Rise Up Like The Sun - Track Listing

Track Listing

1. "Ragged Heroes" (John Tams): Written as a way of announcing that the songs and tunes would be a rallying-call for English folk music. Towards the end, Martin Carthy's counter-melody makes for some very interesting harmonies.
2. "Poor Old Horse" (Traditional sea shanty): Usually called "The Dead Horse". First collected in 1917. The song was sung at the end of the first month on board ship. Sailors would make a horse figure from rags and tar, hoist it to the yard-arm, then cut it loose and let it drift out to sea. The verse about "Sally in the garden" seems to have drifted in from a different unrelated shanty.
3. "Afro Blue/Danse Royale" (Santamaria/Anon medieval): An instrumental track combining Latin-jazz (John Coltrane, 1963) on violin, with a medieval French dance tune on bagpipes. Only the folk-rock band Gryphon had ever attempted anything like this before.
4. "Ampleforth/Lay Me Low" (Trad/Trad): A fiddle tune followed by a hymn from the American non-conformist New Lebanon Church of 1838.
5. "Time To Ring Some Changes": Richard Thompson did not record his song until "Small Town Romance" (1984). Although he was present for the recording of "Poor Old Horse", he does not appear on this track.
6. "House In The Country" (Stewart): The travelling Stewarts of Blairgowrie wrote this song about the difficulty of finding a place to live. It acquired extra resonance during the 1990s when it was sung to highlight the problem of homelessness among the young.
7. "The Primrose": Several tunes with this title originate in the 1880s. The one that survived was first recorded by Jimmy Shand in the 1950s and by Oscar Woods in 1968. The first half uses John Kirkpatrick's version and the second half uses Rod Stradling's version.
8. "Gresford Disaster": On September 22, 1934 265 colliers died at the Gresford mine in North Wales. Ewan MacColl sang this song on" "Shuttle and Cage" (1957).
9. "The Postman's Knock": A traditional song associated with Morris dancing. The Albion Band recorded it again on their album Lark Rise To Candleford(1980).
10. "Pain and Paradise": Written by John Tams, inspired by another sea shanty, "Riding on a Donkey"
11. "Lay Me Low": A different sound mix of track 4.
12. "Rainbow Over The Hill": This Richard Thompson song was recorded in 1978 but not released until 1992. Linda Thompson sings the lead.

Note: tracks 9 to 12 are bonus tracks that were not on the original vinyl or CD releases, but were included on the re-mastered Fledg'ling Records issue of the album, in 2003.