Pour out a little moonshine for Bert Jansch, the folk singer slob with the clawhammer style who proved what William Wallace already knew: Scottish people can concoct their own ferocious form of the blues. Maybe you’ve read enough obits to memorize the litany of artists influenced by the Pentangle member and master of intricate acoustic guitar. Let’s recite them again: Neil Young, Jimmy Page, Johnny Marr, Nick Drake, Donovan, Devendra Banhart, Fleet Foxes, and Noah Baumbach.
The latter slid Jansch’s tunes onto the Squid and the Whale Soundtrack, giving the folk legend a last gasp of semi-fame. Of course, back in the British Isles, Jansch sold racks on racks on racks of records during the folk revival, emerging as a sort of Dylan-like figure until Donovan snatched his spot. Of course, Donovan covered him and even included a song called Bert’s Blues on his Sunshine Superman opus. And Jansch could have written his own “Shark N**as (Biters)” towards Jimmy Page for what he did on “Black Mountain Side.” Then again, I might not have first heard Jansch a half-decade ago, if not for one of those Mojo-assembled Influences of Led Zepp comps.
But influence is secondary. Over the span of a half-century, Jansch left behind a brawling body of work. How to properly sift through 25 solo albums, plus nearly a dozen more EP’s and full lengths with Pentagle. Forget Joe Buddens, Bert Jansch is mood music. Black and blue rain ballads. Funeral hymns and ancient laments. Sacred incantations embedded into dazzling guitar treachery. Jansch’s picking and voice vacillate from sullen fist-waving conviction to pock-marked revelation. You don’t need to be from Clarksdale to count to six notes, you just need to have tar pit colored organs
It’s raining now in Los Angeles and I’m not going to invoke corny coincidence. Bert Jansch has gone corpse, melting into memory like Big Bill Broonzy and Davey Graham, his own heroes. But in times of low ebb and eggplant complexioned skies, you can still hear his weary ballads that belong in that narrow pantheon next to Nick Drake and Elliot Smith — the masters of melancholia. He made the most beautiful death songs that ever breathed and now he can rest.
Download:
MP3: Bert Jansch-“Needle of Death”
MP3: Bert Jansch-“Blackwaterside”
MP3: Bert Jansch-“Poison”
MP3: Pentangle-“Bruton Town”
