Dave Swarbrick, the violinist and singer, who has died aged 75, was one of the most influential folk musicians of the 1970s and 1980s, especially with the group Fairport Convention; in 1999 however, he joined a list of people, including Bob Hope, Mark Twain and Alfred Nobel, whose deaths have been announced prematurely – in Swarbrick’s case in a Daily Telegraph obituary.
The Telegraph, Swarbrick’s paper of choice (“I’m not a Tory but have always had a soft spot for its gung-ho attitude”), had received erroneous information that he had died in his home city of Coventry. When informed that the musician was still alive (though recovering in hospital from a bout of emphysema) the obituaries editor and his staff were said to be “distraught”. Luckily the piece made flattering reading, describing Swarbrick as “a small, dynamic, charismatic figure, cigarette perched precariously on his bottom lip, unruly hair flapping over his face, pint of beer ever at hand, who could electrify an audience with a single frenzied sweep of his bow”
After the initial shock and apologies Swarbrick could see the funny side, coming out with the priceless one-liner: “It’s not the first time I’ve died in Coventry.”
“After all, I’d enjoyed the text of the obit – it was very complimentary,” he explained. “And it had answered a question I’d often asked myself: whether any paper would bother when I died.” His wife, Jill, said: “He read the obituary and didn’t quarrel with any of the spellings or the facts – apart from the obvious one.”
In fact Swarbrick, or “Swarb” as he was known, went on to turn the newspaper’s error to his advantage, admitting that “I never got half as much attention playing as by dying.”
“In fact,” he told the Oxford Times in 2014, “I photocopied the obits, took them to gigs, signed them “RIP Dave Swarbrick” and sold them for £1. After all, where else are you going to get a signed obituary? I had to stop, though, when The Telegraph got in touch and told me I couldn’t do it as they had the copyright.”
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In 2004, following two SwarbAid charity concerts by his Fairport Convention colleague Dave Pegg, Swarbrick received a double lung transplant and subsequently confounded both the press and medical profession by returning as a leading light on the British folk scene.
David Swarbrick was born at New Malden, Surrey, on April 5 1941. He was first drawn to folk music after taking up the guitar during the skiffle boom of the late 1950s. When he was 16, the pianist Beryl Marriott heard him at a skiffle event and invited him to join a ceilidh dance band. She also persuaded him to have another crack at the fiddle, which he had played as a child but which he had long since consigned to the attic.
In the 1960s Swarbrick was invited to play in some of the sessions of Ewan MacColl’s and Charles Parker’s Radio Ballads — setting stories about Britain’s fishermen, roadbuilders, miners, boxers and travellers to music. Through these he was introduced to Ian Campbell, a Scotsman who was turning his sights on the British folk tradition.
Swarbrick joined the Ian Campbell Folk Group in time to play on their first record, EP Ceilidh At The Crown (1962); he went on to help establish them as stars of the emerging folk club scene. The group had a minor hit with the first British cover of a Dylan song, The Times They Are A Changing. Swarbrick’s reputation rose rapidly, and in 1965 he was invited to play on Martin Carthy’s first album.
The next year he suddenly decided to emigrate to Denmark and marry his Danish girlfriend. With little money and no return ticket, he was detained at the Hook of Holland by customs, and promptly sent home again.
He ended up staying in London with Martin Carthy, with whom he went on to develop an important partnership. The intuitive interplay between Carthy’s guitar and Swarbrick’s fiddle was something entirely new. Their albums, Byker Hill (1967), But Two Came By (1968) and Prince Heathen (1969) broke the mould of traditional song arrangement and opened the door for the fusion of folk and rock.
When he was asked to play on a session for Fairport Convention in 1969, however, Swarbrick had never even heard of the band. At that time the idea of an electrified violin was so novel that, in order to create the desired effect, a telephone handset was taped to Swarbrick’s fiddle and connected to an amplifier.
Swarbrick was initially booked for one number only, but he ended up playing on four tracks on Fairport’s Unhalfbricking album (1969) and was invited to join the band full time.
