At Age 15, My Life Changed
I started listening to AM Top 40 Radio when I was a little kid growing up in Los Angeles. KRLA, KFWB (Channel 98!) and one more I cannot recall was the soundtrack to my childhood. I was also a lover of musicals and camp songs, but it was those stations in LA that grabbed me. The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, The Doors, The Byrds, Peter, Paul and Mary, Jefferson Airplane and many others found me through that tiny speaker in my transistor radio or in the family car.
In 1969, my family moved to the northern suburbs of Chicago and through 8th grade and halfway through freshman year at New Trier West High School, I continued listening to AM Top 40 radio. At some point in early 1971, something changed. To me, the songs were losing something and I wasn’t hearing anything interesting. Lyrics and music were becoming boring to me and in my search for a something different I began spinning that AM dial and arrived on a station at the very far left with the call letters WEEF. It caught my attention because the music that was being played at that moment was musically interesting. I don’t recall what the track was, but I remember I was hooked enough to keep the dial on WEEF and that is where it stayed all through high school.
WEEF was out of Highland Park, IL. It signed on at 6 AM and signed off at midnight. In between those hours you never knew what you would get. I recall one long set of nothing but music that featured mandolins; it’s where I first heard Bill Monroe, David Grisman along with several mandolin concertos. This was certainly interesting and innovative programming on AM radio. My clock radio was set to go off when WEEF signed on and I would doze to the music until I had to get up and get ready for school.
One morning, I was half asleep when I was startled awake by un-accompanied haunting harmonies that sounded so ancient and wonderful, followed immediately by electric instruments that also sounded ancient but modern at the same time. It was my first listen to Steeleye Span and the song was “King Henry”. I went to school that day so haunted by my early morning experience that I skipped my last class, jumped on my bicycle and went to the little Flip Side record store and bought “Below the Salt”. Life would never be the same.
Once the album was in my hands, I listened. And Listened. And listened. But it wasn’t just the band or the songs or the arrangements, it was Maddy Prior. I wanted to be like her, in fact I wanted to BE her. I learned the songs and developed a third harmony to the open duet she sings with the late Tim Hart in King Henry. I began to acquire every LP that they produced, learned the songs and then twelve years later discovered The Francis James Child English and Scottish Popular Ballads.
I found this video that has audio and lyrics. I found it amusing that the person whon posted the song said they “couldn’t find lyrics for this song anywhere on youtube” but Google was certainly around in 2009 and they would have found the original lyrics from The Child ballads in many places on the web.