hypersongs

Watch the Stars

Her second album with John Renbourn: fifteen short folk and blues songs recorded in London in January 1966 and released in 1967.
Dorris Henderson, 1967

Watch the Stars (Fontana TL 5385) was produced by Terry Brown. Henderson sang and played autoharp, and Renbourn played guitar and sang backing vocals; Tim Walker played guitar on one track and Danny Thompson bass. The material mixes traditional songs with songs by Bob Dylan ("Tomorrow Is a Long Time"), Gordon Lightfoot ("For Lovin' Me"), Hedy West, Anne Briggs, and Billie Holiday's "God Bless the Child", plus two of her own, "Lonely Mood" and "Gonna Tell My Lord".

It was long out of print before Fledg'ling reissued it on CD in 2005, remastered by Paschal Byrne, with her 1967 single "Message to Pretty" (a song by Arthur Lee) as a bonus; she had died by then. PopMatters gave the reissue 7 out of 10 in November 2005, calling her a vital presence of the British folk scene and writing that she was too good an artist to be forgotten. Wikipedia lists the album as 1966 in its discography and says 1967 in its text; Mainly Norfolk and PopMatters both give 1967.

Track listing

  1. When You Hear Them Cuckoos Hollerin'1:42
  2. It's Been a Long Time2:01
  3. 30 Days in Jail2:34
  4. No More My Lord2:25
  5. Watch the Stars2:13
  6. There's Anger in This Land2:04
  7. Mosaic Patterns2:15
  8. Tomorrow Is a Long Time3:20
  9. For Lovin' Me2:52
  10. Come Up Horsey1:41
  11. God Bless the Child2:58
  12. The Time Has Come2:25
  13. Poems of Solitude2:14
  14. Lonely Mood2:49
  15. Gonna Tell My Lord3:42

Sources

  1. Dorris Henderson: Watch the Stars, Mainly Norfolk
  2. Dorris Henderson: Watch the Stars, PopMatters (2005-11-28)
  3. Dorris Henderson, Wikipedia