Scottish folk musician, Bert Jansch, one of the most influential and revered acoustic guitar players in the world, has died from cancer at the age of 67.

Jansch passed away in the early hours of October 5 at a hospice in Hampstead, north London. Though he had been ill for some time, Jansch continued to tour and perform, most recently appearing at Glastonbury earlier this year.

Born in Glasgow in 1943, Jansch was a leading figure in sixties folk music, releasing his first album, the self-titled, Bert Jansch, in 1965, which has been hailed as one of the greatest folk albums ever recorded. Jansch’s influence as a musician has streched across several musical genres and generations, from Paul Simon to Graham Coxon.

The Smiths’ guitarist Johnny Marr has said that “You hear him in Nick Drake, Pete Townshend, Donovan, The Beatles, Jimmy Page and Neil Young.”

While Neil Young called Jansch “As much of a great guitar player as Jimi Hendrix.”

Between 1967 and 1973, Jansch co-founder and guitarist with the legendary folk group Pentangle, playing alongside John Renbourn, Jacqui McShee, Danny Thompson and Terry Cox. Pentangle were known for their innovative mix of folk, rock and jazz, as seen through their seminal albums, The Pentangle, Sweet Child and Basket of Light. Their biggest hit single was “Light Flight”, which was used as the theme to the hit TV series Take Three Girls.

In 2007, Pentangle received a Life-time Achievement Award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, where producer John Leonard said

“Pentangle were one of the most influential groups of the late 20th century and it would be wrong for the awards not to recognise what an impact they had on the music scene.”

Jansch continued to record, tour (supporting Neil Young in 2010) and producing solo material, which led to a major resurgence in his popularity over the past decade. His most recent album Black Swan was released in 2006, of which All Music said:

For the past ten years Jansch has been undergoing a creative renaissance akin to Bob Dylan’s and people are slowly but surely finding what he has on offer. Black Swan proves that the guitarist and songwriter has a bounty at his disposal. He is writing and recording music that is profound, funny, topical, worldly, and ultimately, necessary.

R.I.P. Bert Jansch 1943-2011
 

Pentangle - “Light Flight”
 

 
I first heard the baroque folk group Pentangle’s song Light Flight on the British equivalent to TV Toons, a sprawling 2 CD set of 60s and early 70s television themes with Diana Rigg as Emma Peel on the cover. Because the songs were all so short, there were about 50 per CD, but one song stood out among them and it was the Pentangle track. The other day I stumbled across a clip of the group playing the song in front of a studio audience and I also found a clip of the show Light Flight was the theme for, a series called Take Three Girls, a 1969 BBC drama that followed the lives of three young women living together in a flat in London. It was the first series to be broadcast in color on the BBC. From the looks of things here, this appears to be a swinging 60s antecedent to Sex and the City. I’d really love to see this! It says on Wikipedia that of the 26 episodes all but ten of them are thought lost.

Does anyone out there have a copy? It doesn’t hurt to ask…