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Sleeve Notes
The Young Tradition are not the first group to exit prematurely and disillusioned from a musical genre that they largely dominated and influenced; but they're certainly one of the more interesting.
The most mercurial of English folk revivalist groups, the YT — Heather Wood, Royston Wood and Peter Bellamy — dominated the London folk scene between 1965 and 1969, faithfully continuingthe oral harmony tradition of rural English folksong collections, and the Copper Family of Sussex in particular. An interface with the past and profound influence on a new generation of revivalists, it is ironic that they never produced in their quirky, tragically short career the classic album that their northern counterparts, the Watersons did.
The recording of their 'Sergeant Pepper' at the height of flower power (the patchily brilliant album Galleries in 1968) terminally tested the musical directions that the three were heading in, and shortly afterwards it was all over.
Peter Bellamy was unhappy with the trend towards mediaevalism that the others were pursuing in the work being developed by Dolly Collins, and which peaked shortly after Galleries in the two brilliant albums she recorded with sister Shirley, Anthems In Eden and Love, Death & The Lady. Several examples of the arrangements she scored for David Munrow's Early Music Ensemble can be heard on this album. But Peter Bellamy recalls: "When mediaeval music started to become more important than the kind of Copper Family style group arrangements that we'd been working on I lost interest. The last album contained all the signs of the break-up."
But there were other reasons. Like all great artists much of the Young Tradition's work was canonised — after their death. "It was both ironic and horrible," says Peter today. "Immediately we broke up we became known as 'the legendary Young Tradition'."
So what had gone wrong? Largely it was the economics and general apathy of the British folk scene although even their four American tours — where the group achieved cult status — managed to lose money. "We simply weren't making a living. It was OK when we were all sharing a flat. But suddenly two of us were married and we were trying to run three households. To sustain this we tried to put our fees up to £30 a night but no-one would book us so we had to drop to £25!"
Four years previously Peter had been persuaded by singer Anne Briggs that he was good enough to make a career on the folk circuit, and at the end of 1964 he gave up his studies at Maidstone Art School and moved to London. By the following March he had met Royston (they were both sleeping on a mutual friend's floor) and Heather, newly out of the army, completed the trio.
They quickly became part of the Soho scene and lodged in the notorious Somali Road folk flat in West Hampstead — a wandering corpus of musicians, with Bert Jansch, John Renbourn and Les Bridger upstairs and at various times Jackson C. Frank, Anne Briggs, Derroll Adams and Donovan downstairs.
The next three years yielded three fine albums and an EP, the best songs from which are contained in this compilation, which looks predominantly at the YT's group arrangements. The Innocent Hare may appear as Sportsmen Arouse in the Coppers' collection and the immortal words Fire and Fleet and Candelight from the much sung Lyke Wake Dirge have lent Buffy Sainte Marie an album title — but the songs here are unmistakable; they are idiosyncratically rendered in the YT's distinctive and much-emulated style that had the full approbation of Bob Copper, even down to the presence of the female voice which the Coppers themselves were later to incorporate as they moved down a generation.
After the band broke up Heather and Royston recorded a further album called No Relation, with Peter Bellamy guesting on three tracks; but the best thing it did was to clear up a popular misconception and was scarcely the precursor of an impending reunion, which by now was the popular petition among the folk fraternity.
The final irony is that the group did sing together again — as recently as October 1988. With Royston and Heather now domiciled in New York and Peter Bellamy, today a successful soloist, still relying heavily on the American circuit for his livelihood, Heather engineered for the three to make an impromptu and unbilled performance at an Eisteddfod in Massachusetts, with Lou Killen also grafted on for the occasion. But according to Peter Bellamy "any chance we have had of reforming before that event were well and truly dashed in Massachusetts."
Which makes this album all the more special as it finally closes the book on one of the great groups. At their best the Young Tradition were matchless — a wonderful hark back to the source of some of the great rural English folk songs and an inspiration to future groups like Swan Arcade. This is the YT at their best …
Jerry Gilbert