Fairport Convention : Full House

After their 1969 album ‘Liege and Leif’ paved the way, Fairport Convention pushed further into traditional music, led by charismatic and renowned fiddle-player Dave Swarbrick, who had joined the group in 1969 after making his name with Martin Carthy earlier in the decade. Vocalist Sandy Denny and bassist Ashley Hutchings left after ‘Liege and Leif’, and for the first time since the group’s inception in 1967, there would be no female voice on a Fairport album. Guitarists Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol took vocal leads with Swarbrick and, with new bassist Dave Pegg joining drummer Dave Mattacks, the group made ‘Full House’, released in July 1970. Picking up where its predecessor left off, and again recorded with Joe Boyd at London’s Sound Techniques, the album continued the standards set by their previous four albums. Four of the seven songs on ‘Full House’ were adapted from traditional folk melodies, such as ‘Dirty Linen’ and ‘Sir Patrick Spens