Fifty years of Rosselsongs

[shewhomust]

Last night at the Sage we celebrated the career of Leon Rosselson with a concert of his songs performed by the composer and Frankie Armstrong, Sandra Kerr, Janet Russell, Martin Carthy and Roy Bailey. Fifty years of songs! But then I first came across Leon Rosselson as a member of the Galliards, who played with Robin Hall and Jimmie Macgregor on some of the first records I owned; in fact, for a long time I thought of Leon Rosselson not as a songwriter but as the guitarist from whose playing I learned the tune of North Country Maid (it was an instrumental, so I didn't learn the words until later). I don't think I had seen him live before last night - although as soon as he sang, his voice and his manner were both so familiar that I began to wonder: that concert that we saw, long ago, with Roy Bailey and Frankie Armstrong and someone else - could Rosselson have been the someone else?

Last night's concert pulled off the same trick of making songs that I hadn't heard in years - decades - not just as fresh and immediate as they were at the time (it's a sad comment on fifty years of political songwriting, that many of these songs have as much to say about the world today as they had about the world of thirty years ago), but as familiar. There were some new songs, too: my favourites from the first half were The Ghost of Georges Brassens (which appears to be on his MySpace page, but I can't persuade it to play) and Conversation on a Mobile (on YouTube).

Of the other performers, I had never seen Sandra Kerr before (I'm not sure why, since she teaches on the Folk degree and - thank you Google! - was the voice of Madeline in Bagpuss) but I was very impressed. She did a fine version of Don't get married, girls, and told a lovely story about touring with Rosselson and Roy Bailey, which she claimed was a perfect demonstration of the difference between the two men: they pulled in to a garage near Dumfries, where a sign read "Clean toilets!". "The dirty ones'll be round the back," said Roy Bailey, but Leon Rosselson just said "It's an order."

I'm not a big fan of Roy Bailey or of Frankie Armstrong; they can be a bit didactic. But there were a couple of things they did with Rosselson last night where the voices worked brilliantly together, and - well, yes, maybe it was didactic, but it worked so well that that wasn't a problem. Martin Carthy is the most self-effacing of superstars, and provided guitar accompaniment throughout - but he also sang a lacerating Palaces of Gold, Rosselson's song about the Aberfan disaster (which I know from Roselson's recording on A laugh, a song and a hand grenade, another wonderful collaboration, this time with Adrian Mitchell, but which Carthy has also recorded).

And eventually - of course - they also sang The World Turned Upside Down. So that was all right.

Comments

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I've walked out of Roy Bailey gigs at Towersey because he is so totalitarian slightly-left-of-Stalin and I couldn't stand his preaching about the Working Man. Like he knows what work is. But that sounds like a great gig and I know it is a great venue. I'd heard of everyone else on your list there but not Rosselson himself. I'll have to acquaint myself with his work.

I know somebody who was on the Folk Degree and it was not all that great, ackshully, she only did one year, but Sandra Kerr was her tutor.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I've never had that bad a time with Roy Bailey. But even when I agree with what he's saying, I'm not necessarily up for being lectured about it. I was surprised how easy it was to take on this occasion (which is a back-handed compliment if ever there was one).

If you know that area of music at all, you'll probably find you do know some of Rosselson's songs...