Sandy Denny
Album: Deluxe Editions
The North Star Grassman And The Ravens
Sandy
Like An Old Fashioned Waltz
Rendezvous
Label: Island
Tracks: 27+33+23+25
Website: http://www.sandydenny.org.uk

We in the know don't need to be told how totally pre-eminent a singer Sandy Denny was, although she was surprisingly under-acknowledged at the time (despite her winning the prestigious Melody Maker Best Female Vocalist award two years running); such assessments are a given, and need take up no valuable wordage in this review, which must concentrate on the continuing re-presentation and re-evaluation of her recorded legacy, in all its obscure corners.

This latest set of lavishly packaged issues together comprises a full-scale re-release for the quartet of solo albums that Sandy recorded for Island between 1971 and 1977. Each of the individual LPs is expanded to a two-CD deluxe edition with the inclusion of a generous quotient of valuable bonus material, and comes resplendent in a sturdy gatefold sleeve with full-colour booklet containing a galaxy of handsomely reproduced photos (some previously unseen) and suitably authoritative accompanying notes by Patrick Humphries. All well and good, but the question that the diehard Sandy Denny fan will be asking straightaway, of course, is whether there is anything genuinely new amongst the bonus tracks; and yes, to my great surprise there is - of which I'll tell more in the paragraphs below.

To deal with the four re-releases individually, then: this deluxe edition of The North Star Grassman And The Ravens actually appeared in the racks in advance of the other three, somewhat over a year ago in fact and (I think) just a little in the wake of the mammoth 19-disc box-set that purported to contain everything Sandy recorded, apart from radio sessions, that could be unearthed (well, at the time…). NSG was one of those albums that with hindsight was released at "the wrong time"; with its at times uncertain mix of styles and settings, it didn't really seem to be able to capitalise on either her Fairport days or her subsequent work with Fotheringay, and it didn't really achieve high sales figures. Having said that, and again with the benefit of hindsight, it's a collection that showcases Sandy's talents and the diversity of her musical predilections in almost equal measure, spanning as it does traditional folk (Blackwaterside), cognoscenti's Dylan (Down In The Flood) and 50s rock'n'roll (Let's Jump The Broomstick) all nestling amongst a blanket of mature Sandy originals which included such outright classics as Late November, Next Time Around and John The Gun. The bonus cuts afford us the opportunity to evaluate the progression from demo stage (using that word advisedly, for even these demos were pretty well advanced) to more refined studio masters, often with completely different arrangements, and also to experience the various sideways- takes of radio session work both contemporary with and shortly after the album's recording and release. The seven radio session cuts selected for this issue have been culled from the Live At The BBC box set that came out in 2007, three years before the "big box" referred to above…

In the case of each of the four deluxe editions, arguably of the most value to fans will be those performances of songs that aren't available on official releases or studio recordings or indeed elsewhere; on NSG, this means Sandy's amazing unaccompanied take on the ballad Lord Bateman. Although this demo, a recent discovery by all accounts, took a pride of place on disc 15 of the big box, a separate instrumental backing track for this song was intended and duly recorded; this appears here, constituting the NSG edition's only genuinely "previously unreleased" track.

Sandy's second solo album - the eponymous one with the "determined angel" cover portrait - is to my mind the most accurate reflection on record of "The Lady" (the album's original title) and her special musical personality: a tremendous, well-balanced set that boasts many of her very finest songs and the exemplary musicianship of her support crew including former band-mates Thompson and Swarbrick. This should have been the album to "make it" for Sandy, but inexplicably it wasn't… One particularly notable aspect of the album was its excellent choice of covers; the (obligatory) Dylan song was the obscure but simply beautiful and heartfelt Tomorrow Is A Long Time, while the second cover was a spellbinding rendition of Richard Fariña's Quiet Joys Of Brotherhood which employed some imaginatively dissonant vocal harmonies. This time, I guess, Sandy was able to get the rock'n'roll out of her system by recording The Bunch's Rock On during an early hiatus in the Sandy album sessions, and the album is all the better for its concentration on the more contemplative material.

The presentation of the album's deluxe edition ideally complements the original (now freshly remastered) LP tracks with the entire album in demo form; the latter, newly unearthed for the big box, providing a revealing insight into Sandy's creative process. The remainder of the bonus tracks are a mixed bunch; there's a demo of an additional original Sandy composition, the Joni Mitchell-influenced After Halloween (not to surface again until Fairport's Rising For The Moon three years later), and a wonderfully intimate sans-strings take on The Music Weaver, the French-language variant of Listen, Listen and the "New Orleans" enhanced For Nobody To Hear. The nine previously unreleased tracks comprise a studio, "band" version of The Lady (mysteriously, not referenced in the booklet essay) and a powerfully knife's-edge voice-and-piano/guitar live set recorded on tour in 1973 at Ebbets Field, Colorado that contains a haunting early rendition of At The End Of The Day, which was to become a key song on Sandy's next LP, Like An Old Fashioned Waltz.

