Dave Swarbrick

ver the years, Dave Swarbrick has been not only a major musical presence on the English folk scene - both electric and acoustic - but also one of the most dominant personalities.  He may perhaps not have been the original architect of English electric folk - a somewhat contentious distinction anyway - but he has certainly been one of its most important exponents, through seven years as the fiddle and mandolin player of Fairport - more often than not at the helm of a band whose career has been problematic to say the least.

Swarb was a natural choice for Fairport when they needed a fiddle player to guest on Unhalfbricking in 1969 and he joined soon after, consolidating their move to the fusion of English traditional folk song and electric instrumentation with the recording of the seminal Liege And Lief.

But even before then, Swarb was already, literally, a folk hero.  A Brummie of Polish descent, his playing career started as a guitarist in a ceilidh band with Beryl and Roger Marriott and Kate Graham.  Through their encouragement he took up the fiddle and became rightly renowned for his outstanding work with the Ian Campbell Folk Group and three years dueting with Martin Carthy before the move to electricity.

Seven years later, Swarb still heads Fairport, and makes his own debut album.  It’s no coincidence that the album features not only members of Fairport - Simon Nicol, Bruce Rowland, and Dave Pegg, Swarb’s old mate from Brum and the Ian Campbell group, but also Beryl, Roger and Kate from his ceilidh band days.  Throughout his career Swarb has never forgotten his roots.   And his musical roots are greatly to the fore in this collection of some of his favourite tunes, the living tradition of Dave Swarbrick.

From the liner notes to Swarbrick & Swarbrick II, 1976 - 1977