Bert Jansch

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Herbert Jansch (3 November 1943 - ), known as Bert Jansch, is a Scottish folk musician and founding member of the band Pentangle. He was born in Glasgow and, particularly in his early career, was sometimes characterized as a British Bob Dylan. This, however, was misleading, in that Jansch's best work has always been fundamentally instrument-driven unlike Dylan's which is primarily lyric-based. In the 1960s, he was heavily infuenced by the guitarist Davey Graham and folk singers such as Anne Briggs. His work influenced such artists as Johnny Marr, Bernard Butler, Led Zeppelin and Neil Young, and earned him a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2001 BBC Folk Awards.

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Early years

Bert Jansch was born in Glasgow in 1943, but brought up in Edinburgh, where he attended Pennywell Primary School and Ainsley Park Secondary School. As a teenager, he acquired a guitar and started visiting a local folk club run by Roy Guest. There, he met Archie Fisher and Jill Doyle, who introduced him to the music of Big Bill Broonzy, Pete Seeger, Brownie McGhee and Woody Guthrie.

After a stint as a nurseryman, Jansch became a full-time musician and spent two years playing one-night stands in British folk clubs. This was a musical apprenticeship which exposed him to a range of influences, including Martin Carthy and Ian Campbell, but especially Anne Briggs, from whom he learnt some of the songs (such as Blackwaterside and Reynardine) that would later feature strongly in his recording career.

Between 1963 and 1965, he travelled alone around Europe and beyond, hitch-hiking from place to place and living on earnings from busking and casual musical performances in bars and cafes. He was eventually repatriated to Britain after catching dysentery in Tangiers.

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London: mid-1960s

Jansch moved to London where, in the mid-1960s, there was a burgeoning interest in folk music. There, he met the engineer and producer, Bill Leader, at whose home they made a recording of Jansch's music on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Leader sold the tape for £99 to Transatlantic Records, who produced an album directly from it: the album Bert Jansch was released in 1965. Jansch followed this with two more albums, produced in quick succession: It Don't Bother Me and Jack Orion—which contained his first recording of Blackwaterside, later to be taken up by Jimmy Page and recorded by Led Zeppelin as Black Mountain Side. Jansch says:

The accompaniment was nicked by a well-known member of one of the most famous rock bands, who used it, unchanged, on one of their records.

In London, Jansch met up with other innovative acoustic guitar players, including John Renbourn (with whom he shared a flat in Kilburn), Davey Graham and Paul Simon. They would all meet and play in various London music clubs, including The Troubadour, in Old Brompton Road, and Les Cousins' club in Greek Street, Soho. John Renbourn founded the Horseshoe Folk Club in Tottenham Court Road, where Renbourn and Jansch frequently played together, developing their own intricate interplay between the two guitars, often referred to as Folk Baroque. In 1967, they recorded the Bert and John album together, featuring much of this material. It was at the Horseshoe that Jacqui McShee began singing with the two guitarists and, with the addition of Danny Thompson (string bass) and Terry Cox (drums), they formed the group, Pentangle.

In 1968, Jansch married Heather Sewell, then an art student—as Heather Jansch she has become a well-known sculptor. She inspired several of his songs and instrumentals: the most obvious is Miss Heather Rosemary Sewell, from his 1968 album, Birthday Blues, but Jansch says that, despite the name, M'Lady Nancy (from the 1971 Rosemary Lane album) was also written for her.

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The Pentangle years (1968–1973)

Pentangle's first major concert was at the Royal Festival Hall, in 1968, and their first album was released in the same year. Jansch largely gave up his solo career and embarked on a demanding schedule of touring the world and recording. Although Pentangle were regarded as a folk music group, they played many of their own compositions and Jansch undertook much of the writing.

Pentangle split up in 1973, and Jansch and his wife bought a farm near Lampeter, in Wales, and withdrew temporarily from the concert circuit.

During this period, guitarist Dave Ellis was described as 'The New Bert Jansch'.

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The late 1970s

After two years as a farmer, Jansch left his wife and family and returned to music. In 1977, he recorded the album A Rare Conundrum with a new set of musicians: Mike Piggott, Rod Clements and Pick Withers. He then formed the band Conundrum with the addition of Martin Jenkins (violin) and Nigel Smith (bass). They spent six months touring Australia, Japan and the United States.

With the end of the tour, Conundrum parted company and Jansch spent six months in the United States, where he recorded the Heartbreak album with Albert Lee.

On returning to England, he set up Bert Jansch's Guitar Shop in the New King's Road, Fulham.

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1980s

In the 1980s, Pentangle reformed with a new line-up, of which Jansch and McShee were the only original members.

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1995 onwards

Since 1995, Jansch has appeared frequently at the "12 Bar Club" in Denmark Street, London. "Live at the 12 Bar" was originally a bootleg, but was of studio standard, and issued officially in 1996. In 2002 Jansch, Bernard Butler and Johnny "Guitar" Hodge performed live together at the Jazz Cafe, London.

In 2005, Jansch has teamed up again with one of his early influences, Davey Graham, for a small number of concerts in England and Scotland.

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Bert Jansch's music

Bert Jansch's musical influences are many and varied: folk (Anne Briggs and A.L. Lloyd); jazz (Charlie Mingus and John Coltrane); early music (John Renbourn and Julian Bream); Indian music (Ravi Shankar) and many others. From these, he has distilled his own unmistakeable guitar style.

Some of his songs feature a basic clawhammer style of right-hand playing but these are often distinguished by unusual chord voicings or by chords with added notes. An example of this is his song Needle of Death, which features a simple picking style but several of the chords are decorated with added 9ths. Characteristically, the 9ths are not the highest note of the chord, but appear in the middle of the arpeggiated finger-picking, creating a "lumpiness" to the sound.

Another characteristic feature is his ability to hold a chord in the lower strings whilst bending an upper string—often bending up from a semitone below a chord note. These can be heard clearly on songs such as Reynardine where the bends are from the dimished 5th to the perfect 5th. Like many guitarists, string bends are a feature of his work and are often used to create notes which are just slightly sharp or slightly flat (by bending a little less than a semitone), creating the impression of a modality that does not belong to a diatonic scale.

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Pronunciation note

Jansch pronounces his surname "Jansh," although his name is often mispronounced as "Yansh."[1]

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Partial discography

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References

  • Doug Kennedy: The Songs and Guitar Solos of Bert Jansch, New Punchbowl Music, 1983. Although this is a book of music, it contains a great deal of biographical information and photographs of Bert Jansch.
  • Colin Harper: Dazzling Stranger: Bert Jansch and the British Folk and Blues Revival (2000, Bloomsbury) ISBN 0747553300 (pbk)
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External links

ja:バート・ヤンシュ no:Bert Jansch

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