Sandy Denny

One of the finest singers England has ever produced, Sandy Denny was a linchpin of the original Fairport Convention. Delivering, alongside Richard Thompson and Ian Matthews, a radical mixture of Dylan covers and Renaissance music, she helped make Fairport leaders of Britain's '60s Olde Musik revival. Her earliest recordings, issued now as The Original Sandy Denny, are straight-folk workouts with mostly just voice and guitar digging into a revealing selection of cover tunes ("Pretty Polly," "Last Thing on My Mind"). Some may prefer its simple purity to Denny's next batch of work, from when she was briefly a member of a sort of lesser Fairport, the Strawbs.

Hannibal's Sandy Denny and the Strawbs, a 1991 reissue of their unreleased 1967 tapes, captures exactly her early promise -- on assured folk numbers by Dave Cousins, she sings with unerring precision, her bell-like delivery coming across as a very natural gift. No More Sad Refrains includes selections from her Fairport work -- and while the individual albums represented (Unhalfbricking, Liege and Lief) remain essential -- the compilation's choices do her justice.

After Fairport, she formed Fotheringay, whose style continued along the lines of lutes 'n' flutes. The North Star Grassman and the Ravens is her final triumph of the style, making way for the fine modern folk of Sandy and Like an Old Fashioned Waltz (the latter features a deft remake of Cahn-Chaplin's "Until the Real Thing Comes Along," suggesting a never-developed jazz direction). Casting her as pop singer didn't quite work on Rendezvous -- the album is dogged by a busy "Candle in the Wind" and a merely capable "Silver Threads and Golden Needles." Although a classy single-disc distillation is available as an import, Denny's glorious three-CD retrospective, Who Knows Where the Time Goes?, is now out of print, which leaves the double-CD No More Sad Refrains to present her work with the Fairport and Fotheringay as well as solo recordings (including some demos and rarities). The PolyGram import Listen, Listen gets its survey onto one disc, but the pure-solo-career selection doesn't do Denny justice. Avoid the cheap but shamefully brief Millennium Collection.

In a tragic accident, Denny died in 1978 after falling down a flight of stairs. Gold Dust: Live at the Royalty Theater draws on her last concert, when she was fighting a cold and with wobbly sound quality. With some parts now rerecorded and the tapes cleaned up, it's a treasure for committed fans, because so little live Denny is available. Today's neofolkies owe her a debt, and all those enthralled by Eva Cassidy should pounce posthaste onto No More Sad Refrains. (PAUL EVANS/MICHAELANGELO MATOS)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide