Chapter 14
The Circularity of British Pop

In the spring of 2017, I visited the School of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh and immersed myself in the Burton Manning tapes. As I listened to a 1966 recording of ‘Pretty Polly,’ sung by Tab Ward accompanying himself on the banjo in Beech Mountain, North Carolina it struck me as being similar to a blues song with the repetition of the opening line, albeit at a snappier pace. Other songs felt truly rooted in Celtic sensibility. There’s a hoedown version of ‘House of the Risin’ Sun’ and a tune called ‘Cumberland Gap’ (‘an old fiddle tune’) that’s so keening and mesmeric it could be a pre-cursor to Teenage Fanclub, with banjo picking that tinkles like a prototype Johnny Marr and plaintive singing that is the ancestor of Morrissey’s melodic drone; with another song titled ‘I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow,’ need I say more.