Fairport Convention - At the BBC: The Judy Dyble Era (1967-1968)

I'm a big fan of Fairport Convention, specifically in the late 1960s and early 1970s when Richard Thompson was a member. Each of their albums from that time period are great, but on top of that, they did a lot of songs for the BBC, many of which never got on any of their albums at the time.

At first, a single CD compilation of their BBC performances came out called "Heyday." Then that was upped to a four CD box set called "Live at the BBC" in 2007 that covered their BBC performances from 1967 to 1974. But even that wasn't enough, and more BBC performances have dribbled out here and there on various archival releases.

This is the start of a series that gathers up all their BBC performances of good sound quality from that early era and organizes it chronologically. I did a similar thing with Dusty Springfield's TV and radio performances. However, that included only songs not recorded by her in the studio. Whereas this includes all songs performed on the BBC, because Fairport Convention often would perform their songs differently while Springfield almost always stuck close to her studio versions, However, I don't include multiple versions of the same song, unless there's an unusual reason to do so.

For about the first year of Fairport Convention's existence, the main vocalist was Judy Dyble. In mid-1968, she left and was replaced by Sandy Denny. This first album of BBC performances collects stray tracks just from when Dyble was in the band. It works out that there's 36 minutes of music from that time, which is a nice album length for that era.

Actually, there wouldn't have been enough material for a good album length except for two songs performed on a French TV station, "Morning Glory" and a nearly eight minute version of "Reno, Nevada."  (I'll include any good TV or radio performance, even if it wasn't actually performed on the BBC.) Surprisingly, color video footage of the band on that French TV station exist on YouTube, and it's quite an interesting watch. (Search for the band name and song name and you'll find it.) It's just about the only color video of the band from its early years.

By the way, only four out of the ten songs below were also on the band's self-titled first album, the only one with Dyble on it.

01 Let's Get Together (Fairport Convention)
02 One Sure Thing (Fairport Convention)
03 Lay Down Your Weary Tune (Fairport Convention)
04 Chelsea Morning (Fairport Convention)
05 Violets of Dawn (Fairport Convention)
06 If [Stomp] (Fairport Convention)
07 Time Will Show the Wiser (Fairport Convention)
08 If I Had a Ribbon Bow (Fairport Convention)
09 Morning Glory (Fairport Convention)
10 Reno, Nevada (Fairport Convention)

https://www85.zippyshare.com/v/HmzD4rur/file.html

For the cover, I took a screenshot from the YouTube video of "Reno, Nevada." By the way, that's Ian Matthew in front, Richard Thompson in the middle, and Judy Dyble in the background.