Bert Jansch - Heartbreak (1982/2012) [Official Digital Download 24-bit/96kHz]

Bert Jansch was one of the most influential figures in British folk. Legendary artists including Jimmy Page, Paul Simon, Elton John, Nick Drake and Fleet Foxes have acknowledged Jansch as a major innovator of acoustic guitar playing. He is listed on Rolling Stone’s “Top 100 Guitar Players of All Time”. The album includes the Jansch classics “Wild Mountain Thyme,” “Sit Down Beside Me” and “Up to the Stars.” Jansch brings his stunning technique and eclecticism to this stellar recording.

Recorded in June of 1981, Heartbreak was produced by two enthusiastic fans, brothers Rick and John Chelew. They borrowed money from their mother to finance the sessions and to pay enlisted musicians like Albert Lee and Jennifer Warnes to accompany Bert in the small Silverlake Studio where the album was recorded. During the sessions for the album, Bert also played a few live gigs at the legendary folk club, McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, California. As John Chelew was assisting with the booking of the club, it made sense to book Bert and help him earn some side money during the recording of Heartbreak. Fortunately for us, Rick and John had the foresight to document these concerts, and now the 30th Anniversary edition of Heartbreak has been further enhanced by a previously unreleased, complete live show from McCabe’s Guitar Shop.

Bert Jansch was a wonderfully maverick musician, as much a gypsy as he was anything, but he was also remarkably consistent to his own vision as a guitarist and songwriter throughout his career, which began when he borrowed a guitar and played a riveting set into a reel-to-reel recorder in his kitchen in the early '60s, which resulted in his first album, simply called Bert Jansch, released on the tiny Transatlantic label in 1965. Mixing jazz, American blues, and British folk into an intense and brilliant acoustic guitar style, he wrote sparse and ruggedly romantic songs while artfully reimagining traditional fare to fit his template, and with his smoky, hard-traveled vocals, he was as consistent a studio artist as we've had in the past 40 years, and every one of his 23 studio albums, even if some of them seem like curious missteps, was unmistakably Bert Jansch. He wasn't built for the commercial mainstream, though, and by the late '70s he was drinking heavily, and while he was too much a talent to not bring something special to everything he played, he seemed to be creatively spent and just barely afloat. In the spring of 1981, two young fans, brothers Rick Chelew and John Chelew, borrowed money from their mother to bring Jansch to California and record an album at Silverlake Studio, hiring in musicians (including Albert Lee and Jennifer Warnes) to support, and lining up gigs for Jansch in the area between sessions to get him some extra money. The album that resulted, Heartbreak, was released in 1982 (on Logo Records in the U.K. and on Joe Boyd's Hannibal Records in the U.S.) and was somewhat of a mixed bag, with Jansch doing yet another version of his signature "Blackwater Side" (this time with Albert Lee on mandolin), delivering fine takes of the traditional "Wild Mountain Thyme" and Tim Hardin's "If I Were a Carpenter," and stumbling through a misguided attempt at "Heartbreak Hotel." It wasn't a bad album, but it was clearly Jansch treading water and trying not to creatively drown, and it quickly went out of print.

Tracklist:

01 - Blackwater Slide
02 - Sit Down Bedise Me
03 - Up to the Stars
04 - It Is Real?
05 - Wild Mountain Thyme
06 - Heartbreak Hotel
07 - No Rhyme Nor Reason
08 - If I Were a Carpenter
09 - Give Me the Time
10 - And Not a Word Was Said

Digitally Remastered.


Thanks to the Original customer!