Songs For Swinging Survivors
His folk club was shut down by the police after only a year, however, for "various reasons", and Softley began singing in The Cock, a pub in St Albans, where he met a young Donovan Leitch, singing together on many occasions (He later cited Softley as a "major influence"). Donovan was soon snapped up by a record label and shot to stardom, but this enabled him to bring Softley to the attention of producers and record companies. He then worked with Peter Eden and Geoff Stephens, and his debut album Songs For Swinging Survivors, which was a purely folk record. The album featured only Softley and his acoustic guitar, and includes the songs The War Drags On, (Covered by Donovan on his 'Universal Soldier' EP), and Softley's own interpretations of Billie Holiday's 'Strange Fruit', and Woody Guthrie's 'The Plains of the Buffalo'. Softley does not look back on this time favourably claiming during production he had gone "through a lot of hells and no heavens, a terrifying amount of personal pain" to the extent that he quit the music business for over four years. During this time, he returned to life on the road until late 1967. Due to contractual issues he never received any royalties in the later years.
Read more about this topic: Mick Softley
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