Davey Graham - Medley: She Moved Thru' the Bizarre/Blue Raga

"The DADGAD tuning was used extensively by Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin and The Yardbirds in the late '60s and '70s. While with The Yardbirds, Page recorded an instrumental entitled White Summer, itself inspired by the first recorded DADGAD tune, Davey Graham's arrangement of the traditional Irish tune 'She Moved Through the Fair'. On Led Zeppelin's eponymous first album, Led Zeppelin, he used this guitar tuning to perform "Black Mountain Side", though he detuned the entire guitar by one-half a step for the recording, so it was really D?-A?-D?-G?-A?-D? (where the '?' denotes a flattened note)--the piece which was strongly influenced by Bert Jansch's earlier arrangement of a traditional Irish song called "Blackwater Side" (though Jansch actually used 'drop D' tuning). Page later revisited the DADGAD tuning for the song "Kashmir", which appeared on the band's sixth album Physical Graffiti." - I copied and pasted this info straight from a great website on altered tunings called "Guitar Tunings Data Base" (GTDB) Hopefully this will settle some of the controversy surrounding this video, and all of the comments below.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• davygraham
• daveygraham
• annebriggs
• bertjansch
• jimmypage
• rorygallagher
• folk
• instrumental
• acoustic
• guitar
• DADGAD
• DADGBE
• tuning
• raga
• whitesummer
• blackmountainside
• celtic
• middleeastern
• MOJO
• crymeariver
• stairwaytoheaven
• SonicScales
• anji
• blues
• shemovesthroughthefair
• pierrebensusan
• irish
• traditional

[schummsy]

It's on "After Hours at Hull University, 4th February 1967" (RCCD 3021). I found it on a Mojo compilation, "The Roots of Led Zeppelin". Incidentally, if I hadn't heard Zep's "Black Mountainside" as a young teenager in the '70's, I may never have discovered this, Anne Briggs, Bert Jansch and a whole world of music. And if musicians hadn't 'stolen' songs down through the ages, those songs would have died. There. I feel better now.

[zenfreestyler]

This piece is from that Mojo compilation exactly, along with Bert Jansch's "Blackwater Side". That CD opened me up to blues music for the first time really. I literally downloaded the pic off google along with this piece from that CD and here you have it ;) Your comment makes this video worth it's while here on YouTube.

[mussman717word]

In all honesty, Page threw completely original guitar parts into the old blues covers by Led Zeppelin. Not justifying "Black Mountain Side," which is complete plagiarism, but Led Zeppelin remade a lot of "decent" songs and made them great by changing a LOT of things. In most cases (this one excluded) the only part of a song left unchanged would be the words, and many of the words used in those songs were hardly poetic and often common phrases themselves.

Peace.

[theotherhepcat]

@HotspurJr

Not exactly, because both songs are old traditional folk songs; however, Page's renditions were - more or less - the same as Jansch and Graham... but the songs themselves are only identifiable by their melodies.

Therefore, Page could legally perform said songs and not give credit to Jansch or Graham as the tunes are still the traditional folk songs.

That said, what bothers me the most is that Page re-titled the songs for the Zeppelin albums - which is actually quite deplorable.

[buzanthefearless]

What is the official, actual, real name of the first part -- is it "She Moved Through the Fair" or "She Moves Through the Fair" or "She moved through the bazaar" or "She moves through the bazaar" ? Or something else?

[peregrinusnoctis]

@HotspurJr

Well-said.

Page's unwillingness to give proper credit where due makes him increasingly look like a brilliant but immoral technician, rather than an artist in his own right.

[peregrinusnoctis]

@DADGADSB

It can reasonably be stated that all modern (i.e., post-Enlightenment) artists understand the distinctions between origination and plagiarism, and that there exists a moral imperative to publicly acknowledge appropriation of another's work, and of traditional work. Page understood this, but for his own reasons (e.g., legal, financial, etc.), chose not to so do. Henceforth, his reputation will ever reap the consequences.

A chord is an element, like salt--rather than a dish or recipe.

[mouse17101710]

@DADGADSB

I agree, not stealing but being influenced. My mate remembers his step dad recalling a story of him bumping into his old mate Davey Graham on Oxford Street back in the 60s and asking why his forefinger and middle finger were strapped together. DG had been to Morroco and was forcing himself to play a different (and rather demanding) right hand finger picking style. We all need influences to become what we are.

[planet123]

As I have been "influenced" by Led Zep's music I will claim I wrote it all.

[mielazul]

Fans of this kind of Celtic-Arabic guitar sound might like "Rosetta West - Yallah."

[8333P]

@N8wood1 This song is on the 36 track double CD compilation: Davy Graham - A Scholar and a Gentleman, released in 2009.

[HotspurJr]

@DADGADSB "He simply needed to announce before each performance that the song he was about to play was inspired by his personal heroes"

More like - all he needed to do was give them songwriting credit (and royalties) on the albums themselves, instead of crediting himself as the author of the songs. Look, I'm a huge Page and Zeppelin fan, but what made this really lame behavior was his claim - on the albums - that he wrote the songs. He didn't.