An Introduction to the Watersons/Waterson:Carthy

Now this must have been quite a job, albeit a highly rewarding and enjoyable one: concertina-ing the recordings of The Watersons and Waterson:Carthy onto just one CD. Topic must be congratulated for teasing out some choice cuts – the likes of ‘Three Score and Ten’ from their first recordings on the New Voices compilation of 1965, and songs from Lal and Norma's ATrue Hearted Girl and Mike Waterson's eponymous 1977 set. Scattered among these rarer tracks are a select number of signature songs: ‘Pace Egging Song’ and ‘Emmanuel’ from The Watersons, and from the 1990s renaissance of Waterson:Carthy, the incomparable ‘When First I Came to Caledonia’. We also get a choice cut in Norma Waterson's ‘Once in a Blue Moon’ from Oliver Knight's 2002 release, Mysterious Day.

The one album they omit any recordings from is 1999's Broken Ground, but there is an earlier version of that LP's song ‘Fare Thee Well, Cold Winter’, from The Watersons’ final 1981 album, Green Fields. There has been no Waterson:Carthy release since 2006's Holy Heathens and the Old Green Man (from which is drawn ‘Jacobstowe Wassail’) but the set closes with the apposite ‘Goodbye, Fare Thee Well’ from 2004's Fishes & Fine Yellow Sand album. Their collective greatness is undimmed.