Sandy Denny - A Boxful of Treasures

My introduction to Sandy Denny came when I bought Led Zeppelin's fourth album and listened to The Battle of Evermore. I had to know more about the lady singing with Robert Plant. Her albums were mostly still in print at the time and I was lucky to find the ones that weren't fairly quickly in the used record stores I haunted. My goodness, what a voice! Beautiful and earnest, delicate and strong. She had a quality that I have not yet heard in another singer (Sandy died in 1978, several years before I discovered her). She was a folk singer at heart but calling her simply a folk singer is such an understatement. Anyway, you get the idea: I'm a huge fan. So much so that I bought the first box set devoted to Sandy back in the eighties...then I bought it again when it was released on CD several years later. So I have one Sandy Denny box set and along comes A Boxful of Treasures. Do I buy a second box set? It has lots that I don't have but lots that I do have. I finally bite the bullet and get it. Honestly, if I would have heard the live version of Whispering Grass that is on the box when I was trying to decide, I would have snatched this thing up a long time ago. Some of the "treasures" are for-fans-only recordings, to be sure, but there is plenty of great stuff here.

Now, I'm a realist. Unless you're already a Sandy Denny fan, you're not going to buy this box set. Fair enough. You owe it to yourself, though, to introduce yourself to the lady's works. Check out the No More Sad Refrains anthlogy which has Sandy solo, as well as with Fairport Convention and Fotheringay. From the exquisite Fotheringay to Nothing More and the folksy John the Gun, British folk music has never sounded better.

I also recently picked up It Suits Me Well - The Songs of Sandy Denny by Vikki Clayton. Not to take anything away from Vikki, who does a wonderful version of John the Gun, but the funny thing about tribute albums is that they often highlight just how special the original artist was.