LIEGE AND LIEF
Liege & Lief is the fourth album by the English rock band Fairport Convention. It is the third and final album the group released in the UK in 1969, all of which prominently feature Sandy Denny as lead female vocalist. (Denny does not appear on the group’s debut album from 1968.) It is also the very first Fairport album on which all songs have either been adapted (freely) from traditional British and Celtic folk material (e.g., “Matty Groves”, “Tam Lin”), or else are original compositions (e.g., “Come All Ye”, “Crazy Man Michael”) written and performed in a similar style. The popularity of Liege & Lief did a great deal to establish the new style commercially and artistically as a distinct genre. In an audience vote at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2006, the album was voted Most Influential Folk Album of All Time. (More from Wikipedia)
Guest vocalists are another common feature of rock albums and rock concerts. The only time Led Zeppelin used one was when Sandy Denny gave a stirring performance as the second vocalist on “The Battle of Evermore” on their landmark fourth album, Led Zeppelin IV; she even got a special symbol by her name in the musician credits to go with the “ZOSO” symbols used by the four bandmembers. For those of you who know her only from that song, you owe it to yourself to check out her ground-breaking work on the early albums of Fairport Convention, particularly Liege and Lief, which is generally considered to be the greatest English folk album of all time. Her alto voice had a purity and a piercing clarity that even most opera divas can’t muster.
(August 2011)
