Foggy - Selftitled (Great and Very Rare Folk From York Records UK 1972)

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British folk duo Foggy's first album, which originally was released on York Records in 1972. You may expect nice remakes of well-known classic pop and folk tunes. A must for collectors of British folk rock!

Danny Clarke and Lennie Wesley formed this soft folk duo in the late 60s, initially called Foggy Dew-O, but later shortening the name to just Foggy. Brian Willoughby was a member briefly in 1973. On Born To Take The Highway they covered four Strawbs songs. Dave Cousins and Tony Hooper produced and various Strawbs played on their album, Simple Gifts. These days Granville Clark is a watercolour artist.

Foggy (originally Foggy Dew-o) were the duo of Danny Clarke and Lennie Wesley, who had a strong Strawbs connection over the course of their three-album career. Future Strawb Brian Willoughby played with them briefly, they covered no fewer than four Strawbs songs on Foggy Dew-o's second album, Born to Take the Highway, and half of the band guested on the sole Foggy album, 1972's Simple Gifts.

It's a reasonable enough folk-rock release, although nowhere near the level of Fairport, Steeleye et al., or even some of the better lesser-known acts (Trees, Mellow Candle). Much of the album has a faint country flavour, which doesn't do it many favours with the benefit of hindsight, while ill-advised covers (The Byrds' I Wasn't Born To Follow, The Beatles' Let It Be) would have been better left quietly on the shelf. 

The occasional song stands out, notably the Eastern-flavoured She's Far Away and the opening and closing versions of the title track, an old Shaker hymn whose tune was annexed for Sydney Carter's Lord Of The Dance, but I'm afraid there's far too much filler here for this to be regarded as in any way a lost classic.

Like most of The Strawbs' contemporaneous releases, there's some Mellotronic input here. Then-Strawb Blue Weaver plays full-on strings on My Song and Kitty Starr, plus flutes (under a real one) on Old Moot Hall, although they don't always enhance the material in quite the way you might expect. 

Top playing from Blue, though, with a high-speed flute run in the last-named that you'd have trouble doing on a well-gigged machine. All in all, then, a passable album with some nice 'Tron work, but nothing you desperately need, unless you have to a) own every British folk-rock album from the early '70s, or b) have to own every album containing Mellotron. Who said, "Me"?

01.Simple Gifts
02.Baby Day
03.She's Far Away
04.My Song
05.Let It Be
06.Madelaine
07.I Wasn't Born To Follow
08.Kitty Starr
09.Was It Only Yesterday
10.How Come The Sun
11.Nobody Knows
12.The Very First Time
13.Take Your Time
14.Old Moot Hall
15.Simple Gifts

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