"Full House" BBC sessions

[Jules Gray]

Hi all

I'm new around here.  My name's Jules, and I've been a Fairport nut for a couple of years now.  I have a question for you.

It seems to me that the 1968/9 Fairport BBC sessions all seem to exist in decent quality.  Am I right in thinking this is largely due to Ashley Hutchings making sure he got copies for his personal collection?  Do all the released 1960s BBC songs come from Ashley's own archives?

Am I right in thinking that the 1970 "Full House lineup" BBC sessions do not exist in similar quality and that all we have are off-air recordings?  If so, where did the edited Journeyman's Grace from the Unconventional box originate?  Because that sounds pretty decent to me, yet the version of Now Be Thankful on the same box sounds pretty dire.  I know there's an acetate of a longer Now Be Thankful on the 2-CD boot of these sessions - goodness knows why they didn't use that instead! - but everything else on that set is of a much poorer quality.

I'd love to hear the long Now Be Thankful, the unedited Journeyman's Grace, Sickness And Diseases with RT on lead guitar, Staines Morris et al in decent quality.  Is this a folorn hope, or did any of this material survive the infamous BBC tape culls?  If anyone knows for sure, please educate me!

This seems like a friendly place.  I'm looking forward to talking awhile!

Jules

[Andy]

You may wish to ask these questions of Dave Pegg, currently occupying the "Talkwahile Guests" hot seat. Not for long, though, so do scoot along!

Welcome to Talkawhile!

[Jules Gray]

Thanks, I will!

Jules

[Nick]

The standard policy for BBC sessions at that time was to erase the tapes after a certain time period. Peel said in his autobiog that sessions would only survive if someone in the studio had been unscrupulous and made their own copy or someone recorded it off the radio. If only they'd thought about things more at the time...

Fingers crossed for the Full House ones though, they sound really good.

Cheers

Nick

[Jules Gray]

Fingers crossed for the Full House ones though, they sound really good.

Indeed they are.  In fact some of the 1970 BBC recordings, notably the unedited Journeyman's Grace, and Sickness and Diseases are arguably the definitive versions, as they include Richard Thompson's guitar parts.  The Angel Delight versions are disappointing in comparison.

The BBC version of Journeyman's Grace from Fairport Unconventional is simply annoying as it misses out the second verse.

Jules

[Pat Helms]

Certainly, I would believe lower generation copies of the various sessions might still exist - where they might be can only be guessed.  I don't know who compiled Now Be Thankful, but I'm sure (s)he was in the same "bottom dwelling" well as most of us other collectors.  All tracks appear to have a long ancestry from the orignal sources.