His first album as a fully fledged member of Fairport Convention was Liege & Lief (1969), which broke new ground in marrying traditional songs with rock. Two members of the band, Sandy Denny and Ashley Hutchings, walked out after disputes about the direction of their music. This left Swarbrick and the guitarist Richard Thompson to take their place at the core of the band.
Over the next 15 years Fairport Convention undertook world tours and made more than a dozen albums.After Richard Thompson’s departure in 1970, Swarbrick developed into a surprisingly sensitive songwriter, and also took on the role of lead singer. In 1971 he was the prime creative drive behind Fairport Convention’s most ambitious project, Babbacombe Lee, an album based on the story of John Lee, a convicted murderer who was reprieved after three attempts to hang him at Exeter in 1885 had failed.
Swarbrick remained a constant presence throughout the numerous internal disputes which disrupted Fairport. But continual playing of the electric violin left him virtually deaf in one ear, and in 1984 he decided to retire. During his Fairport years he had also realeased three well- received solo albums, Swarbrick (1976), Swarbrick 2 (1977) and Lift the Lid and Listen (1978).
He now reverted to the acoustic violin as he returned to folk clubs with fellow Fairport member Simon Nicol. In 1986 he formed a new band, Whippersnapper. He also made occasional returns to the Fairport fold, playing at their annual Cropredy Reunion Festival in Oxfordshire. “I’m always amazed to listen to my Fairport stuff,” he said in 2014. “It’s so fast. What was I on?”
In 1988 Swarbrick linked up again with Martin Carthy. They made some successful tours, and produced a couple of fine albums, Life and Limb (1990) and Skin and Bone (1992). He made cameo appearances in several films, including Far From The Madding Crowd, while his musical adaptation of Babbacombe Lee became the subject of a television documentary. He also spent some years in Australia, working with the guitarist and singer Alistair Hulett, with whom he recorded the impressive The Cold Grey Light (1998), before returning home.
After his double lung transplant, in 2006 Swarbrick started touring again with fellow ex-Fairporter, Maartin Allcock, and Kevin Dempsey – calling themselves, with a wink to the Telegraph’s premature obituary, Swarb’s Lazarus, producing the album Live and Kicking (2006) and appearing at the Cropredy Festival. He played fiddle for Steve Ashley, John Kirkpatrick, Bert Jansch, Pete Hawkes, and the Canadian reggae artist Jason Wilson and his band (an album, Lion Rampant, was released in 2014). He also reignited his partnership with Martin Carthy, with whom in later years he regularly hit the road for an autumn tour.
In 2007 Swarbrick joined the 1969 Fairport Convention line-up, with Chris While standing in for the late Sandy Denny, to perform the whole of the album Liege & Lief, and three years later, in 2010, he joined Fairport Convention on stage for an impromptu performance of Sir Patrick Spens.
In 2010, backed by a stellar array of guest musicians, he released Raison d’être, his first solo album for nearly 20 years. It was reviewed in more than 20 publications, the English Folk Dance and Song Society Magazine describing it as “the work of a fine fiddler who simply refuses to lie down and rest on his not inconsiderable laurels”.
Swarbrick did much work with up-and-coming artists, becoming patron of the Folkstock Foundation, set up to promote young acoustic talent. In April and May 2014, at his personal request, he did a 17-venue tour of Britain, organised by Helen Meissner of the Foundation, supported by the folk trio Said the Maiden, and also featuring young folk artists.
Blunt, funny and charming, after his premature demise Swarbrick went on a receive a clutch of awards. In 2003 he received the Gold Badge from the English Folk Dance and Song Society and the Gold Badge of Merit from the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters.
In 2004 he received a lifetime achievement award in the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, and in 2006 Fairport’s Liege & Lief album was voted “Most Influential Folk Album of All Time” by Radio 2 listeners. At the 2007 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, he and Martin Carthy won the “Best Duo” Award. In 2012 he received another lifetime achievement award at the 2012 Fatea awards.
Swarbrick, who was married several times, is survived by his wife, the painter Jill Swarbrick-Banks, whom he married in 1999, and by a son and two daughters.
Dave Swarbrick, born April 5 1941, died June 3 2016
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