Sweet Child
Encyclopedia
Sweet Child was a 1968 double album by the British folk-rock band Pentangle
: Terry Cox
, Bert Jansch
, Jacqui McShee
, John Renbourn
and Danny Thompson
. One album was recorded at Pentangle's live concert in the Royal Festival Hall
, which took place on 29 June 1968: the other was recorded in the studio. The material is the most wide-ranging of Pentangle's albums, including folk songs, jazz classics, blues, early music and Pentangle's own compositions.
The traditional material includes the spiritual "No more my Lord" (known in some versions as "Never turn back"). Here the song is underpinned by an almost melodic drum riff by Cox whilst McShee provides the vocals. "Watch the stars" is another traditional American song, sung as a duet between McShee and Renbourn, who also plays a fingerstyle accompaniment on electric guitar. "The time has come" is a song, very much in the folk idiom, but written by the singer Anne Briggs
. British folk music is represented by "So early in the spring" (a faultless unaccompanied performance by McShee), "Sovay
" (a song about a female highwayman), the Scottish "I loved a lass", "The trees they do grow high", and "Bruton town" (an English ballad which relates a story very similar to Giovanni Boccaccio
’s Pot of Basil in the Decameron). This song is a live version of the song that was recorded on Pentangle's first album: it includes typical folk themes of love, jealousy, class prejudice, violence and ghostly apparitions. The Pentangle version epitomises the "folk baroque" guitar techniques of Jansch and Renbourn but is also one of the best examples of all five members of the band contributing their own styles to create a musical whole.
The album includes two pieces by the jazz musician Charles Mingus
. One is "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
"—Mingus' tribute to Lester Young
—interpreted quite freely as a guitar duet by Jansch and Renbourn, which they had previously recorded on their joint Bert And John
acoustic album. The other is "Haitian Fight Song", played as a dramatic solo piece by Thompson on the double bass.
McShee and Renbourn demonstrate their blues credentials with an upbeat version of the Furry Lewis
song "Turn your money green", with Renbourn providing a distinctive guitar accompaniment. The other blues number is "I've got a feeling", which is based in a standard twelve-bar structure, but is, unusually, in 3/4 time and from both this and a harmonic stand point clearly derived from the Miles Davis composition "All Blues". This version features bass solos in two choruses, showcasing Thompson's use of the double bass as a melodic instrument.
Renbourn undertakes a set of early music pieces, during the live recording, retuning his guitar to create a drone effect on the bass strings. The highlight is his rendition of William Byrd
's "Earl of Salisbury's pavan", in which he is accompanied by Cox on glockenspiel.
The band's own compositions include some solos, namely Jansch's "A woman like you" and Cox's "Moon dog". Sung by Cox to the accompaninent of hand drums, this is his tribute to the blind American street musician, Moondog
. Also, there are some band instrumentals: "No exit", "In time", "Hole in the coal" (actually based on Ewan MacColl
's song "The big hewer") and "Three part thing", which starts as a renaissance fantasia but develops into some characteristic jazz- and blues-influenced improvisation.
The other band compositions are "Market song" (which uses a typically complex rhythm, switching between 7/4, 11/4 and 4/4 time signatures), "In your mind" (based on a 7/4 rhythm) and "Sweet child". This, the title song of the album, is a love song, sung by McShee and Jansch with Renbourn playing a blues-based lead guitar.
The album cover was designed by Peter Blake
, better-known for his design of The Beatles
' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
album.
CD Bonus tracks:
CD Bonus tracks:
Pentangle (band)
Pentangle are a British folk rock band with some folk jazz influences. The original band were active in the late 1960s and early 1970s and a later version has been active since the early 1980s...
: Terry Cox
Terry Cox
Terence William Harvey 'Terry' Cox played drums in the British folk rock bands The Pentangle, Duffy's Nucleus and Humblebums....
, Bert Jansch
Bert Jansch
Herbert "Bert" Jansch was a Scottish folk musician and founding member of the band Pentangle. He was born in Glasgow and came to prominence in London in the 1960s, as an acoustic guitarist, as well as a singer-songwriter...
