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Mike Harding Want to get to know Folk? Mike Harding will get you up to speed... watch folkfacts video Watch Mike Harding tell you five folk facts Audio help 5 albums you have to own
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Mike Harding Mike tells you the five folk albums you need in your collection... watch 5 albums video Watch Mike tell you his top five folk albums Audio help Key events in folk Woody Guthrie Woody Guthrie's first, legendary recording sessionwith Alan Lomax at the Library of Congress in March 1940. Songs included"So Long", "It's Been Good to Know You", "Dust Bowl Blues", and "I Ain't Got No Home". Liege And Lief In 1969 Fairport Convention release Liege And Lief, the first British Folk Rock album. Most of the songsare adaptations of Old English Folk songs produced using a mixture of acoustic and electric sounds. Planxty Planxty revolutionised traditional Irish Music in 1973. Their debut album, featuring Christy Moore, Donal Lunny and Andy Irvine, bought the music to a whole new audience with their fresh attitude and political edge. Ewan MacColl Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd release English/Scottish Popular Ballads, the first time many of the songs have been committed to record. This reintroduced a new generation to the folk heritage of the British Isles. Dylan Goes Electric Bob Dylan swapped his acoustic guitar for an electric one at the Newport Festival in 1965 to the bewildement and disgust of die-hard folk festival fans. Key folk songwriters
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Ewan MacColl Ewan MacColl Ewan MacColl can lay claim to being the driving force behind the revival of British folk in the 50s, not least for founding the first folk club in England. MacColl wasa poet, a playwright,a performer and, of course, a songwriter, whose songs include "Dirty Old Town" and "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", reinterpreted by a series of performers in popular music. audio icon Dirty Old Town audio icon The Lag's Song audio icon Go Down Ye Murderers
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Bob Dylan Bob Dylan Regarded as one of the most-important songwriters of his generation, both as a folk performer and in music in general. When people make a claim for song-lyrics as poetry, Dylan and Leonard Cohen are usually the lyricists quoted at length. audio icon Mr Tambourine Man audio icon Subterranean Homesick Blues audio icon The Times The Are A-Changing
Joan Baez Joan Baez An iconic figure in the 1960s peace movement and in American folk, Baez was been writing her own songs, and interpreting others' songs, for decades, blazing a trail for subsequent female singer-songwriters. audio icon Love Song to A Stranger
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