Along The Road Forever : Live At The BBC

The most comprehensive Martin Carthy collection ever assembled – 20 CD set with live and session performances recorded for the BBC over a 57 year period. Includes 80-page hardback book with an essay by celebrated biographer Clinton Heylin, covering Martin’s whole life in music, with unseen photos, many from Martin’s personal archive, separate session notes by renowned Carthy chronicler Kevin Boyd and a photograph signed by Martin. Though he eschews such terms himself, few would deny that Martin Carthy MBE is the godfather of English folk – a singer, tradition bearer and guitar stylist of colossal quality and influence with 60 years of celebrated recorded work as a solo artist, as a duettist with Dave Swarbrick and with his daughter Eliza Carthy, and as a member of ground-breaking ensembles ‘Steeleye Span’, ‘The Albion Country Band’, ‘Brass Monkey’, ‘The Watersons’, ‘Waterson: Carthy’ and ‘Wood, Wilson, Carthy’. All of these collaborations and more are represented in this stunning collection from Martin’s extraordinarily extensive career of interactions with the British Broadcasting Corporation – as a studio session guest and concert performer over a span of 1965-2022, across BBC Radios 1, 2, 3 and 4 and BBC television, with early performances from 1960s regional channel ABC TV as a bonus. What survives of Martin’s BBC output is perhaps a fraction of what once aired over the course of nearly 56 years of moments on the usually ephemeral medium of broadcasting, yet its range & heft is remarkable – an alternative career history and testament to a truly singular artistry: 221/2 hours, 328 tracks (two thirds from a master source) of which there are 237 distinct items of repertoire.