John and Beverley Martyn

Before leaving John Martyn, originally born as Iain David McGeachy, who of course went on to record a series of solo albums in the 1970s, I do want to say a bit about his short-lived duo with his wife.

In January 1969, when the photo for the cover of “You Can All Join In” was taken, John Martyn met singer Beverley Kutner at a concert supporting US singer Jackson Frank (who had been a boyfriend of Sandy Denny) at Chelsea College of Art. Beverley was also a singer on the London folk scene and had been a friend of Paul Simon when the American singer-songwriter had lived in London. After Simon found success with Art Garfunkel, he secured her appearance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. When she met John she was in the process of working on solo material for producer Joe Boyd’s Witchseason Productions and was looking for musicians to work with. She later recounted “He was individual, rakish, all curly hair and smiles. He seemed like the ideal guy to help me out, plus of course it helped that I fancied him like mad.” John and Beverley soon became romantically involved and married in 1969. I do not know how, when or why that marriage ended, but the singing partnership ended after August 1970.

I acknowledge my indebtedness for much of the above to the copious notes in the CD inserts of the two albums by the duo, which were both released in 1970, although the first was recorded on 1969.

I only became aware of the duo when I bought the Double LP Island 1970 sampler “Bumpers”, a copy of which I briefly owned. I swapped it for three Rolling Stones singles at Violet Mays in Sheffield in 1971. However, by then I knew every track on the sampler intimately, including “Go Out And Get It” from the LP “Stormbringer” by John And Beverley [!] Martyn.

In the mid 1970s i frequented a second hand record shop in Sheffield called “Rare & Racy”, and came across a copy of this LP in the racks.

So I bought it, and it is a great record. I do not know if it was ever available on a pink label, though the probability is that it was, but the copy I got was on the palm tree label: