BEGGARS HILL 1976

With only 500 pressed, original 1976 vinyl copies of the sole album by unsung Surrey-based folk-rock foundlings Beggars’ Hill are failsafe wallet-lighteners these days, fetching anything up to £250 – ie, £247.40 more than the initial asking price. Had the album contained any original compositions you could arguably double its true value.

Beggars’ Hill – gimlet-eyed sleuths will notice a wandering apostrophe on the CD spine and on the disc itself – were a young, open-ended collective who specialised in diligent, dignified rearrangements of worthy folk fare, whether drawn from traditional sources (Jack Hall, Here’s To The Last To Die) or from then-contemporaries (New St George and Poor Ditching Boy by Richard Thompson; If You’d Been There by Bridget St John). In the main, their poised and painstaking approach works a treat – notably so in their commendably gentle, lyrical interpretation of the Robin and Barry Dransfield arrangement of The Wild Rover. Folk-ophobes may admittedly find all of their prejudices confirmed – everything is sung straight down the nose, with a palpable sense of real ale retention, finger-in-ear earnestness and beard/jumper interdependency – but just as strong is the sense of warm, familial, humanistic conviviality which any decent folk club provides.

Reviewed by Marco Rossi

Tracks :

1 New St. George
2 Cannily, Cannily
3 Jack Hill
4 Here's to the Last to Die
5 Let It Be Me
6 Who Knows Where the Time Goes
7 When Will I Be Loved
8 Sailor Home From The Sea
9 If You'd Been There
10 Poor Ditching Boy
11 Wild Rover

Artwork Included