, Jacqui McShee
Jacqui McShee
thumb|300px|right|Jacqui McShee performing with [[Pentangle]] at the 2007 [[BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards]]Jacqueline 'Jacqui' McShee is an English singer. Since 1966 she has performed with Pentangle, a jazz influenced folk rock band.-Biography:McShee's musical career began as a soloist in British folk...
, John Renbourn
John Renbourn
John Renbourn is an English guitarist and songwriter. He is possibly best known for his collaboration with guitarist Bert Jansch as well as his work with the folk group Pentangle, although he maintained a solo career before, during and after that band's existence .While most commonly labelled a...
and Danny Thompson
Danny Thompson
Daniel Henry Edward 'Danny' Thompson is an English multi-instrumentalist best known as a double bassist and businessman...
. One album was recorded at Pentangle's live concert in the Royal Festival Hall
Royal Festival Hall
The Royal Festival Hall is a 2,900-seat concert, dance and talks venue within Southbank Centre in London. It is situated on the South Bank of the River Thames, not far from Hungerford Bridge. It is a Grade I listed building - the first post-war building to become so protected...
, which took place on 29 June 1968: the other was recorded in the studio. The material is the most wide-ranging of Pentangle's albums, including folk songs, jazz classics, blues, early music and Pentangle's own compositions.
The traditional material includes the spiritual "No more my Lord" (known in some versions as "Never turn back"). Here the song is underpinned by an almost melodic drum riff by Cox whilst McShee provides the vocals. "Watch the stars" is another traditional American song, sung as a duet between McShee and Renbourn, who also plays a fingerstyle accompaniment on electric guitar. "The time has come" is a song, very much in the folk idiom, but written by the singer Anne Briggs
Anne Briggs
Anne Briggs is an English folk singer. Although she traveled widely in the 1960s and early 1970s, appearing at folk clubs and venues in England and Ireland, she never aspired to commercial success or to achieve widespread public acknowledgment of her music...
. British folk music is represented by "So early in the spring" (a faultless unaccompanied performance by McShee), "Sovay
Sovay
Sovay is a traditional English folk song about a young woman who dresses and arms herself as a highwayman in order to test her suitor. In disguise she robs her suitor of nearly all his possessions, but even under threat of death he refuses to give up the gold ring given by Sovay, thus proving...
" (a song about a female highwayman), the Scottish "I loved a lass", "The trees they do grow high", and "Bruton town" (an English ballad which relates a story very similar to Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...
’s Pot of Basil in the Decameron). This song is a live version of the song that was recorded on Pentangle's first album: it includes typical folk themes of love, jealousy, class prejudice, violence and ghostly apparitions. The Pentangle version epitomises the "folk baroque" guitar techniques of Jansch and Renbourn but is also one of the best examples of all five members of the band contributing their own styles to create a musical whole.
The album includes two pieces by the jazz musician Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music...
. One is "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
"Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" is a jazz standard composed by Charles Mingus originally recorded by his sextet in 1959 as listed below, and released on his album Mingus Ah Um. Mingus wrote it as an elegy for saxophonist Lester Young, who had died two months prior to the recording session...
"—Mingus' tribute to Lester Young
Lester Young
Lester Willis Young , nicknamed "Prez", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and clarinetist. He also played trumpet, violin, and drums....
—interpreted quite freely as a guitar duet by Jansch and Renbourn, which they had previously recorded on their joint Bert And John
Bert And John
Bert And John is the fourth album by Scottish folk musician Bert Jansch, released in 1966. A number of songs are performed with friend and fellow guitarist John Renbourn, who would later join him in the group Pentangle. An expanded version of the album was later released in America in 1969 by...
acoustic album. The other is "Haitian Fight Song", played as a dramatic solo piece by Thompson on the double bass.
