Nancy Kerr – The Poor Shall Wear the Crown – Songs by Leon Rosselson
Little Dish Records (LiDiCD004) – 26 December 2021
On BBC Radio 4’s Front Row in May 2020, Nancy Kerr featured as a guest during which she spoke of a new lockdown project for which she intended to film a song a day for one month via her YouTube channel. The project had a very particular focus – they were covers of songs by the folk singer, song writer and children’s author Leon Rosselson. He initially came to prominence in the 60s when he sang satirical songs on ‘That Was the Week That Was’, a BBC topical TV programme presented by David Frost. His folk singing career took off in the 1970s when he also released a number of collaborative albums with the late Roy Bailey. In the 90s, he also began to write children’s books. His first, Rosa’s Singing Grandfather, was shortlisted in 1991 for the Carnegie Medal.
On 26th December, Nancy released an accompanying 12-track album to the project. It is available digitally via Bandcamp and as a limited edition CD (a digipak and booklet with photography by James Fagan and illustration/design by Lizzy Doe).
Even with a song a day for a month, Nancy will have been spoilt for choice considering Leon’s substantial back catalogue, beginning with his debut solo album ‘Songs for Sceptical Circles’ released in 1966. It was in many ways an ideal lockdown project, a way to occupy the time she suddenly had on her hands, a new challenge both musically and vocally, and the ideal celebration of a man who provided the folk soundtrack to her childhood and who should, as she says, be more celebrated, something you’d be hard pushed to argue with after listening to the songs covered in this tribute.
In her Frontrow interview, she emphasised the importance of these songs when she explained how Leon’s work had helped make her the writer and musician she is today. She added, although he wrote about poverty, inequality and war, he did so with a lightness that has enabled them to resonate across time. More telling was her reference to how the songs zoom in and out simultaneously – while you know the songs were about the world, they could also be about hurt, love or a flawed character. This special quality to his songs seemed to resonate with Nancy during lockdown – a time when we were zooming in on our own lives while also trying to make sense of the world and bring some clarity into our daily lives.
The album kicks off with the ‘The Ant and the Grasshopper’, a re-examination of a parable that extolled the virtues of hard work and planning for the future:
“Now see the grasshopper reel like a dry leaf falling,
Weaving a dance that will last forever,
Back goes the ant to his nest to work, to feed, to rest,
For him there will always be tomorrow.”
Nancy sings and performs on Guitar, Violin, Viola and Piano throughout. She has such a striking voice and vocal style that no complicated arrangements are really needed. However, her guitar accompaniment here, and her musicianship throughout, adds a beautiful defining quality to the release.
The album takes its title from the lyrics of ‘Harry’s Gone Fishing’ that follows – “And the rich shall wear the saddle and the poor shall wear the crown. When Harry rises up and turns the world upside down.”
Nancy’s mixture of song and spoken-paced lyrics lends the piece a theatrical quality that grabs your attention while the additional string arrangements remain simple and grounded.
I still find ‘Song of the Old Communist‘, a powerful and very relevant song for today, maybe more so with the growth in power of corporations – we still need those hot heads and hot hearts to fight the fight. It originally featured on ‘Where Are The Elephants?’ (1991), on which Martin Carthy played the guitar. As with all the songs here, Nancy does make her mark musically, giving her own twist to arrangements but what’s more striking is her vocal delivery – she sings from the heart with a genuine conviction that lends great weight to the lyrics.
The Poor Shall Wear the Crown is a great gateway album into Rosselson’s world for newcomers and an equally captivating re-examination of his work for the familiar. There are sure to be some revelations along the way for many. One of several came with ‘Susie’, an irresistible number from his 1988 album I Didn’t Mean It, which Nancy describes as a superb example of song-as-theatre and a masterclass in form. It’s not short on humour either, as Susie sinks her teeth into the flesh of authority figures (the more senior, the better). I’d love to see it performed live; you can picture an audience joining in on “she won’t let go, she won’t let go’.
Another new one to me was Invisible Married Breakfast Blues which appeared on Love Loneliness Laundry, a collaboration with Roy Bailey, which also featured Val Bailey on vocals for this number. The original is almost an acoustic take on the synth-pop of the time. Nancy replaces the ticking clock with the rhythmic plucking of violin strings which are no less dramatic in their ability to create the welling tension behind this song. She notes, “Leon has observed that feminism ‘declared the personal to be political which seems to me to be a very good idea as far as songwriting is concerned.'”
I encourage you to seek out the original videos James Fagan filmed for this series; some of the settings are perfect. Also taken from Love Loneliness Laundry, for ‘Don’t Get Married Girls’, one of the most requested songs on the album, you’ll find Nancy sitting on a bed with the laundry in a basket behind her.
‘Palaces of Gold’ is another well-known favourite that I first heard sung by Martin Simpson. It appeared on Leon’s 1968 album A Laugh, a Song, and a Hand-Grenade and again as the title track on his 1975 album. Written in response to the devastating Aberfan disaster, it highlights the huge imbalance between rich and poor, the priviledged and the exploited. Nancy’s version is exceptional; using a simple guitar refrain, she lets her voice carry the weight of these powerfully damning lyrics.
For She Was Crazy, He Was Mad, she turns her attention to accompaniment, which she describes as often complex, linear, and inextricably entwined with the main melody. Here she adapted the original especially for “DADGAD guitarists who are really violinists”.
Nancy doesn’t shy away from a musical challenges either. When she takes on ‘Whatever Happened to Nannerl?‘ that originally featured Fiz Shapur on harpsichord (keyboard), she mimics the complex orginal harpsichord on bowed string. It’s a song dedicated to Mozart’s sister (Maria Anna, affectionately known as Nannerl), who went largely ignored by his biographers other than to highlight her brother’s genius. She was an exceptional musician, and in this song, Nancy notes that upon deeper listening, it also uncovers the speaker’s subtle disdain not just for the wayward brother but for art itself. “In the end, what good did all that music do?”
We get a pleasant surprise thrown in for the classic children’s song ‘Why does it have to be me?’ on which she is joined by the young Harry Fagan…a future folk singer maybe? It’s a little jewel of a song.
The album ends on a “glorious hymn to art and English radicalism“ with ‘Bringing the News from Nowhere’. In the notes, Nancy lets us in on something interesting, which makes the perfect endnote:
“I mainly worked from memory and always by ear when arranging them – conscious of trying to honour Leon’s virtuosic and frequently cross-genre amplification of under-told histories, within the parameters of my own musical voice. This is a fancy way of saying that I made lots of mistakes – sorry Leon! The “folk process” is all very well until it happens to you.”
This project may have never happened if not for the lockdown, not that I give thanks in any way for those events, but we are all the richer for offerings such as this. As far as tribute albums go, they don’t come much better than this. It is a heartfelt and tremendous album that shines a bright light on the poetic work of Leon Rosselson.
Order via Bandcamp: https://nancykerr.bandcamp.com/album/the-poor-shall-wear-the-crown-songs-by-leon-rosselson
Photo Credit: James Fagan