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Sleeve Notes
THE YOUNG TRADITION was very much an antidote to the UK folk rock and established folk revival ethics and appearances. In their day they were flamboyant in appearance, energetic, anarchic and also possessed attitude by the bucketful. While their appearance and image had more in common with Carnaby Street and psychedelic fashions, their approach to their material was more cerebral and academic. They sang (mostly unaccompanied) with three-part harmonies and strong distinguished individual voices, or to accompaniment on acoustic guitar and English concertina.
Laurence Aston, writing in the foreword of the 1996 re-issue of The Young Tradition/So Cheerfully Round, said: "When Peter Bellamy, Royston Wood and Heather Wood formed The Young Tradition in the mid-sixties, they created a unique synthesis of the new energies thrown up by the folk revival and the English tradition of unaccompanied harmony singing." However, they had much in common with The Incredible String Band in their assimilation of a wider array of cultural and musical influences as much as their close harmonies had with singing families like The Copper Family from Rottingdean in Sussex and The Watersons in Hull, Yorkshire.
During their brief heyday between 1966 and 1969, The Young Tradition proved itself an ambitious, determined eclectic outfit, yet one rooted in traditional mores and idioms. Individually they were Peter Bellamy, Royston Wood and Heather Wood — the latter two unrelated, a point which they were adamant to emphasise, even calling their 1977 duet album No Relation. All three were accomplished individual vocal stylists with diverse musical roots. Peter was into rock'n'roll and blues, while Royston and Heather's musical likes included classical, jazz and early chamber music. Together they brought a sense of excitement, danger and diversity to an English folk scene that needed a shot in the arm, turning younger audiences on to traditional song and promoting an academic approach to their material. The group's electrifying (but not electrified) live performance of a huge repertoire of traditional songs was successfully translated onto their three Transatlantic albums (The Young Tradition, So Cheerfully Round and Galleries, plus an EP, Chicken On A Raft), which were released between 1966 and 1968. They also later imbued their treatments of traditional songs with forays into medieval music and created something timelessly unique and individual, rooted in the past but also shamelessly contemporary. To say that they were revolutionary is not an understatement. They were as radical in their time as Ewan McColl and A.L. Lloyd were in theirs, and their influence continues today to artists like Bellowhead, Jackie Oates, Bella Hardy and Eliza Carthy. In 1996, assessing the impact that The Young Tradition had on their emergence, Heather Wood wrote: "It was a case of being in the right place at the right time: London in the Swinging Sixties. But instead of being into rock'n'roll, we were into traditional English folk music. The Young Tradition happened by accident. Peter and Royston met when they were both camping on a friend's floor, and started making harmonies together. I ran into them at a folk club (there were two or three a night back then) and just joined in from the audience. Then people started offering us gigs. We travelled all over the UK and did four tours in Canada and the US."
Peter Bellamy was born in Bournemouth and spent his formative years in North Norfolk. He studied at Norwich School of Art, and later at Maidenhead Art College under Peter Blake, and decades later still retained something of the flamboyant art student image. Encouraged by his friend Anne Briggs, he dropped out of college in 1965 to become a cofounder of The Young Tradition. Royston Wood was a former teacher and advertising executive from Surrey. His enthusiasm for folk music started out as a spare time avocation, singing sea shanties and traditional folk songs at college clubs, and he also had a preference for classical music, especially orchestral and chamber works. Heather Wood was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, and spent a year at University College, London (BA Hons in Philosophy & Economics).
The Young Tradition began life in 1965 with the meeting of Royston Wood and Peter Bellamy. With the addition of Heather Wood, the trio recorded mainly traditional songs in close harmony and mostly without accompaniment. They signed to Transatlantic Records in 1966; that year they recorded their first album, The Young Tradition (TRA 142), which featured mostly unaccompanied three-part harmony singing with the occasional guitar accompaniment. Produced by Nathan Joseph, tracks included traditional songs like Byker Hill and The Banks Of Claudy, and the hymn-like The Truth Sent From Above. The album's cover had a suitably moody shot of Heather, Royston and Peter, the latter's windswept blond fringe emitting a punk look.
