Sandy Denny & The Strawbs - All Our Own Work: The Complete Sessions is now available legitimately on CD from Witchwood Media, with bonus tracks and unreleased material. Please see Complete Sessions page.
The tapes made in Copenhagen with Sandy Denny first saw the light of day as a budget label Pickwick release, spurred on by the success of "Part Of The Union". They stood up very well indeed nonetheless - a valiant first recording effort for any band. Apparently the first song they cut was the first track "On My Way": it was resuscitated as a Stones-style rocker for the 2000 UK Tour, and has featured since as a "rocked-up acoustic number" in the acoustic repertoire: what goes around, comes around!
Joe Boyd later re-released a slightly different selection of the tapes on CD (designed to emphasise Sandy Denny's contribution, and with additional strings (recorded at the time, but not included in the mix used for All Our Own Work) as Sandy And The Strawbs on his Hannibal label.
The album has been bootlegged by a Spanish company Rockeria Estrella, based in Denia, near Alicante in Spain. See All Our Own Work bootleg. Bonus tracks come from Sandy And The Strawbs.
Dave Cousins (vcls, gtrs)
Tony Hooper (vcls, gtrs)
Ron Chesterman (dbl bs)
Sandy Denny (vcls, gtr)
Ken Gudmand (drms)
Cy Nicklin (sitar)
NOTE: a number of these tracks were recorded at different times - some of the above players played on the Copenhagen sessions, but may not have played on all tracks.
Track listing
Vinyl album (UK): SHM 813 (Pickwick, 1973) - DELETED. Cover is cheap and garish, with photos of the band inside the first "S" of Strawbs. Back cover features black and white shot of the intended cover - the band sitting round admiring chalk caricatures of the band (the chalk drawing idea resurfaced on Sandy's first album with Fairport - What We Did On Our Holidays - and the drawings were almost certainly done by Sandy).
Produced by Gustav Winkler
Co-ordination Karl Emil Knudsen
Engineer Ivar Rosenberg
Recorded in Copenhagen, August 1968
Sleeve design
Caricatures Sandy Denny
Other information.
The sleeve includes a statement that "The original 1968 recordings of The Strawbs featuring Sandy Denny"
Dave Cousins recalls in 1973:-
If you like this is the missing link – the first recordings any of us ever made. We were playing in Tivoli for a couple of weeks that Summer – In Thoger Olesen's Visevers Hus".
"Would you like to make an LP?" asked the funny man with the beetle sun glasses and big bushy beard.
"Great!"
Sandy, I remember , slept on the couch that big Bill Broonzy had slept on ; Ron fell backwards off the stage with a bottle of 'elephant' in his hand; I hit Tony under the ear with my banjo, but then he fancied Paul Bach's fifteen year old sister. Gustav smiled and got the best possible sounds out of the simplest of two track recording equipment. Karl said it all cost too much, and took far too long – but smiled in the end. In fact we all smiled! Ah, those were the days!
UK Chart: not placed
US Chart: not released