Chords for Folk Britannia: The Watersons & Anne Briggs

[Gm] [Cm] But there were others still determined to build on the work of the English folk [Gm] revival.
[Cm] _ _ _ [G] _ _
_ _ _ _ They sing _ _ _ _ _ _ in folk clubs all over the country.
They [D] travel around [E] in an old van.
They positively shun the limelight.
[G] These are the Waterstones, a very important part of the revival of traditional British music. _
_ _ _ _ _ [G#] There was a great gulf between [G] what we did and what the blues guitarists did.
[N] We were excited by our own tradition.
We were absolutely enthralled to the music.
The music is dark, the music is fascinating.
_ _ It's our _ tradition.
[G] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [C] You can lose [G] yourself within yourself and forget completely about the audience.
But they can lose themselves in the music as well.
Yeah, well, this is what's important.
That's the point, to bring the audience into you instead of_
A significant fellow traveller of the Waterstones was Anne Briggs.
_ We're all sort of singers.
[C]
We're conditioned to singing in clubs.
We're conditioned to be club performers.
Now, which never was the role of folk singers before.
[G]
The thing is, what we've done, we've picked up the threads of a tradition.
We've not got, really, other than a few old recordings, we've not got anything else to go on.
I never found a [N] single _ thread apart from a gut feeling.
That was the only thread that ran through it all,
was that _ direct line that some singers had _ through singing their songs to [F#] the human emotion.
_ [C#] _ _ [F#] _ _ _
_ _ _ One morning fell _ _
_ _ _ [G#] _ [F#] to take _ _ the air [C#] _ _
[F#] _ _ [B] down by _ Blackwater _ side.
[F#] _ _ I first heard Anne Briggs down at the Troubadour, and I suppose it would be 62.
She was very young, 15 or something, 16.
I walked in the door and I saw this woman singing,
standing up, her hands behind her back, her head back and [E] just sang. _
[F#] This lovely fluid voice, _ _ very straightforward singing, really wonderfully musical, gorgeous timing.
_ _ _ [F#m] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[G#] _ _ _ [F#m] _ _ [B] _ _ _
_ Anne _ _ [F#] _ Briggs sort of came out of nowhere.
[G#] She had [F#m] passion and she took no prisoners.
[B] For her, folk song was visceral, it came from here, not from here.
[A#] _ [N] And if she sang a song that you already knew, like Lowlands, Hawaii, sea shanty,
but she sang it _ as a love song, which of course it is, in origin, before it became a sea shanty.
I thought, well, I can sing that song, but I feel differently about it,
so I just thought I'd sing it the way that I felt about it.
I love the sound of it, and [G#] I love the words of [N] it, and I love the tune.
And I just sang it, and it obviously didn't come out very shanty-like by the time I'd done with it.
_ _ _ _ _ _ [C] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [C#m] _
_ [Gm] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ My _ John [Cm] _ _