The Young Tradition quickly established them among the forefront of new British folk acts. Bruce Eder's review in All Music commented thus: "This, the trio's debut album, sounds surprisingly lean and authentic. Accompanied primarily by a single guitar, Young Tradition sings well and unpretentiously (including solo numbers by each). The material has been chosen with a careful, scholarly hand and eye, and the authenticity is refreshing. "
Appearing at clubs, concerts and festivals, The Young Tradition's reputation was bolstered considerably through radio spots on programmes like BBC's Folk On Sunday. Soon it was time for a new album, and The Young Tradition's second album, So Cheerfully Round {TRA 155), was released in 1967. Produced by Bill Leader, the album again was based on traditional material but with two contemporary songs: Watercress-O by Derbyshire singer/songwriter/melodeon player Roger Watson, and a setting of Judith Pieppe's The Hungry Child. It had guest appearances from Dave Swarbrick and two additional violinists, Rod Skeaping and Adam Skeaping, while Dolly Collins contributed additional vocals. Again, traditional material formed the backbone of the album with songs like Daddy Fox (a variant on the American folk song The Fox Went Out On A Chilly Night), The Bold Dragoon and The Old Miser, and ballads like Knight William and the closing Whitsuntide Carol. Bruce Eder described So Cheerfully Round as "a more fully produced recording than their debut, adding to the vocal and instrumental richness of the trio's sound."
The group cut its final album, Galleries (TRA 172), for Transatlantic in 1968. Recorded at Livingston Studios and produced by Bill Leader with augmented arrangements by Dolly Collins, Galleries was the trio's most unusual and complex album, cantered on medieval music rather than 19th century folk song. This time much more accompaniment was featured with Peter playing whistle, guitar and concertina, Royston playing tabor and tambourine, and Heather playing whistle. The Early Music Consort (David Munrow, Rod & Adam Skeaping and Christopher Hogwood) also appeared, along with Dolly Collins, Dave Swarbrick and Sandy Denny, the latter two masquerading under the name of The Pembroke Unique Ensemble.
Galleries was The Young Tradition's most cosmopolitan of all their recordings. Issued with a full colour sleeve that typified the eclectic exoticism of the period, the album was a collection of now familiar traditional songs. There were sacred harp hymns like Idumea and Wondrous Love, English songs, early music pieces, country blues and recitations set to music. There were solo spots for each member (Heather's The Rolling Of The Stones, Peter's Ratcliff Highway and Royston's Brisk Young Widow); The Husbandman And The Servingman featured a fascinating call and response duet between Peter and Royston, and there were ensemble versions of John Barleycorn and Banks Of The Nile. There were also a number of fascinating mini tracks which added extra intrigue and mystery. These included Intro: Ductia with its pun title and Stones In My Passway — Peter's interpretation of a Robert Johnson song. The closing epic, The Agincourt Carol, had backing from David Munrow's Early Music Consort and was recorded in one take, with Munrow practically collapsing afterwards.
Galleries showed The Young Tradition's penchant for early music as well as the folk tradition. While it sounds flash and flamboyant (visually in keeping with their image at the time), it also highlights their adherence to purist ethnic roots as regards the source material and its treatment. The album was recorded between UK and American tours and festival appearances, and it captured their energy and eclecticism in a way their previous albums did not. In 1973 Transatlantic Records re-released Galleries as Galleries Revisited with a new sleeve depicting a working class family mantelpiece with framed individual portraits of Peter, Heather and Royston.
The Young Tradition was now a well-known name on both sides of the Atlantic, featuring at Cambridge Folk Festival in the UK and America's Newport Folk Festival. Their Transatlantic recordings were issued under license stateside on Vanguard Records. The American Vanguard issue of The Young Tradition's debut album, in spite of having the same name and cover picture, was in fact a compilation of tracks from this album and from So Cheerfully Round. Galleries received a proper US release the album issued in its entirety.
Their final release for Transatlantic was a five track EP, Chicken On A Raft, which comprised of unaccompanied sea shanties that highlighted their vocal powers and returned The Young Tradition to its accapella roots. The 45rpm record featured two tracks on one side (Chicken On A Raft and Randy Dandy-O) with a three song medley of sea shanties on the other. Chicken On A Raft featured Royston, Heather and Peter with extra vocal contributions from Dave Calderhead, Hans Fried, Ken Hamer, Roger & Frances Jones-Ford, Arthur Knevett, Rod & Danny Stradling.
Also in 1969 The Young Tradition, along with Shirley and Dolly Collins, recorded an album of seasonal songs called The Holly Bears The Crown which, due in part to the band's 1969 break up, remained unreleased until the mid-1990s. A 1974 single of a track from the album, The Boar's Head Carol b/w The Shepherd's Hymn, received radio airplay and threatened to make the singles charts. Another track from the album, Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day, which featured The Young Tradition with Dolly Collins accompanying on pipe organ, was included on The World Of Folk (Argo SPA A 132) — a compilation issued in 1971 by Decca under the Argo imprint. The Holly Bears The Crown was finally released in its entirety in 1995 on Fledgling Records.
