Martin Carthy

The English folk singer and guitarist whose arrangement of "Scarborough Fair" reached Paul Simon and Bob Dylan.

From the Troubadour to Steeleye Span

Martin Dominic Forbes Carthy, MBE, was born on May 21, 1941 in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, and grew up in Hampstead, north-west London. He began performing at 16 at The Loft, a coffee bar in Belsize Park, and was a resident at the Troubadour in Earl's Court in the early 1960s. He played skiffle guitar and sang with Redd Sullivan's Thameside Four (the join is dated 1959 by Mainly Norfolk and 1961 by Wikipedia), and in 1964 joined the Three City Four with Marian Mackenzie, Ralph Trainer and Leon Rosselson. Hearing Sam Larner at Ewan MacColl's club shaped how he approached traditional song, and Larner inspired him to become a folk singer. He recorded for the first time in 1963 on Hootenanny in London, and the Library of Congress blog notes he befriended Bob Dylan during Dylan's London visit between December 1962 and January 1963.

His debut album, Martin Carthy (Fontana, 1965), featured Dave Swarbrick on fiddle, and the pair became a long partnership, with Byker Hill (1967) the first release with equal billing. He played electric guitar in Steeleye Span from 1969 to 1972, on Ten Man Mop (1971), then joined the Watersons, and made the Albion Country Band's Battle of the Field (1973). Later groups were Brass Monkey with John Kirkpatrick, Waterson:Carthy from 1994, Blue Murder and the Imagined Village. Solo records include Landfall (1971), Shearwater (1972), Crown of Horn (1976), Out of the Cut (1982), Waiting for Angels (2004) and The Moral of the Elephant (2014, with Eliza Carthy).

Method and standing

Wikipedia credits him with alternative tunings and percussive picking, and ranks him among the most influential figures in English folk, an influence on Dylan, Paul Simon and Richard Thompson. The Library of Congress blog says his guitar style has been emulated by practically all English folk guitarists since the 1970s. He received an MBE in 1998, BBC Radio 2 Folk Singer of the Year in 2002 and 2005, and the Radio 2 Folk Awards Lifetime Achievement award in 2014. The four-CD box set The Carthy Chronicles appeared in 2001.

In 2025 he returned with Transform Me Then Into a Fish (HemHem Records), his 19th studio album and first in eleven years, produced by Ben Seal and Eliza Carthy. It was recorded in 2024 as a bookend to the 1965 debut, with new versions of its songs, and takes its title from "Ye Mariners All". Sheema Mukherjee plays sitar on three tracks. It was nominated for the 2025 Mercury Prize, making him the oldest artist on the shortlist.