for years. I got the Mel Bay publication “British Fingerpicking Guitar” and what I saw there was so different from my version that I figured it was another of those wildly innacurate transcriptions that used to be more common. Some of the left-hand fingering seemed impractical and the rest unreasonable. I eventually worked it out for myself from the recording, and when I went back and compared it to the Mel Bay transcription, I realized it’s pretty accurate.

[DavyM]

What a great post....

Loaned my LP of Folk Blues And Beyond to a friend many years ago and never saw it again.

Brought so many great memories of the late 60's folk scene in the UK.

RIP Davy

[JonPR]

For all you Davy fans who've not seen this yet - full movie-length doc:

[Denny B]

Originally Posted by JonPR

For all you Davy fans who've not seen this yet - full movie-length doc:

Thanks for posting this...I've added it to my YouTube acct to watch later tonight.