Hark! The Village Wait

Personnel:

Maddy Prior: vocals, five-string banjo, step dancing

Tim Hart: vocals, electric guitar, electric dulcimer, fiddle, five-string banjo, harmonium

Ashley Hutchings: bass guitar

Gay Woods: vocals, concertina, autoharp, bodhran, step dancing

Terry Woods: vocals, electric guitar, concertina, mandola, five-string banjo, mandolin

Guest musicians:

Gerry Conway: drums (tracks 2-3, 5-8)

Dave Mattacks: drums (tracks 4, 10-12)

Produced at Sound Techniques, London, 1970 by Sandy Roberton and Steeleye Span

UK release date: June 1970

Highest chart places: UK: did not chart, US: did not chart

Running time: 38:55

We had ructions in the studio. It wasn't a happy album. It was a wonder we finished it.

Ashley Hutchings, Singing From The Floor, JP Bean, 2014

Bands 'getting it together in the country' was quite fashionably du jour in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Hutchings' previous band, Fairport Convention, had done it when they descended on Farley Chamberlayne in Hampshire for the Liege & Lief album. Traffic would convene at a remote cottage in the hamlet of Aston Tirrold in Berkshire, and Jimmy Page and Robert Plant spent time at the Bron-Yr-Aur cottage in Snowdonia working up material for Led Zeppelin III. The newly-formed Steeleye Span did similar, but instead of it being a harmonious, creative melting pot in an idyllic rural setting, their stay at a cottage in the small Wiltshire village of Winterborne Stoke was fraught, with seething domestic tensions.

The band then spent one week recording the album at Sound Techniques Studio in Chelsea, London. A former dairy, the studio opened in 1965 and soon became the setting for a number of recording artists on the burgeoning folk rock scene, including the Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention and Pentangle, as well as straight-ahead rock acts like Elton John, Jethro Tull and Pink Floyd. Steeleye Span's first five albums would all be recorded here.

The album, like the two that came after it, was co-produced by the band's newly-appointed manager, Sandy Roberton. He had been a key figure in the British blues boom in the mid-1960s before turning his attention to the burgeoning folk scene. As Jerry Gilbert noted in a December 1975 Sounds retrospective:

It would be easy to underplay or dismiss Roberton's role in the formative years of Steeleye. As a young, eclectic folk producer, he looked like the obvious successor to Joe Boyd as folk/rock producer supremo when the latter went back to the States, and the fact that his promise was never really fulfilled can largely be put down to bad luck.

Roberton was, at least, able to secure the band a one-off release on the prestigious RCA label for this album. The two subsequent releases would be on small independent labels and it would be a couple of years before they could benefit from the stability of a long-term contract with a major record label.

There were different degrees of experience within the newly formed band. Hutchings and Terry Woods had both recorded albums with Fairport Convention and Sweeney's Men, respectively. For Gay Woods, this was her recording debut. While Prior and Hart had also made two albums by then, this was their first time in a fully equipped professional studio. Their previous albums, Folk Songs Of Old England Volumes 1 And 2, were recorded on a primitive four-track machine at a small studio in Putney.

Although this first lineup did not have a permanent drummer and would not have one until 1973, Gerry Conway provided drums on six tracks and Dave Mattacks on a further four. The lack of an official drummer/ percussionist was less a band policy at this stage and more a matter of finding the right person. 'The main problem is getting hold of someone who's sensitive to our music', explained Hutchings in an April Melody Maker interview, Conway and Mattacks being otherwise engaged with Fotheringay and Fairport Convention, respectively.

Sadly, the tensions that had begun building up at Winterborne Stoke did not dissipate once inside the studio. There was increasing factionalism between the duos of Hart and Prior on the one hand and the Woods on the other. Hutchings, who was still recovering from the effects of a serious crash on the M1 that had killed one member of Fairport Convention and the girlfriend of another, tried but ultimately failed to act as peacemaker. In the liner notes for Spanning The Years, the 1995 double-disc compilation, Prior wrote affectionately of the material on that first album but noted:

The strains of the rehearsal time spilt over into the recording situation, and we parted on fighting terms at the end of the sessions.

Thus, several weeks before the album was due out, Jeremy Gilbert penned an enthusiastic preview feature on the band's debut album for Melody Maker in April 1970, but even that pointed out that both of the Woods were quitting and that Martin Carthy would be joining the band.

It might not have been a happy album to make, but it's an absolute joy to listen to. Not all of the elements that would later come to define the classic Steeleye template are present, but many of them are, including the short acapella pieces, the traditional English, Irish and Scottish songs performed on both electric and acoustic instruments, Prior's instantly recognisable crystal- clear vocals, along with Hart's equally distinctive faux-agricultural voice and the beautiful vocal harmonies. The elements that are missing include the virtuoso fiddle playing, although Hart does contribute fiddle on one track. The 'rock' element of the band's folk rock approach would also become more apparent further down the line. Moreover, distinctive elements from this album would largely disappear from future albums due to the departure of the Woods. For all the fractiousness, it remains an outstanding and memorable debut.

The album's title stems not from the act of waiting but refers to the custom of musical 'waits' that were common from medieval times onwards. These would be groups of musicians who would be formally employed by the authorities to perform in towns and cities, particularly in the mornings and evenings, but on occasion, throughout the day. By the 19th century, the practice had long been abandoned, but the name lingered on to describe any small group of singers or musicians going around the streets, performing for money. It is this later practice that is likely to have inspired the album name.

When RCA originally released the album, the cover bore a photograph of the five members standing on a rustic-looking footbridge looking out onto the river below. Confusingly, however, when it was re-released by United Artists the following year, it was given the same hessian-effect sleeve that was used for the second album, Please To See The King, with only the wording of the title being different. The album was not originally released in the US and did not get an American release until it was reissued by Chrysalis in 1976 with a different cover again, this time featuring a sepia image of the Leather Bottle pub in Cobham, Kent.

Despite the major-label release, the album did not chart, a marked contrast with Fairport Convention's Liege & Lief, which made it to number 17 in the UK album charts earlier that same year. However, the new outfit and their debut album picked up some favourable press coverage, with Jeremy Gilbert writing confidently in Melody Maker in April 1970: 'Fairport Convention were the first group to bring traditional folk music to the general public, and Steeleye Span will be the second.'

'A Calling-On Song' (Ashley Hutchings)

As with Fairport Convention's Liege & Lief, the album Hutchings had been involved in making prior to this one, it opens with an original song written in a traditional style. Although the words are from Hutchings, the tune is a traditional one, based on the 'Earsdon Sword Dance Song'. Calling-on songs were often sung at the start of traditional sword dance routines to herald the beginning of the performance, just as a theme tune introduces a TV show in the modern age. The album's sleeve notes explained: 'Songs similar to this one are used by the leaders of rapper and long sword dance teams to preface the dancing and to drum up a crowd.' Thus, Steeleye Span preface the album with a 'calling-on' song of their very own:

We have come to relate many stories

Concerning our forefathers' times

And we trust they will drive out your worries

Of this we are all in one mind

Many tales of the poor and the gentry

Of labour and love will arise

There are no finer songs in this country

In Scotland or Ireland likewise

Sung acapella, the band set out their mission statement for the album in beautiful four-part harmony.

'The Blacksmith' (Traditional, arranged by Steeleye Span)

This was a...