English Drinking Songs – A.L. Lloyd

Description

First released in 1961, these songs, sung by Bert Lloyd, are drinking songs in the best sense of the phrase; songs from the great British pub tradition. At the “Eel’s Foot” pub on the gusty East coast of England, on a Saturday night, the farm-workers bring their songs and match them against the songs of the sailors and cattle-dealers and travelling tinsmiths. These are drinking songs, but not in the strict sense, not songs merely in praise of liquor, but songs that tell a bit of a story: “Songs as sly as a tinker’s wink, as rough as a ploughman’s hand, songs as sung and social as the Eel’s Foot itself, with the wind and the rain outside and the firelight and the music within.” – from the sleeve notes by A.L.Lloyd.