Folk music is such a contentious term to define. At one time, it was simple. Folk music was the traditional music of any given country. Its songs and tunes were 'in the tradition': anonymous works, handed down from generation to generation with each performer making their personal mark by adding some small variation of tune or verse. Everything else was 'popular' music. With the advent of recordings, everything changed. Traditional musicians no longer need to draw source material from others they encounter locally or on their travels. Recordings allow a performance to be heard anywhere and at any time.


Most folk performers these days draw inspiration from the contents of a CD rather than a field trip. Even if they recourse to the latter, they usually encounter musicians as exposed to radio and discs as themselves.

Recent changes in the definition of musical genres have also robbed the word 'folk' of its universal connotations. 'World' music means we no longer classify the traditional music of countries other than America or the British Isles and Ireland as folk. 'Blues', 'Cajun', 'Singer-songwriter', 'Celtic' and other forms now have their own individual distinct brands. So, if you want to buy 'folk' in the broadest sense, you will need to not only investigate that category but also other areas of the Ace website: such as 'world', 'blues' and so forth.

Fortunately, the 'folk' part proper of the Ace catalogue boasts some of the tastiest music around to more than satisfy your initial appetite. It can generally be divided into three types - topical song and folk of the '60s (mostly on the Vanguard and Big Beat labels), acoustic guitar (generally on Takoma and Vanguard, but also some on Big Beat) and Irish folk (drawn together in the wonderfully comprehensive series on Globestyle). The topical song and folk movement of the 1960s is represented by such key practitioners as Joan Baez, Doc Watson, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Phil Ochs, Richard & Mimi Fariña, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Bert Jansch, Tom Paxton, the Holy Modal Rounders and Doctor Strangely Strange. Acoustic guitar music is highlighted in the recordings of legendary figures like John Fahey, Leo Kottke and Bert Jansch. The Globestyle Irish series assembles a diverse, musically heady panorama of Irish music from such legendary names as Seamus Ennis, Willie Clancy, John Doherty, The McPeake Family, Julia Clifford, Jackie Daly and Hugh Gillespie, amongst many others.

These two albums were probably the most important recordings Joan Baez made during the 1960s. In the scope of what they tried to achieve and in Joan's ability to stamp her authority on this material, 'Joan Baez 5' and subsequent album release 'Farewell Angelina' surpassed all her earlier work.

For both she samples a broad range of (then) youngblood singer songwriters - among them Phil Ochs ('There But For Fortune'), Richard Fariña ('Birmingham Sunday'), Donovan ('Colours') and, of course, Bob Dylan ('Farewell Angelina', 'Daddy You Been On My Mind', 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue', 'It Ain't Me Babe' and 'One Too Many Mornings'). She includes traditional folk material - 'River In The Pines', 'When You Hear Them Cuckoos Hollerin', 'Death Of Queen Jane' - but also, under the guidance of Vanguard's Maynard Solomon, explores Heiter Villa-Lobos 'Bachianas Brasileiras No 5 - Aria' and the Old French song 'Pauvre Ruteboeuf'.
These two eclectic programmes are united by the force of Baez' vision and her voice and guitar, both of which are at their musical peak. Her singing is often understated (as in 'There But For Fortune' and 'Birmingham Sunday') and this sense of a powerful musical tool, reined in and harnessed to the subtleties of the song, makes for a memorable performance. On the Villa-Lobos, the demands of the aria allow Baez' voice more freedom but she approaches this in a more disciplined fashion than before.

Captain Beefheart once commented how much he loved painting the desert because it was 'subtle, so subtle'. The same can also be said of the late John Fahey's guitar playing. The work collected for this 'Best Of...' has a unity of approach that defies the eighteen-year period it draws on without ever seeming static. Constantly shifting melodically, tonally and harmonically, the music develops through subtle intuition rather than creative leaps and bounds. The sacred tunes - 'In Christ There Is No East Or West', 'I'm Going To Do All I Can For My Lord' - possess a haunting beauty that is echoed in more recent contemporary experimental work such as Gavin Bryars 'Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet'. 'Poor Boy (Long Ways From Home)' and 'Fare Forward Voyagers remain two of Fahey's classic performances, here given serious competition from sixteen other brilliant recordings

For most people on the folk scene during the early to mid-'60s, the eponymous 'Bert Jansch' Transatlantic LP was their first introduction to this talented singer, guitarist and composer. A near perfect 'folk' recording (recorded in Bill Leader's Camden kitchen with the most basic tape equipment), it seemed to spring out of nowhere. 'Young Man's Blues' captures the period that preceded this, showing how developed Jansch's early repertoire was even at this stage and offering a glimpse of the Glasgow folk scene that also delivered such talents as the Incredible String Band. (Jansch biographer Colin Harper charts the period in his extensive sleevenotes.) Considering the amateur nature of these "live" recordings, the sound quality has a rough and ready charm, the music is exciting and the folk club ambience (rather than being a distraction) adds to the feel of the performances.

John Crosby has contributed extensively to such publications as Q, Mojo, Time Out, fRoots, City Limits and Old Time Music. He authored 'Professor Longhair: a bio-discography' in the early 1980s and has compiled and written the sleeve notes to more than 120 albums containing a wide variety of music -- from American folk to acid jazz -- as befits his eclectic tastes. John recently compiled and sequenced the music (and wrote the accompanying book) for the acclaimed 4-CD box set 'Peter Green: The Anthology'.

He is currently an independent publicist/PR working with such artists as the Portuguese fado singer Mariza, 2008 Mercury Prize nominees The Unthanks, Chumbawamba, Yasmin Levy and The Imagined Village.

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