Nice folk, but no fair deal

Martin Carthy is renowned – among other things – for being one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet. And even at the age of 68 and after half a century of touring and making records, there is nothing remotely jaded in his attitude to the music business.

Carthy has long been regarded as the King of English Folk, yet when it is put to him that he has perhaps grown too big for folk clubs, his response is: "Ask me! All people have to do is ask."

He was twice a member of the highly successful folk-rock group, Steeleye Span. His other famous collaboration has been with wife Norma Waterson and her sister and brother in The Watersons, originally a Hull group that went on to sprout many permutations involving their children, and is often referred to as The First Family of Folk. When he was awarded an MBE in 1998 it caused some to mutter that, compared to pop music, folk was still woefully undervalued in Britain. After all, the previous year Paul McCartney had received a knighthood, and both he and Carthy were at the very top of their respective fields.

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Carthy himself wouldn't dream of thinking such thoughts. Sitting in a room of his large redbrick Victorian house at Robin Hood's Bay, he is more interested in talking about the music, and name-checking his hugely diverse influences – artists like skiffle supremo Lonnie Donegan, the old Norfolk fisherman and singer Sam Larner, the American blues vocalist and guitarist Big Bill Broonzy and Indian sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar.

But he is more reticent about the influence that he himself has had on others, not least the early work of Bob Dylan and Paul Simon.

Back in the halcyon days of the early 60s, when Carthy was a regular performer in famous London folk clubs like the King & Queen, the Troubadour and the Roundhouse pub in Wardour Street, he became friends with the then-unknown Dylan, who – says Carthy – was like a piece of "blotting paper, absorbing musical ideas everywhere he went".

He adds that in those days everyone was copying from each other. "That's the way we all picked things up at the time. If someone came up with a great new idea, everybody pounced on it ..." He stops to unleash one of his explosive laughs. "But it was yours! It was always recognised as being yours."

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Many have pointed to the similarity between the tune of an early staple

of Carthy's repertoire, Lady Franklin's Lament, and the song Bob Dylan's Dream which appeared on the best-selling Freewheelin' Bob Dylan LP. And from another famous Carthy song – actually a medieval ballad for which Carthy had worked out a guitar arrangement – it has been suggested that Dylan found the basis of the tunes for Boots of

Spanish Leather and Girl From The North Country.

But it would be Paul Simon – also just another folk singer in London before he went back to New York to find fame with Art Garfunkel – who gave the same old ballad a whole new lease of life. As a result, its name is known the world over and, after Ilkla Moor Baht'at, it is Yorkshire's best-known folk song.

So what really went on with Scarborough Fair?

The back-story to this question is this. In the early 1960s Martin Carthy found it in a book called The Singing Island, a collection of English and Scots folk songs compiled by Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl.

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Carthy gave the song a highly distinctive ostinato guitar riff and recorded it for his first solo LP in 1965. Then a year later the song appeared on the hit Simon & Garfunkel LP Parsley Sage Rosemary & Thyme (the title taken from the song's lyrics) complete with Carthy's beautiful guitar riff. It also featured not once but twice on the best-selling soundtrack album to the hit Dustin Hoffman film, The Graduate.

And it made a fortune.

In a legend that is itself ideal material for a great folk ballad, it was widely believed that Paul Simon had pocketed the lot.

And that's what Carthy believed himself. In fact, at that time his own music publisher had brought a lawsuit against Paul Simon and eventually the American agreed to settle for $20,000 on condition that Carthy received at least 50 per cent.

Carthy eventually got just half that amount for a song that, by his own estimation, went on to make "millions and millions".

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But slipped into the pile of documents which Carthy was asked to sign to end the lawsuit was a piece of paper which effectively waived his right to any future claim on Scarborough Fair.

The story becomes even murkier. Years later, Carthy found out that the song had not made a fortune for Paul Simon after all. In fact, for a long time Simon was unaware that he too didn't receive any money for it. This was later confirmed by the Performing Rights Society and Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society, which distribute song royalties.

So who got – and continues to receive – the Scarborough Fair millions?

Carthy reveals that it was the publisher who handled his lawsuit against Paul Simon. He had quietly copyrighted the song, effectively taking it over in the knowledge that Carthy had just signed away his claim.

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"Think how much that song has made," says Carthy, leaning back in his sofa and staring at the ceiling. "There was the original Simon & Garfunkel album, then the movie, then the soundtrack album, and of course the film went on to video and DVD, and it's repeated time and again on cable, satellite and terrestrial TV. Each time that song is played it's racking up royalties."

He mentions the publisher's name but – always the nice guy – he asks that the name is not printed, even though the publisher is now dead.

"You know, I got so fed up with the whole affair. I coined the phrase 'I'm tired of the trudge through the grudge'. That's how it felt for many years. But then I started to think, well, it's not as if the producers of The Graduate would have come to my door and said 'Oh, we heard that song on your album and we really want you to do the music for this movie.' I don't think that would have happened. And I've now reached the view that I believe Scarborough Fair is as much Paul Simon's as it is mine."

Still, they didn't speak for many years. But when Simon was performing in London in 1998, out of the blue he phoned Carthy and they met.

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"Paul said, 'come on, were you mad at me?' And I had to say, 'yes I was.' Then he told me the story of what happened with that song. I actually went away really delighted, almost walking on air. It was over."

Final closure came when, on the last night of Simon's London shows, he asked Carthy to join him on stage at the Hammersmith Apollo to sing – what else? – Scarborough Fair.

Now about to celebrate his 50th anniversary as a professional folk musician, he has no intention of hanging up his guitars. When he first started out, he laughs, he admits to having thought that anyone over 30 should retire. He was even quoted as saying that "people of forty and fifty really ought to know better. ... they should be tucked up with their carpet slippers and cardies.

"When people ask me if I'm going to retire, I ask them what a retired musician is. Because musicians don't retire, it seems to me. I don't understand why they would want to." Like his old friend Bob Dylan he maintains a ceaseless performing schedule.

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"The outside world makes a big fuss of touring, but it's what your job is. Bob Dylan understands that. When I saw Paul Simon we were talking about it, and Paul said that Dylan is intent on removing the mystique from tours.

"There's no big secret about it. In my case I get in a car and step on a train and then do a gig. That's what the job is. That's my nine-to-five (laughs), or nine in the morning to midnight. It's a long day but a great life."