Dave Swarbrick

David Cyril Eric Swarbrick (5 April 1941 – 3 June 2016) was an English traditional folk musician and songwriter who primarily played the violin. He was one of the most highly regarded musicians produced by the second British folk revival, contributing to some of the most important groups and projects of the 1960s, and he became a much sought-after session musician, which led him throughout his career to work with many of the major figures in folk and folk rock music.

A member of Fairport Convention from 1969, he assisted on their influential album Liege & Lief (1969) which is credited with initiating the British folk rock movement. This, and his subsequent career, helped create greater interest in British traditional music and was also influential within mainstream rock. After 1970 he emerged as Fairport Convention's leading figure and guided the band through a series of important albums until their temporary disbandment in 1979. Fairport Convention claimed in 1998 on The Cropredy Box album, that his style has been copied or developed by almost every British and many world folk violin players who have followed him.

He also played in a series of smaller, acoustic units and engaged in solo projects. He maintained a massive output of recordings and a significant profile and made a major contribution to the interpretation of traditional British music.

Swarbrick was born on 5 April 1941 in Stoneleigh, Surrey. His family moved to Linton, near Grassington, North Yorkshire, where he learned to play the violin. In the late 1940s the family moved to Birmingham, where he attended Birmingham College of Art (now absorbed into the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design at Birmingham City University) in the late 1950s, with the intention of becoming a printer. After winning a talent contest with his skiffle band, playing guitar, he was introduced to Beryl and Roger Marriott, influential local folk musicians. The Marriotts took him under their wing and Beryl, discovering that he had played the violin classically up until the skiffle craze, actively encouraged him to switch back to the fiddle and he joined the Beryl Marriott Ceilidh Band.

He joined the Ian Campbell Folk Group in 1960 and embarked on his recording career, playing on one single, three EPs and seven albums with the group over the next few years. He contributed significantly to the BBC Radio Ballads series on recordings with the three most important figures in the British folk movement of the time A. L. Lloyd, Ewan MacColl, and MacColl's wife Peggy Seeger, as well as part of several collections to which the Ian Campbell Group contributed.

From 1965 he began to work with Martin Carthy, supporting him on his eponymous first album. The association was such a success that the next recording, Second Album (1966), gave them equal billing. They produced another four highly regarded recordings between 1967 and 1968, including Byker Hill (1967), whose innovative arrangements of traditional songs made it one of the most influential folk albums of the decade. Swarbrick also played on albums by Julie Felix, A. L. Lloyd and on the radio ballads, and became perhaps the most highly regarded interpreter of traditional material on the violin and certainly one of the most sought-after session musicians.

In 1967, Swarbrick released his first solo album Rags, Reels and Airs (on Topic Records), with guests Martin Carthy and Diz Disley, which has since become a benchmark for generations of folk fiddlers.^{[citation needed]}

In 1969, Swarbrick was working as a session musician. During recording sessions for the Unhalfbricking album, Fairport Convention's manager, Joe Boyd, hired Swarbrick to play some overdubs on the Richard Thompson-penned track "Cajun Woman". Fairport had decided to play a traditional song "A Sailor's Life", which Swarbrick had previously recorded with Carthy in 1969, and he was asked to contribute fiddle to the session. The result was an eleven-minute mini-epic that appeared on the 1969 album Unhalfbricking and which marked out a new direction for the band.