Front Parlour Ballads

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It may be surprising that the great man of British folk-rock has lived in America for the past 30 years. Thompson occasionally makes use of a thumb-pick, playing in fingerstyle, the most notable example being on the motorcycle ballad " 1952 Vincent Black Lightning". Thompson's new LP is Daring Adventures; the man's fairly rare amongst proficient guitarists in that the guitar work is subservient to the songs but lifts them all the same.

Ever since, he’s lovingly explored and excavated genres from rockabilly to flamenco, music-hall to pop (2003’s 1,000 Years of Popular Music did all this in one album, moving from 13th-century ballad Sumer Is Icumen In to Britney Spears’s Oops!

In 2014, they even made an album, Family, together with their children Teddy and Kami, among others.

Thompson was born in London in 1949, the younger child by five years to big sister, Perri (who became and still is a fashion designer). Our apps allow you to read the FT anywhere, even when you’re offline, never miss a story with breaking news alerts and monitor your portfolio while you're on the move. Thompson is still a restlessly curious, active musician, and a raucous one live: his shows often have the power and fervour of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. This album, particularly the acoustic guitar ballad " 1952 Vincent Black Lightning", was hailed by critics and fans alike and greatly advanced Thompson's reputation as a leading traditional-style guitarist. Later in 1969, Fairport re-grouped with a new drummer, Dave Mattacks, and also invited the well known fiddle player, Dave Swarbrick, to join.But America is a strange country, one that’s never quite seemed to recover from the civil war, and I think we’re still feeling the repercussions of that today. Thompson appears alongside family members, both blood related and by marriage, on the album Family (2014) by Thompson (the band being named for all the Thompsons that appear), performing two songs solo and contributing to others as well. In July 2019, New West Records released a soundtrack album for the documentary The Cold Blue, featuring the film's original score composed by Thompson. Thompson's songs have been extensively covered; for example, Dimming of the Day has been performed by artists such as The Neville Brothers, Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, David Gilmour, The Blind Boys of Alabama, June Tabor, The Corrs and Alison Krauss and Union Station. In 1997 he worked with long-time friend and band member Danny Thompson to record a concept album Industry that dealt with the decline of British industry.

An award-winning team across four time zones helps readers make better investment decisions by highlighting key risks and opportunities.Factory in the US, P-Vine in Japan, Planet Records in Australia, and Proper Records in the UK and Europe. He remembers sitting in Thompson’s living room one afternoon in 1964, hearing the Rolling Stones’ Not Fade Away for the first time. We discuss some the women who’ve made a mark on his life: Shirley Collins, with whom he’s played and toured (“an extraordinary woman”) and Liz Gordon, an American tour booker with whom he had a brief relationship in 1971: she asked him to get her pregnant, as she wanted a child (she told him she was happy to be a single parent). Thompson noticed the van, travelling at 70mph, suddenly veering towards the motorway’s central reservation. I note Thompson now has a sofa – he smiles – but he still prays every day at set times, observes Ramadan, pays the zakat: “I just do the same things that a quarter of people in the world do.