The father of the 1960s British folk scene, Martin Carthy was a direct influence on everyone from Bob Dylan and Paul Simon to Billy Bragg and Blur’s Graham Coxon.<\/p>\n
Released on his 84th birthday, Transform Me Then Into A Fish is a recreation of his 1965 debut album, the songs reappraised through a lens of age and experience.<\/p>\n
Carthy’s voice is careworn but it’s never less than compelling. Over the years, the musician’s delivery has become more conversational \u2013 lending a fresh pathos to Lovely Joan, the story of a maid who tricks a na\u00efve suitor into handing over his jewellery, then steals his horse.<\/p>\n
He goes one further on The Famous Flower of Serving Men, delivering all 32 verses of the 17th Century revenge ballad in spoken word, laying stark the brutal violence at its core.<\/p>\n
Carthy is the third member of his family to receive a Mercury nomination, after daughter Eliza and his late wife, Norma Waterson. Eliza joins him on Ye Mariners All, and adds a sitar line to a mystical version of Scarborough Fair.<\/p>\n
When he first excavated and recorded these songs six decades ago, they were forgotten relics. Now, they are part of the folk cannon \u2013 but, as he closes the circle of his long career, Carthy shows how adaptable they (and he) remain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The father of the 1960s British folk scene, Martin Carthy was a direct influence on everyone from Bob…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-127383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}