American folk singer who made her name in Britain
Peter Durward Harris | Leicester England | 12/14/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Born and raised in America, Julie Felix had a very international pedigree, mixing Mexican, Welsh and Native American bloodlines. Julie set off for Europe with her guitar, initially to Greece, but eventually ending up in London, where she eventually secured a recording contract. This compilation contains all the tracks from her first three albums, somewhat unimaginatively titled Julie Felix, The second album and The third album.
The first album, mainly if not entirely comprising covers, mixed traditional folk songs with more recent songs including four of Woody Guthrie's and two of Bob Dylan's. At the time, the folk boom had reached its peak in America, but many of the leading practitioners weren't particularly well known in Britain, so it didn't matter. Julie decided to look for less obvious material and found some on the British folk music circuit. One of these songs (The road makers) is about the destruction caused by the building of a new by-pass. Of course, there are always two sides to stories like this, because by-passes cost a lot of money and aren't built just to annoy people, but the song does illustrate the strong feelings that are aroused. Despite the inclusion of some British songs, covers of North American songs occupy most of the album, notably two by Ian Tyson including Someday soon and two by Tom Paxton including Last thing on my mind.
Julie left Decca after releasing those two albums, but she'd left enough material for a third album. Julie says they were out-takes from the first two albums. She tried but failed to prevent the original release of the third album, but I don't think that she had anything to be ashamed or embarrassed about. Among the songs here are two more Tom Paxton covers (What did you learn in school today?, Going to the zoo) and they are among the highlights of the third album. The former earned Julie a regular spot on David Frost's TV show (The Frost report) while the latter became the song for which Julie is best remembered. There are plenty of other great songs here, including The fox and the goose (a traditional folk song) and ending with Julie's own (autobiographical?) song, I travelled all over this world.
If you enjoy the music of Joan Baez, you'll surely enjoy the music of Julie Felix. I wonder what would have happened if Julie had stayed in America. She could have been a bigger star than she actually became in Britain, or she might have been ignored because there was so much other talent around. As it was, Julie raised the profile of folk music in Britain at least for a while."
Track Listings (22) - Disc #1
