Bob, first thank you for sending me the latest Covers installment! I was very surprised about the Davey Graham - you wrote:
>16. Davy Graham - Both Sides Now: Here's the medallion-piece of this CD to me...mostly because this one is hard to find, >and well worth the hunt! Anything BUT ho hum. About 7 minutes long, with a "Cotton Ave" like guitar intro, in a raga mode, >then Davy breaks into a guitar lick EXACTLY like what Joni did in "In France They Kiss On Main Street" (this song was >recorded in 1968) then the tempo picks up and it's an acoustic roller-coaster ride. Boy is it great!! A few years back I recommended to the list a quite incredible book that might interest a number of people here, "Unknown Legends of Rock and Roll - Psychedelic Unknowns, Mad Geniuses, Punk Pioneers, Lo-Fi Mavericks and More" by Richie Unterberger which includes a sample compilation CD in the pocket and some Joni content. It covers tons of the very greatest (mostly well-known and not "unknown") and the Davey Graham chapter always stood out in my mind. Here are a few excerpts (including the Joni content): "You could not, by most stretches of the imagination, call Davey Graham a rock guitarist. But the fact is, you couldn't really call him a blues, folk or jazz guitarist, either. He's all of those things and none of those things. What Graham did in the 60s was bring an unsurpassed eclecticism to the craft of guitar virtuosity. He both anticipated and influenced the British psychedelic rock, blues-rock, and folk-rock scenes to an extent that is woefully underappreciated to this day.... Like [John] Fahey and [Sandy] Bull, Graham was one of the first Western guitarists of any sort to incorporate middle eastern modes and Indian ragas into his music. Unlike Fahey and Bull, however, Graham is mostly unknown in the U.S., even on a cult level, as most of his records were never released stateside....Paul Simon, who met Graham in the mid-60s during a residency in England,even asked Davey to join him as an accompanist at one point. When you hear Jimmy Page play intricate acoustic guitar leads in Led Zeppelin's quieter moments, or Richard Thompson genre-hopping between folk, blues and more, you're also hearing Graham's legacy, British songwriter Pete Brown, who co-wrote several Cream classics with Jack Bruce, calls Graham 'one of the first world musicians.' and sees him in the start of 'a whole kind of genre of people,' extending through Renbourn, Jansch, and Thompson in particular.....Graham's particular genius was his ability to rearrange blues and jazz standards in a way that made them sounds exotic and fresh. An especially striking example is his 1968 overhaul of Joni Mitchell's 'Both Sides Now,' which moves from amore or less straight Indian raga into explosive folk-jazz verses." Notes from his album "Large as Life and Twice as Natural" (1968 Decca, UK) which features members of Pentangle..."several sparkling raga-folk fusions, particularly "Blue Raga," and the daring cover of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now." ...only available as a rare, out of print UK import, and crying for CD reissue." Kakki NP: Steely Dan - King of the World - The Record Plant, 3/20/74 (thanks to Bob for this one, too. Ahhh, incredible!)
