''Folkjokeopus'' is the third album issued by English

folk Folk or Folks may refer to: Sociology *Nation *People * Folklore ** Folk art ** Folk dance ** Folk hero ** Folk music *** Folk metal *** Folk punk *** Folk rock ** Folk religion * Folk taxonomy Arts, entertainment, and media * Folk Plus or Fol ...

/rock singer-songwriter and guitarist Roy Harper. It was produced by

Shel Talmy Sheldon Talmy (born August 11, 1937) is an American record producer, songwriter and arranger, best known for his work in the UK in the 1960s with the Who, the Kinks and many others. Talmy arranged and produced hits such as "You Really Got Me" ...

and was first released in 1969 by

Liberty Records Liberty Records was a record label founded in the United States by chairman Simon Waronker in 1955 with Al Bennett as president and Theodore Keep as chief engineer. It was reactivated in 2001 in the United Kingdom and had two previous revival ...

History

The album is notable for the lengthy track "McGoohan's Blues", which Harper states was "inspired by actor

Patrick McGoohan Patrick Joseph McGoohan (; March 19, 1928 – January 13, 2009) was an Irish-American actor, director, screenwriter, and producer of film and television. Born in the United States to Irish emigrant parents, he was raised in Ireland and Engla ...

's depiction of the establishment rebel in his TV series, ''

The Prisoner ''The Prisoner'' is a 1967 British television series about an unnamed British intelligence agent who is abducted and imprisoned in a mysterious coastal village, where his captors designate him as Number Six and try to find out why he abruptl ...

''". An extended, Dylanesque

strophic form Strophic form – also called verse-repeating form, chorus form, AAA song form, or one-part song form – is a song structure in which all verses or stanzas of the text are sung to the same music. Contrasting song forms include through-composed, w ...

accompanied only by Harper's guitar ("how the sea she roars with laughter/And howls with the dancing wind/To see my two feet standing here/questioning") suddenly segues, after over ten minutes, first into a brief, new and quieter theme and then into a full-band coda. The searing falsetto of "She's the One" makes for one of Harper's most intense and moving recordings as manic guitar-strumming accompanies his scornful upbraiding of an acquaintance for his self-pitying insensitivity to a "wonderful wife" whom the singer sees and apparently loves as "a very beautiful young woman". Like "McGoohan's Blues", this track seems to merge two related but distinct songs. "One for All" was dedicated to

tenor saxophonist The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most commonly used saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B (while th ...

Albert Ayler Albert Ayler (; July 13, 1936 – November 25, 1970) was an American avant-garde jazz saxophonist, singer and composer. After early experience playing R&B and bebop, Ayler began recording music during the free jazz era of the 1960s. Howev ...

, whom Harper had known in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

. It includes a lengthy acoustic guitar solo. "Exercising Some Control" and "Manana" may be numbered among Harper's light-hearted crowd-pleasing songs, while "In the Time of Water" and the

Incredible String Band The Incredible String Band (sometimes abbreviated as ISB) were a Scottish psychedelic folk band formed by Clive Palmer (musician), Clive Palmer, Robin Williamson and Mike Heron in Edinburgh in 1966. The band built a considerable following, esp ...

ish "Composer of Life" are more experimental, the former featuring the sound of water and Harper's sitar. The opening "Sergeant Sunshine" features the voice of Jane Scrivener while other contributing musicians include

Nicky Hopkins Nicholas Christian "Nicky" Hopkins (24 February 1944 – 6 September 1994) was an English pianist and organist. Hopkins performed on many popular and enduring British and American rock music recordings from the 1960s to the 1990s, most notably ...

Ron Geesin Ronald Frederick Geesin (born 17 December 1943) is a Scottish musician, composer and writer known for his unusual creations and novel applications of sound, as well as for his collaborations with Pink Floyd and Roger Waters. Career Ron Geesin ...

, "Russ" on bass guitar and drummer

Clem Cattini Clemente Anselmo Agustino Cattini (born 20 August 1937) is an English rock and roll drummer of the late 1950s and 60s, who was a member of The Tornados before becoming well known for his work as a session musician. He is one of the most prolifi ...

. The American release swaps in two tracks, "Zaney Janey" and "Ballad of Songwriter", for the original UK album's track, "One for All". The album title, along with the title of the Skip Spence record, was borrowed to provide the name of a

Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...

record store,

Oar Folkjokeopus Oar Folkjokeopus (commonly known as Oar Folk) was a Minneapolis record store that operated on the corner of Lyndale Ave and 26th St from 1973 until 2001. The store was considered one of the staples of the Minneapolis rock scene in the 1980s, along ...

Reception

Richie Unterberger Richie Unterberger (born January 19, 1962) is an American author and journalist whose focus is popular music and travel writing. Life and writing Unterberger attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he wrote for the university newspaper '' ...

reviewing for

Allmusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

40 years later noted "influences such as

Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...

Bert Jansch Herbert Jansch (3 November 1943 – 5 October 2011) was a Scottish folk musician and founding member of the band Pentangle. He was born in Glasgow and came to prominence in London in the 1960s as an acoustic guitarist and singer-songwriter ...

Donovan Donovan Phillips Leitch (born 10 May 1946), known mononymously as Donovan, is a Scottish musician, songwriter, and record producer. He developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelic rock and world mus ...

, and possibly

Al Stewart Alastair Ian Stewart (born 5 September 1945) is a Scottish born singer-songwriter and folk-rock musician who rose to prominence as part of the British folk revival in the 1960s and 1970s. He developed a unique style of combining folk-rock so ...

" and praised Harper's "uniformly excellent" guitar work but criticised Folkjokeopus for being "sprawling and unwieldy".

Track listing

All songs written by Roy Harper

Personnel

*Roy Harper – vocals, acoustic guitar *Jane Scrivener – additional vocals *"Russ" – bass guitar *

– piano *

– drums, percussion *

– arrangements ;Technical Personnel *Woody Woodward – art direction *Ray Stevenson – photography

References

{{Authority control Roy Harper (singer) albums 1969 albums Albums produced by Shel Talmy Science Friction albums Liberty Records albums