Main menu
Fretplay home Submit tabs

Bert Jansch
Bert Jansch tabs Bert Jansch discography

Channels
Guitar channel Bass channel Guitar videos Reviews

Message Forum
Guitar forum Bass forum Bands and artists Promote your band Recent discussions All categories

Fretplay.com

Bert Jansch guitar tabs

CD reviews

The Best of Bert Jansch

Bert Jansch - The Best of Bert Jansch Audio CD

A fair review of the Bert Jansch "The Best of Bert Jansch" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Bert Jansch reviews here, or go back to the Bert Jansch tabs.

Band: Bert Jansch
Title: The Best of Bert Jansch
Rating:

Release Date: 1992-06-22
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Blackwaterside 2: M'Lady Nancy 3: Woman Like You 4: Strolling Down the Highway 5: Casbah 6: Reynardine 7: Miss Heather Rosemary Sewell 8: Come Back Baby 9: First Time Ever I Saw Your Face 10: Poison 11: Angi 12: Promised Land 13: Blues 14: Running, Running from Home 15: Alice's Wonderland 16: Nicola 17: Alman 18: It Don't Bother Me 19: Peregrinations 20: Gardener 21: Sarabanda 22: Veronica 23: Needle of Death 24: Birthday Blues 25: Tell Me What Is True Love?

Seminal Performances from a Master
Solo, with John Renbourne, in Pentangle, or reflected in the work of early Paul Simon (covering Anji) or Jimmy Page (appropriating Black Waterside), his influence was enormous. Coming of age in the sixties with a guitar in your hand, it was impossible to ignore Bert's work. Sparkling fingerwork, an authentic vocal sound, and brilliant, eclectic compositions make this a must-have CD for anyone who wants to know about the roots of the late 20th century popular acoustic guitar sound. If only we could get rid of those drums. . . . without them this would be a 5 star album.

Simply Excellent
Simply put, Jansch is a wizard on the guitar. I don't have much to add to the other excellent reviews of this compilation. I was aware that Donovan recorded a song called House of Jansch, but I never realized what an influence Bert was on one of my favorites Al Stewart. Just listen to the glorious Nicola - stylistically reminds me of Stewart's Once an orange always an orange. However, I think Jansch was the master of the English folkies. My other favorite on this collection is Needle of death, a depressing but excellent track from Bert's first recording. This compilation has a variety of American blues, traditional UK folk, Renaissance and Baroque classical - buy it and you will not be disappointed. I can't remove it from my cd player!.

The fingerpicking genius that is Bert Jansch
Chances are you will recognize the first track, "Blackwaterside" as being the inspiration, so to speak, for Jimmy Page's "Black Mountain Side" on "Led Zeppelin I. Neil Young once said that Bert Jansch did for the acoustic guitar in the 1960s what Jimi Hendrix did for the electric guitar, and you can take that statement at face value or you can listen to "The Best of Bert Jansch" and decide for yourself. " Which reminds me, that as long as we are throwing around comparisons of acoustic guitar playing to electric guitar playing when Jansch joined up with John Renbourn in the group Pentacle it was the equivalent of having Page and Jeff Beck playing with the Yardbirds at the same time. You might also recognize "Angi" from an early Simon & Garfunkle album, an instrumental piece written by Davey Graham, so there are some major influences involved here even if for some reason you have not heard of Jansch until now. Just to complete the circle, "Blackwaterside" is somewhat reminiscent of Graham's "She Moved Tho' the Fair," so apparently Jansch be both a borrower and a lender.

It will not take you long to become convinced that Jansch's stark fingerpicking is first class. What will take longer is realizing that he is a decent songwriter as well. There are a few traditional pieces here, starting with "Black Water Side" and continuing with "Reynardine" and "The Gardner. " But of the twenty-five tracks collected here on this 1990 release from Shanachie, sixteen are written by Jansch. The best known is "Needle of Death," inspired by the death of a friend on heroin, which is ironic given that it is an atypical Jansch song, where the singing and the lyrics overshadow the guitar playing. But when Jansch included lyrics with his songs they did tend to be rather dark in nature. Most of these songs are short, two to three minutes, in length, which explains why you end up with only 66 minutes of music with twenty-five tracks. But that is still over an hour's worth of music that establishes Jansch as an important figure in the British folk movement.

Jansch's singing seems indifferent at times, but there are a few moments where he is committed to his voice being the primary instrument, such as on "Needle of Death" and his cover of Ewan MacColl's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. " Still, it is the guitar playing, which sounds like it comes from the Renaissance one moment, as with "Nicola" and "Sarabanda," and another you find him playing blues guitars on tracks like "Strolling, Strolling Down the Highway" and "Come Back Baby. " If you want you can just program this CD to do nothing but the instrumental tracks: 2, 7, 11, 13, 15, 16, 17, 19, 21, 22 and 24, and have a really fine album right there. In fact, when you get to songs like "Poisoned" and "Promised Land" where there are suddenly drums and other instruments you are rather surprised and just want to get back to Jansch playing his guitar, whether he bothers to sing or not.

The songs are not arranged chronologically, so you are going to have tracks from his first album, recorded on a portable tape player in the kitchen of his London flat with Jansch playing a borrowed guitar, alternating with those from the end of the 1960s when he was going for a more commercial sound using studio musicians before he returned to a sound more in lines with his earlier folk recordings. But "The Best of Bert Jansch" is obligated to cover the entire spectrum of the height of his musical career. Most of his original albums are out on CDs, sometimes in combinations (e. g. , his first and third albums, "Bert Jansch" and "Jack Onion"), all of which will persuade you to remember Jansch when you start ticking off the names of the greatest guitar players of your lifetime.

Superb Introduction To Jansch's Early Work
S. This album was originally released by Transatlantic (and distributed by Kicking Mule in the U. ) in 1979 with the same album cover, but with only thirteen tracks--and only eight of those show up on this generous 25-track anthology of Bert Jansch's work from 1965-1971, covering such albums as It Don't Bother Me, Jack Orion (with future Pentangle co-founder John Renbourn), Nicola, Birthday Blues and Rosemary Lane.

The Best of Bert Jansch includes instrumentals like "Perigrinations," "Alman" and "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"--all clocking in at under two minutes each. Then there's the bluesy interpretaion of Davey Graham's instrumental "Angie. " In addition to being a gifted guitar player, his songwriting and expressive vocals on songs like "It Don't Bother Me" and "Needle of Death" make Jansch one of the most important folk artists of the 20th Century.

While Jansch's albums from the past two decades have been few and often go out of print (I would recommend 1981's Heartbreak and 1990's Ornament Tree), his early Transatlantic recordings are still readily available (many of them as two-fers). So if this album leaves you wanting more (and it should), I would suggest Rosemary Lane, Birthday Blues and his self-titled debut. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

To date, the best Jansch anthology
This anthology is clearly the best one available as of this writing (the other reviewer's comments notwithstanding--some of the "tape stretch" he refers to was also present on the 33 rpm issues: a lot of Jansch's early material was recorded at home on a portable tape player, so high audio quality can hardly be expected). I have been a Bert Jansch fan for over thirty years, own just about all of his recorded material, and count him as my single favorite performer. If you can't admire the man's significant creative genius from this sample of tracks, there's no hope for you--it would be difficult to come up with the name of another acoustic guitarist in the second half of the 20th century who produced a more original and influential style than did Jansch. And the good news is that this sample by no means exhausts his catalog of first-rate material.

You can see a complete list of all Bert Jansch discography, or go back to the Bert Jansch tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.