McShee and Renbourn demonstrate their blues credentials with an upbeat version of the Furry Lewis
Furry Lewis
Furry Lewis was an American country blues guitarist and songwriter from Memphis, Tennessee. Lewis was one of the first of the old-time blues musicians of the 1920s to be brought out of retirement, and given a new lease of recording life, by the folk blues revival of the 1960s.-Life and...
song "Turn your money green", with Renbourn providing a distinctive guitar accompaniment. The other blues number is "I've got a feeling", which is based in a standard twelve-bar structure, but is, unusually, in 3/4 time and from both this and a harmonic stand point clearly derived from the Miles Davis composition "All Blues". This version features bass solos in two choruses, showcasing Thompson's use of the double bass as a melodic instrument.
Renbourn undertakes a set of early music pieces, during the live recording, retuning his guitar to create a drone effect on the bass strings. The highlight is his rendition of William Byrd
William Byrd
William Byrd was an English composer of the Renaissance. He wrote in many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard and consort music.-Provenance:Knowledge of Byrd's biography expanded in the late 20th century, thanks largely...
's "Earl of Salisbury's pavan", in which he is accompanied by Cox on glockenspiel.
The band's own compositions include some solos, namely Jansch's "A woman like you" and Cox's "Moon dog". Sung by Cox to the accompaninent of hand drums, this is his tribute to the blind American street musician, Moondog
Moondog
Moondog, born Louis Thomas Hardin , was a blind American composer, musician, poet and inventor of several musical instruments. Moving to New York as a young man, Moondog made a deliberate decision to make his home on the streets there, where he spent approximately twenty of the thirty years he...
. Also, there are some band instrumentals: "No exit", "In time", "Hole in the coal" (actually based on Ewan MacColl
Ewan MacColl
Ewan MacColl was an English folk singer, songwriter, socialist, actor, poet, playwright, and record producer. He was married to theatre director Joan Littlewood, and later to American folksinger Peggy Seeger. He collaborated with Littlewood in the theatre and with Seeger in folk music...
's song "The big hewer") and "Three part thing", which starts as a renaissance fantasia but develops into some characteristic jazz- and blues-influenced improvisation.
The other band compositions are "Market song" (which uses a typically complex rhythm, switching between 7/4, 11/4 and 4/4 time signatures), "In your mind" (based on a 7/4 rhythm) and "Sweet child". This, the title song of the album, is a love song, sung by McShee and Jansch with Renbourn playing a blues-based lead guitar.
The album cover was designed by Peter Blake
Peter Blake (artist)
Sir Peter Thomas Blake, KBE, CBE, RDI, RA is an English pop artist, best known for his design of the sleeve for the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. He lives in Chiswick, London, UK.-Career:...
, better-known for his design of The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band The Beatles, released on 1 June 1967 on the Parlophone label and produced by George Martin...
album.
Live album
- "Market Song" (Pentangle) – 4:23
- "No More My Lord" (Traditional) – 4:05
- "Turn Your Money Green" (Furry LewisFurry LewisFurry Lewis was an American country blues guitarist and songwriter from Memphis, Tennessee. Lewis was one of the first of the old-time blues musicians of the 1920s to be brought out of retirement, and given a new lease of recording life, by the folk blues revival of the 1960s.-Life and...
) – 2:59 - "Haitian Fight Song" (Charles MingusCharles MingusCharles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music...
) – 3:52 - "A Woman Like You" (Jansch) – 4:06
- "Goodbye Pork Pie HatGoodbye Pork Pie Hat"Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" is a jazz standard composed by Charles Mingus originally recorded by his sextet in 1959 as listed below, and released on his album Mingus Ah Um. Mingus wrote it as an elegy for saxophonist Lester Young, who had died two months prior to the recording session...
" (Charles MingusCharles MingusCharles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music...
) – 3:48 - "Three Dances" – 4:57
- "Brentzel Gay" (Claude GervaiseClaude GervaiseClaude Gervaise was a French composer, editor and arranger of the Renaissance, who is mainly remembered both for his association with renowned printer Pierre Attaingnant, as well as for his instrumental music.-Life:...
) - "La Rotta" (Trad.)
