STAND outside Martin Carthy’s front door and you can glimpse the North Sea, its wild breakers hammering the grey cliffs of Robin Hood’s Bay. Step inside the front door and you’re immediately surrounded by marvels of a different kind. Rows and rows of framed photos rise up to the ceiling of his hallway, many of them pictures of his distant family; even relatives in Edwardian dress just before the First World War.
There are candid shots of folk royalty too. There’s Jeannie Robertson, accompanied by a young Carthy himself, and Anne Briggs (“Annie”, as he calls her) snapped in a busy street scene. Here’s a grinning Bob Dylan, hanging out with Richard Fariña and Carthy in a dark London bar in the early ’60s.
“We called him Dick Farina back then,” laughs Carthy, dressed in a colourful shirt and patterned jumper, earrings reassuringly in place. “Because he only got the tilde when he met Mimi Baez. They recorded an album in London back then, and you know what Dylan called himself? Blind Boy Grunt!”
While Carthy and Mr Grunt are still in touch – more on that later – the pictures he holds dearest are those of the Watersons, especially of his late wife Norma, who passed away two years ago. Lal and Mike Waterson had already gone, which leaves Carthy alone to carry the torch for the Hull siblings and their powerful, ancient-sounding music.
“I miss Norma like mad,” he says. “We just missed 50 years, as we got married in June 1972 – that’s her on the wall at the pub on our wedding day – and she died in January 2022. When she first became ill, Eliza moved down here to help, but Norma lived another 13 years.”
Though his late wife’s absence is keenly felt, Carthy is kept busy by his extended family: his grandson is staying with him, along with his tortoise and to sit in the living room, an ancient harmonium in the corner and one of his Martin signature models lying on the sofa near a set of that week’s s. Carthy is practising hard for his current batch of live dates, constantly reworking ballads he’s known for 60-odd years. He’s resolutely living in the now, enthusing about new music from the Goblin Band and Lankum.
