Saturday, October 21, 2006

Recommended by honeybean...
Hamish Imlach "Live!" (Scottish Folk 1967)
Paisley Folk Song Club. February 24th, 1967

Hamish Imlach (1940-1996) was a folksinger from Glasgow, Scotland. Despite being little-known in the US and outside of the folk community, he influenced many other artists, including most notably John Martyn and Billy Connolly.
He had his biggest hit in the late 1960s with "Cod Liver Oil and the Orange Juice," a scurrilous and hilarious take on the American gospel standard "Virgin Mary Had a Little Baby" written by Ron Clark and Carl MacDougall. The song was banned by the BBC as it was assumed to be full of double meanings, but at one point became the most requested song on British Forces Radio.
He was described by Ewan McVicar, the scottish storyteller and singer, as "a raconteur who taught Billy Connolly, a singer who taught Christy Moore, a blues guitarist who taught John Martyn". ~Wikipedia

Hamish Imlach had a multi-layered performing career, as an anti-nuclear activist, comedian, folk-singer, and political satirist. A native of Scotland, he began his recording career in 1966 on Transatlantic Records' XTRA label and ultimately cut eight popular LPs for the company over the next seven years. He loved traditional folk songs, but was a performer of many parts, with a topical political bent to his work--relfected in his performances of Scottish and Irish political songs--but it was his comical songs about various bodily functions that found Imlach his widest audience. Imlach's mixture of folk music and comedy, which made him resemble a kind of politicized, scatological Scottish version of Allan Sherman, had a profound influence on an entire generation of up-and-coming performers in England, and can be felt even in the work of Monty Python's Flying Circus. His 300 pound physique, and his enjoyment of smoking and drinking took a toll on his health, and during the last years of his life, Imlach's performing career was severely curtailed, although he did contribute vocals and arrangement expertise to Sinead O'Connor's 1990 album Lion In A Cage. In 1992, he wrote and published an autobiography, Cod Liver Oil And The Orange Juice - Reminiscences Of A Fat Folk Singer. The first part of the book title was also the name of one of his most popular songs, and other Imlach numbers that fans especially enjoyed were "Black Is The Color Of My True Love's Hair, "This Sporting Life," and "Sonny's Dream." ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide

More about Hamish Imlach here: TheBalladeers.com
Personally, I can feel similar atmosphere as Vin Garbutt's live album
"The Young Tin Whistle Pest".

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank you very much for this rare one!!!!
I have seen him live, ca. 20 years ago in a smll pub in Germany and it was a great pleasure!!!!

Best wishes
bobdylan(Frank)

22 October, 2006 06:03  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Seems like I need a password to extract the files on this one. Is that possible?

19 March, 2007 08:26  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh dear god this is great, great, great... but 160 kbps is too low quality....

Lizardson, maybe I don't understand how all this works but could you try to put these recordings up at at least 250+ kpbs?

19 July, 2007 12:17  

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