- "The Earle Of Salisbury" (William ByrdWilliam ByrdWilliam Byrd was an English composer of the Renaissance. He wrote in many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard and consort music.-Provenance:Knowledge of Byrd's biography expanded in the late 20th century, thanks largely...
)
- "Brentzel Gay" (Claude Gervaise
- "Watch The Stars" (Traditional) – 3.11
- "So Early In The Spring" (Traditional) – 3:37
- "No Exit" (Jansch / Renbourn) – 2:22
- "The Time Has Come" (Anne BriggsAnne BriggsAnne Briggs is an English folk singer. Although she traveled widely in the 1960s and early 1970s, appearing at folk clubs and venues in England and Ireland, she never aspired to commercial success or to achieve widespread public acknowledgment of her music...
) – 3:14 - "Bruton Town" (Traditional) – 6:27
CD Bonus tracks:
- "Hear My Call" – 3:48
- "Let No Man Steal Your Thyme" – 2:59
- "Bells" – 4:45
- "Traveling Song" – 4:17
- "Waltz" – 6:00
- "Way Behind the Sun" – 2:59
- "John Donne Song" – 3:24
Studio album
- "Sweet Child" (Pentangle) – 5:15
- "I Loved a Lass" (Traditional) – 2:44
- "Three Part Thing" (Jansch / Renbourn / Thompson) – 2:29
- "SovaySovaySovay is a traditional English folk song about a young woman who dresses and arms herself as a highwayman in order to test her suitor. In disguise she robs her suitor of nearly all his possessions, but even under threat of death he refuses to give up the gold ring given by Sovay, thus proving...
" (Traditional) – 2:51 - "In Time" (Cox / Jansch / Renbourn / Thompson) – 5:09
- "In Your Mind" (Pentangle) – 2:16
- "I've Got a Feeling" (Pentangle) – 4:29
- "The Trees They Do Grow High" (Traditional) – 3:51
- "Moon Dog" (Cox) – 2:44
- "Hole in the Coal" (Ewan MacCollEwan MacCollEwan MacColl was an English folk singer, songwriter, socialist, actor, poet, playwright, and record producer. He was married to theatre director Joan Littlewood, and later to American folksinger Peggy Seeger. He collaborated with Littlewood in the theatre and with Seeger in folk music...
) – 5:23
CD Bonus tracks:
- "Hole in the Coal" (alternate version) – 2:44
- "The Trees They Do Grow High" (alternate version) – 3:52
- "Haitian Fight Song" (studio version) – 4:20
- "In Time" (alternate version) – 4:40
Personnel
- Terry CoxTerry CoxTerence William Harvey 'Terry' Cox played drums in the British folk rock bands The Pentangle, Duffy's Nucleus and Humblebums....
: Drums, glockenspielGlockenspielA glockenspiel is a percussion instrument composed of a set of tuned keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. In this way, it is similar to the xylophone; however, the xylophone's bars are made of wood, while the glockenspiel's are metal plates or tubes, and making it a metallophone...
, vocals - Bert JanschBert JanschHerbert "Bert" Jansch was a Scottish folk musician and founding member of the band Pentangle. He was born in Glasgow and came to prominence in London in the 1960s, as an acoustic guitarist, as well as a singer-songwriter...
: Guitar, vocals - Jacqui McSheeJacqui McSheethumb|300px|right|Jacqui McShee performing with [[Pentangle]] at the 2007 [[BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards]]Jacqueline 'Jacqui' McShee is an English singer. Since 1966 she has performed with Pentangle, a jazz influenced folk rock band.-Biography:McShee's musical career began as a soloist in British folk...
: Vocals - John RenbournJohn RenbournJohn Renbourn is an English guitarist and songwriter. He is possibly best known for his collaboration with guitarist Bert Jansch as well as his work with the folk group Pentangle, although he maintained a solo career before, during and after that band's existence .While most commonly labelled a...
: Guitar, vocals - Danny ThompsonDanny ThompsonDaniel Henry Edward 'Danny' Thompson is an English multi-instrumentalist best known as a double bassist and businessman...
: Double bass