Mary Hopkin
The Welsh folk-pop singer Apple Records signed in 1968, whose acoustic second album Earth Song/Ocean Song (1971) includes her reading of Ralph McTell's "Silver Birch and Weeping Willow".
Apple
Mary Elizabeth Blodwen Hopkin was born on May 3, 1950 into a Welsh-speaking family; Wikipedia gives Pontardawe and her official biography Ystradgynlais. She sang with a local folk group, the Selby Set and Mary, and made a Welsh-language EP for Cambrian, Llais Swynol Mary Hopkin, on May 3, 1968. After Opportunity Knocks on ITV in 1968, Paul McCartney heard her, reportedly on the recommendation of Twiggy, and signed her to Apple. "Those Were the Days", which McCartney produced, was released on August 30, 1968 and reached 1 in the UK and 2 in the US, selling more than eight million worldwide.
Post Card (February 21, 1969, produced by McCartney, with Donovan, George Martin and the London Welsh Choir among those playing) reached 3 in the UK and 28 in the US. "Goodbye", by Lennon and McCartney, followed on March 26, 1969 and reached 2 in the UK. She was second behind Dana at Eurovision in Amsterdam on March 21, 1970, with "Knock, Knock Who's There?". She left Apple in March 1972, and later sang backing vocals on David Bowie's "Sound and Vision" and a wordless vocal in Vangelis's Blade Runner music. Her own label, Mary Hopkin Music, was founded in 2005 to release her archive of master tapes, beginning with Live at the Royal Festival Hall 1972.
Earth Song/Ocean Song
Her second album, Earth Song/Ocean Song, was released on October 1, 1971 (the official discography page says 1972; every other source says 1971), produced and string-arranged by Tony Visconti at AIR Studios in London in May and June 1971. She had stopped working with McCartney in 1969 and felt sidelined under the producer Mickie Most; she had admired the sparse sound of the Strawbs' Dragonfly and asked for its producer. Visconti proposed an acoustic, string-accented album with Dave Cousins, Ralph McTell and Danny Thompson, and chose from about 200 songs. Ralph McTell played guitar and twelve-string, Cousins guitar and banjo, Thompson double bass, and the Pop Arts String Quartet strings. Ken Scott mixed it.
The album did not sell: it reached only Bubbling Under 204 in the US and missed the UK chart, and she said it fizzled out because she was in summer shows and could not promote it. She later called it one I could play today without embarrassment, and her most satisfying Apple album. AllMusic gave it four stars and Christgau B-plus, and Record Mirror called it a gorgeous album which you would do well to possess. A 2010 remaster added three bonus tracks.
Albums
- Earth Song/Ocean Song 1971 · Apple
Her second album: ten songs, mostly by folk writers, in sparse acoustic settings.
Songs
- Silver Birch and Weeping Willow Earth Song/Ocean Song · 1971
A Ralph McTell song from My Side of Your Window (1969), the third track of Hopkin's second album.
Sources
- Mary Hopkin, Wikipedia
- Earth Song/Ocean Song, Wikipedia
- Mary Hopkin: official biography, maryhopkin.com
- Mary Hopkin, The Paul McCartney Project