Bert Jansch: Angie

I am still away from home helping the Dowager Lady Bonkers and do not have my copy of Electric Eden to hand. So my tribute to Bert Jansch will just be this Sunday video choice.

Angie was written by Jansch's fellow Scottish acoustic guitar pioneer Davey Graham, who died in 2008. Graham's Wikipedia entry quotes Ralph McTell talking about it:

here was a tune that combined a quirky rhythm figure with a tune of simple beauty with sexy blue notes with a hypnotic descending bass line. The hard part of this was that there were two beats to every bass note instead of the one that most of us were able to play. I was captivated and for the next few weeks played nothing else. Finally I could manage a passable version. My mates were impressed! It practically became my signature tune.

Angie became the song that every aspiring folk guitarist wanted to master, but Jansch learned it from a tape borrowed from Graham's half-sister, Jill Doyle, who was giving him guitar lessons. He included it on his 1965 debut album, which was entitled simply Bert Jansch.

You can read more about Jansch's career in his Washington Post obituary.