In 1969, the group split up on account of their different musical preferences, with Peter Bellamy wanting to pursue pure traditional music while Royston and Heather Wood were getting more interested in Early Music. Their final concerts were at the Newport Folk Festival and Cecil Sharp House, home of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, in October 1969.
On the band's dissolution, individual solo careers started to emerge. Peter Bellamy began a long running and successful solo traditional folk music career. While still in The Young Tradition he recorded two solo albums of British folk songs, Mainly Norfolk (which concentrated on songs learned from local singers in the Norfolk area including Walter Pardon and Harry Cox) and Fair England's Shore. Bellamy would record a series of solo albums including The Fox Jumps Over The Parson's Gate in 1969, Won't You Come With Me in 1971, Tell It Like It Was in 1975, and an American-issued album, Peter Bellamy, in 1975 which included a setting of Al Stewart's Nostradamus. These albums featured mostly traditional English songs, while Peter's interest in the works of Rudyard Kipling yielded a series of albums of him singing his own settings of poems by Kipling, beginning with Merlin's Isle of Gramerye and Oak Ash And Thorn. He also recorded a collection of his settings of the Barrack Boom Ballads of Rudyard Kipling, which was released in England in 1977.
Peter Bellamy's other major contribution to British folk music was his self-composed ballad opera The Transports. The Transports was based on the true story of a Norfolk couple, Henry Cable and Susannah Holmes, and their sentence of transportation to the Colonies in New Zealand. An ambitious epic work, The Transports was recorded with an all-star cast including Martin Carthy, Nic Jones, June Tabor, Cyril Tawney, Vic Legg, A.L. Lloyd and Dick Gaughan, and was voted Folk Album of the Year for 1977 by readers of Melody Maker. Later he recorded Both Sides Then, Fair Annie and Songs And Rummy Conjurin Tricks before in 1991, in despair through depression, he took his own life on 24th September of that year.
Royston Wood and Heather Wood continued to work together after the split with Peter Bellamy in 1969, but they didn't record again until 1977 when they released No Relation, an album which included Peter Bellamy as guest singer on three tracks, and also appearances by guitarists Pete Kirtley and Simon Nicol and bass guitarist Ashley Hutchings.
Royston Wood also joined with Ashley Hutchings in the first line up of The Albion Country Band. After leaving them, Wood joined the Yorkshire-based accapella group Swan Arcade. Founded in 1970, Swan Arcade featured Dave & Heather Brady and Jim Boyes, all of whom were proficient instrumentalists. However, they concentrated mainly on unaccompanied songs and made one album, Swan Arcade, in 1973. On Boyes' departure Royston Wood joined, and this line up recorded the band's first John Peel Session on 13th February 1973. In turn, Wood was replaced by Brian Miller (ex Laggan and Great Fife Road Show), and the second Peel Session was recorded on 25th March 1974. The line-up was then expanded to include bassist Kevin Hingston, guitarist Jack French and drummer Chris Taylor but Miller left to form a duo with Charlie Stone, before their final Peel Session on 23rd September 1973. Royston Wood sadly died in a car crash on 4th April 1990.
Heather Wood, the sole remaining member of The Young Tradition, is now based in New York and became an American citizen in 2003. She recorded an album, The Curate's Egg, with the accapella trio Poor Old Horse, and has written articles (usually on folk music topics) for such publications as Broadside (USA), The Clinton Coordinator (USA), Folk Review (UK), Folk News (UK), Folk Roots (UK) and Melody Maker (UK). She also wrote a book, 101 Marvellous Money-Making Ideas For Kids (Tor Books, 1995), has written short stories, and compiled directories such as The Beer Directory and the third edition of the Grass Roots International Folk Resource Directory (co-edited with Leslie Berman).
While The Young Tradition's career was brief, it was exciting and challenging. They took English folk music to the edge and added a sense of rock and roll attitude while preserving the material's individual narrative essence. Their recordings still sound fresh and authentic while revelling in the experimental time frame of their creation. Their freshness and narrative power remains intact as when initially recorded. Their recordings for Transatlantic, as collected here, bear witness to their visionary status and maintain their legendary place in British folk music history. In April 1996 Heather Wood summed up the individuality of their approach: "We made up our own harmonies, which owed much to The Copper Family, but also came from our other musical loves. For Royston, it was classical music. For me, it was the Everly Brothers and years of school and church choirs. We were three very definite individuals, but we came firmly together on one thing — we loved the music. We had a great deal of fun, we saw a lot of places, and we made many friends."
© John O'Regan, 2013
For BGO Records — all rights reserved.
Thanks to Lawrence Aston, Bruce Eder and Heather Wood.
