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Davy Graham has never really got the attention he deserves. He developed the style of guitar playing picked up by the likes of Bert Jansch, Nick Drake, John Renbourn and even Jimmy Page’s acoustic outings. But a lot of his stuff was a little too out-there for the early sixties with heavy Indian influence and deep jazz experiments that wouldn’t take off until the latter half of the 60s. Added to that, his decades spent in Syd Barret like solitude meant he never had much commercial success.
But his tune Angi was immediately accessible and became the must-play piece for the aspiring guitarists of the 60s folk revival. It’s been covered by pretty much everyone, almost always with a different spelling, Bert Jansch recorded it as Angie and later by Simon and Garfunkel as Anji. I’ve tried arranging it for ukulele in the past and could never get it right. But with him passing away in December I reapplied myself to the task and got an arrangement that I’m happy with.
My arrangement is heavily based on Bert Jansch’s and is quick tricky to play. In the fingerpicking sections I’m usually coving the A string with my middle finger, E string with my index finger and G and C strings. There are a few places where I switch to one finger per string (such as bar 6).
I was busking it rather than strictly following the tab for the MP3 so it does differ slightly from the arrangement in the tab. But you get the idea.
Wow! I really didn’t expect this song over here. I bought the Jansch record on which this song appears and listened to it on a loop for about a month.
Looks like a challenge, but one I’m real happy to take on.
Thanks for sharing your hard work!!!
You’re my new hero
-Vincent