Martin Carthy: New York Mining Disaster 1941

It is easy to laugh at the Bee Gees for their disco heyday, but as the tribute programmes that have, sadly, been necessary in recent years have proved, they have written an awful lot of good songs over the years.

In fact, when they re-emerged in the second half of the 1970s it was as though dinosaurs had been sighted swimming up the River Welland. Beacuse I just remembered them from their first period of popularity some 10 years before.

Here, on his 1998 album Landfall, Martin Carthy makes a Bee Gees single from 1967 sound like an ancient folk song. And very good it is too.