With a life as tragic as any bluesman, Jackson C. Frank wrote songs laced with melancholy and pathos, and the best of these ("Blues Run the Game," "My Name Is Carnival," "Halloween Is Black as Night") are striking in their resignation and their acceptance of the dark turns of fate…
Bert At the BBC is a comprehensive collection of Jansch’s appearances at the BBC, featuring over eight hours of rare and unreleased recordings, including live-on-air spots, studio sessions and full concerts straight from the BBC vaults, delving further into this legendary performer’s canon. Bert Jansch was the very essence of folk music, providing inspiration for everyone from Paul Simon and Neil Young to Led Zeppelin and countless folk revivalists.
While Jackson C. Frank’s eponymous 1965 album and other material has enjoyed numerous official and unofficial reissues, Jackson C Frank: The Complete Recordings is the first to compile his entire recording career. The Complete Recordings contains a total of 67 tracks, 24 of which have never appeared before. Every song has been mastered or remastered, a number of them straight from the original, brittle reel-to-reels on which they were originally laid down.
2010's mammoth, highly collectible and very limited, 19-disc Sandy Denny box set was truly a thing to behold, presenting the entirety of her career from studio to stage to front porch. It was a completist's dream, but it came with an exceptionally high price tag, which makes the appearance of 2011's Notes and the Words: A Collection of Demos and Rarities a real gift for fans, especially those who already own the complete studio recordings, whether solo or with Fotheringay, Strawbs, or Fairport Convention. The handsome, limited-edition four-disc box skims the cream from the top of the myriad rarities, BBC sessions, demos, and outtakes that made the previous collection so remarkable (an intimate bedroom recording of Jackson C. Frank's "Blues Run the Game"; an early demo of Like an Old Fashioned Waltz's "Carnival" with previously unheard melodies and lyrics; a blistering alternate studio take of a Dave Swarbrick-less "Sailor's Life," and alternate versions of Fairport classics like "Matty Groves," "Come All Ye," and "Fotheringay"), resulting in a wonderful window into one of English folk music's most magnificent voices.
A one-night-only concert was held at New York City’s Town Hall last fall, to celebrate the music of the Coen brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis. The evening was filmed for a documentary that was broadcast by Showtime last winter, and now Nonesuch Records releases a live recording of the concert, Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of “Inside Llewyn Davis,” on January 13, 2015. The concert, documentary, and live album were produced by Inside Llewyn Davis writer/director/producers Joel and Ethan Coen and soundtrack producer T Bone Burnett. (Nonesuch also released the film’s soundtrack.) The concert poster included with the first 200 Nonesuch Store pre-orders are no longer available.