LAOFW is a very special record, a real heartbreaker. When I'm in certain moods, I consider it Sandy's finest hour, its lush romanticism ideally matching the sentiments and lyrical invention; and its best songs quite literally make me weep. The album marked somewhat of a turning point in Sandy's music, as she was turning increasingly away from her roots in traditional folk and towards the more consciously arranged and produced product of a mature singer-songwriter; and at that stage, that wasn't such a bad thing, for she was after all so much more than a folk singer. The album's contrasted "wild-card" songs, the standards Whispering Grass and Until The Real Thing Comes Along, added a different kind of "old-fashioned" dimension too, representing music Sandy had loved since her childhood. As Patrick Humphries' perceptive booklet note observes: "Hard to believe such an album of nostalgia mixed with hard-won experience could have come from someone still in their mid-20s!" But the album's delayed release proved yet another example of bad timing, as by the time it appeared in the racks (late spring of 1974) Sandy had rejoined Fairport Convention, so a new solo album was viewed by some as a bit of an irrelevance. But nobody could question its sheer quality, on all levels.

The deluxe edition's bonus tracks deliver alternate takes of four of its tracks and a truly ravishing demo of Whispering Grass (more enticing even than the album cut) - all of which provide fascinating glimpses into work-in-progress, especially so with the intimate piano-backed versions of No End, At The End Of The Day and the title track, all shorn of the final album's string arrangements. There's also a tremendous early take of No End on which Sandy's phrasing is so tellingly different (and she re-orders the first two verses during the session!). The discs are topped up with a band version of Walking The Floor Over You which doesn't quite fit in this company, together with four tracks taken from the above-mentioned Radio Sessions box (including a knowing 1973 revisit of Who Knows Where The Time Goes?). Finally, the only track on this edition which can genuinely qualify for unreleased status is an undated Dutch TV recording of Whispering Grass, tacked somewhat casually onto the end of the second disc.

Finally we come to Rendezvous, which after a lot of chopping and changing of track selection (and a title change from Gold Dust) only appeared in May 1977. The album is often regarded as the "honourable failure" among Sandy's records; even for some admirers it proved the last straw in terms of choice of material and over-ambitious production values. And this despite the sympathetic hand-on-the-tiller of Trevor Lucas, and the presence of some fine musicians. There's no doubting the continued quality of Sandy's own songwriting - One Way Donkey Ride, No More Sad Refrains, I'm A Dreamer and All Our Days are up there with the best creations on her previous three albums, while By The Time It Gets Dark and Full Moon should by rights have made it to the final cut in place of covers. But it's hard to escape the feeling that a concern for commercial accessibility informed to too great a degree both the song selection and the sometimes leaden and over-produced nature of the musical arrangements. Having said that, the best and most enterprising of the settings, such as the expansive, impressionistic orchestral arrangement that graces All Our Days, are quite masterly.

The bonus tracks for this deluxe edition are for the most part valuable additions, especially the five stripped-down demos of her own songs and the piano-only version of Candle In The Wind (which I much prefer to the finished album version), while the choral version of All Our Days is a bit of a curiosity (albeit an interesting one). This deluxe edition of Rendezvous is rounded off with a pair of tracks from the November 1977 Royalty Theatre concert that was eventually to be released in 1998 under the confusing title of Gold Dust. The previously-unreleased contingent would appear to comprise an alternative take of Take Me Away and possibly the alternate mix outtakes of Easy To Slip and Losing Game, although the notes don't clarify beyond quoting a publication date of 2012 for all three cuts. I'm also puzzled that the omission of Sandy's final vocal recording, Moments, especially since the playing-time on this final disc gives distinctly short measure at barely 45 minutes.

Which brings me to a discussion of the all-important matter of presentation of these deluxe editions. One drawback is that while these deluxe editions would appear to be intended as the definitive last word on the respective albums, the booklets don't even contain the lyrics (whereas those for the 2005 single-disc reissues of Sandy, LAOFW and Rendezvous did). The other frustration stems from what will be an important consideration for the majority of prospective purchasers and not just the diehard Sandy Denny fans or fanatical completists: that of the not always entirely logical selection of bonus material from the extensive corpus of available recordings. This is often also inconsistent between the 2005 single-disc "expanded editions" of the four albums and the respective brand new double-disc "deluxe editions", for the latter doesn't truly displace the former. This would seem to be a deliberate marketing ploy, for in order to get many of the more crucial bonus tracks, e.g. Moments, the "clarinet" version of Full Moon and the King & Queen Of England demo, not to mention the El Pea incarnation of Late November (as recorded for the projected second Fotheringay album), you'll need to invest in the big box-set. It's my belief that earlier useful compilations such as The Attic Tracks, Island's Who Knows Where The Time Goes? and Fledg'ling's A Boxful Of Treasures have been superseded by the big box, but the appearance of further odd tracks on new editions such as these under review only confuses matters for all concerned, especially when the accompanying booklets don't always identify beyond a reasonable doubt the provenance of some of the individual tracks. A certain amount of diligence and persistence is required to dig amongst the text in several cases in the new editions; in that respect, David Suff's notes for the 2005 single-disc reissues are often more comprehensive with regard to detailed discographical matters such as these. Methinks it's time that a proper concordance to Sandy's recordings should be provided, now that all possible recordings have now been unearthed (or have they?)… We do need to keep track of such matters after all, especially since the big box-set can't now be regarded as the definitive and complete Sandy Denny archive.

David Kidman