DAVY GRAHAM – Hat (Bread & Wine BRINECD-4)

HatHat, released in 1969, was Davy Graham’s third album for Decca. The mixture of blues, jazz and mainstream songwriting with a little classical thrown in continues the pattern set by his earlier work but it is a rather slight album. Only three tracks exceed three minutes and one can’t help but think that a modern day producer would have encouraged Davy to expand one or two of the pieces. If that would be a good thing I’ll leave for you to decide but it does sometimes feel as though he’s hurrying to get finished.

He opens with the first “mainstream” song, The Beatles’ ‘Getting Better’, and later we have two Paul Simon songs and one by Bob Dylan. ‘Down Along The Cove’ is stripped of its pedal steel and pared back to its 12-bar roots which is a clever way of approaching it. Second is ‘Lotus Blossom’, a song from 1930s popularised by Jimmy Witherspoon and given a hint of ‘Anji’, and then the first of two Willie Dixon songs, ‘I’m Ready’. Davy is accompanied on this album by Danny Thompson on double-bass and an unnamed percussionist and the arrangements seem to fit with the pace and energy of the performances.

Art Blakey’s ‘Buhaina Chant’ is the first of the jazz compositions played with a north African vibe and it’s followed, somewhat incongruously, by ‘Homeward Bound’. It’s a sentimental song of homesickness in Paul Simon’s hands but Davy races through it – actually it works quite well. The other Simon song is ‘I Am A Rock’. After the traditional ‘Love Is Pleasing’ Davy gives us a hornpipe by Purcell adapted from the harpsichord and after the Dylan song we have ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ and a guitar composition by Stan Watson. And so he moves between styles and times with abandon – I enjoy the album but I wish Davy had stretched out on even one track to show what he could really do.

Dai Jeffries

‘Homeward Bound’: