Bron yr Aur

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by IndianaGeo

He (Jansch)is a master. Makes me wonder who HE was influenced by, and on and on.

The main influences he always mentioned himself were Brownie McGhee and Snooks Eaglin (blues); Davy Graham (jazz and Arabic influence); Jackson C Frank (singer-songwriter); and Anne Briggs (traditional folk). He was in awe of all of them, perhaps surprisingly - he was already an accomplished guitar player before he encountered all but McGhee.

He'd had piano lessons as a young teenager, but they didn't last. He owned a Big Bill Broonzy EP. He saw his first guitar at school when a teacher brought one in, but didn't own one until he was 16 (1959). That was when he started hanging out at a legendary Edinburgh folk club where he saw Brownie McGhee. There were other guitar players in the club who showed him things: guys few people have ever heard of, like Len Partridge and Archie Fisher - they'd show him a few tricks, and he'd be ahead of them in weeks. The bootleg album Young Man Blues (live stuff from 1962-65) shows how far he'd come since 1959. He was one of those people who had a guitar attached to him at all hours of the day, usually picking away in the background.

All his influences naturally had their own traditions, but Davy Graham is probably the one who stands out. There wasn't really anyone before him who'd done anything like the same thing with an acoustic guitar. He was extraordinarily knowledgeable about many kinds of ethnic folk music, and could play many exotic string instruments aside from guitar. He was a conscientious technician, almost academic in his approach, and while he appreciated Jansch's skill, he always resented the latter's easy success, which he put down to his charisma. (Jansch might have been "underground" in comparison with his pop-folk disciples like Donovan but, in comparison with Graham, Jansch was a positive pin-up boy. To us folk fans in the mid-60s, Jansch was the epitome of "cool", while Graham was distant and inscrutable. You could identify with Bert; you'd never identify with Davy. And the girls loved Bert too. We all wanted to be the kind of guitar player girls loved...)

Some footage of Davy from a rare 1981 TV prog:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdHWPt6pHNg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZWtNYDz1So
Here he is having some fun on oud and sarod:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N7wHNcFMgQ

Other important figures in the late 50s/early 60s UK (seminal folk guitarists): Steve Benbow, Martin Carthy... and er, that's about it. This was at a time when the traditional folk scene frowned on the guitar as being an inappropriately American instrument... . (Imagine being regarded as a dangerous rebel, just by singing folk songs to an acoustic guitar!... let alone singing blues, which, as white English people, we obviously had no right to do.)
But once the "folk boom" hit in '65 (thanks almost entirely to Donovan, unfairly maligned at the time), then - alongside Jansch and Renbourn - virtuosos like Cliff Aungier (Page produced his first album) and Gerry Lockran emerged from the woodwork, followed by John Martyn, Ralph McTell, Nick Drake, John James, and all the rest. The greatest among them all dead now, of course....

Aungier and Lockran were the first ones to blow me away, in 1966 (had the effect on me that McGhee must have had on Bert Jansch). Unfortunately there's no film of them at their best, just a couple of clips of Aungier - his skills raddled by chronic alcoholism by this time, but still glimpses of greatness:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnDizI20BWE
Jansch's tune High Days was a posthumous tribute to Aungier.
There's no live footage of Lockran at all, but here's a track from his 1968 LP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPFqqmwkWTk - when you're 17 and that guy is standing singing and thrashing hell out of an acoustic 6 feet in front you, that's what they call a formative influence...

[IndianaGeo]

Jon,
Wow.. great stuff. Great post. I can see you've done your homework here and delivered it! Thanks. I'm not entirely surprised that Big Bill Broonzy was an influence.. so much has been transferred from him. And come to think of it, guys like Blind Lemon Jefferson too. He's often cited by players such as Mark Knopfler. Lots to check out from your post. I've already looked at some of videos. Thanks again for sharing these insights.

IG

[Betelgeuse]

Now here's a thing... I read (most of) this post yesterday, lured in by talk of possibly my favourite Led Zep tune, Jimmy Page in acoustic mode, alternate tunings, Bert Jansch, Davey Graham, Snooks Eaglin and many more wonders. All the time I was also thinking about the PDF that I had that included the tablature for this song. So before I really finished reading this I set about working out how to split the PDF document and create another PDF with just the tab for the Led Zep tune in question. Having managed all these technicalities and being rather pleased with myself I now realise IT'S A DIFFERENT BLOODY SONG!!

Firstly, whatever possessed Led Zep to have a tune called 'Bron-Y-Aur Stomp' (possibly my favourite Led Zep tune) and then unbeknown to me another tune called 'Bron-Yr-Aur'. Secondly, how come no-one else made the same mistake —probably because no one else just listens to Led Zep III and 'Going to California' like what I do.

Anyway, here's a link to the PDF with the tab for 'Bron-Y-Aur Stomp'
IndianaGeo - perhaps this could be the second tune you learn in alternate tuning, there's a kind of symmetry about it all with the titles being the same ooopss I mean similar. Although I should warn you in advance that when it comes to tempo changes this tune has it all with bars of 3/4 or 7/8 or 9/8 thrown in to the melting pot, but it's definitely well worth having a go for that exact reason.

And here is the tune, although this is a live version, the original from Led Zep III doesn't seem to be on YouTube


I was going to wax lyrical about Davey Graham and Snooks Eaglin also, but considering that the majority of this post is off topic anyway I should probably leave it there for the moment.