Mary Hopkin - BBC Sessions, Volume 2 (1971-1977)

Here's the second and last album of Mary Hopkin at the BBC. 

As I've explained in previous posts about her, Hopkin was a big star from about 1968 to 1971. She seemingly started to lose interest in having a prominent music career around 1971, and stopped performing concerts in 1972. After that, her appearances on TV or radio slowly petered out. This album reflects that. The first ten songs are from 1971, the next three are from 1972, and the rest are from 1974 and 1977.

Everything here is unofficially unreleased. But it all sounds very good, because it was all on the BBC in one way or another, although some are from BBC TV shows. (Specifically, tracks 8 to 10 are from a Lulu TV show, and tracks 14 and 15 are from a Cilla Black TV show.) The last two are songs from when Hopkin joined folk guitarist Bert Jansch in a concert in 1977. Those were broadcast on BBC radio later, so they sound as good as the rest.

The remainder are from BBC studio sessions. There was some BBC DJ talking over the music, even though that had mostly gone out of style by 1971. That's the case for tracks 1, 2, and 4. As usual, I used the audio editing program X-Minus to wipe the talking while keeping the underlying music.

The three songs from the Lulu TV show, tracks 8 to 10, also have "[Edit]" in their names, but it's not for the usual reason mentioned above. Instead, I felt the vocals were way too quiet compared to the backing music, so I used X-Minus to boost the vocals. They sound a lot better now, although the sound on them is still a bit worse than the rest.

This album is rather long, at 56 minutes. A few more songs and I would have split this into three short albums, but instead I had to settle for two long albums.

01 Jefferson [Edit] (Mary Hopkin)
02 Earth Song [Edit] (Mary Hopkin)
03 Ocean Song (Mary Hopkin)
04 Silver Birch and Weeping Willow [Edit] (Mary Hopkin)
05 Streets of London (Mary Hopkin)
06 There's Got to Be More (Mary Hopkin)
07 Water, Paper and Clay (Mary Hopkin)
08 Let My Name Be Sorrow [Edit] (Mary Hopkin)
09 Prelude [Edit] (Mary Hopkin)
10 Snowbird [Edit] (Mary Hopkin & Lulu)
11 What a Friend You Are (Mary Hopkin)
12 Aderyn Pur (Mary Hopkin)
13 Sparrow (Mary Hopkin)
14 Shamarack (Mary Hopkin)
15 Both Sides Now (Mary Hopkin & Cilla Black)
16 Once I Had a Sweetheart (Mary Hopkin)
17 With You or Without You (Mary Hopkin)
18 Ask Your Daddy (Mary Hopkin & Bert Jansch)
19 If I Had a Lover (Mary Hopkin & Bert Jansch)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15292228/MaryHop_1971-1977_BBSessionsVolum2_atse.zip.html

There aren't many good photos of Hopkin from 1971 or after, so I've used one that apparently is from a 1970 TV show. I don't know the details.