Fairport Convention - Babbacombe Lee
1971 studio album
Released in November 1971 on Island Records.
Original LP track listing:
1. John’s reflection on his boyhood, his introduction to Miss Keyes and The Glen, his restlessness, and his struggles with his family, finally successful, to join the navy. - 6:19
2. This was the happiest period in his life. All locked set fair for a career until he was stricken with sickness and invalided out of his chosen niche in life. Reluctantly and unhappily he turned to a number of menial occupations and finally returned to the services of Miss Keyes. - 10:12
3. Tragedy now strikes hard. The world’s imagination is caught by the brutal senseless[ness] of the apparent criminal who slays his kind old mistress. - 3:57
4. John was hardly more than a bewildered observer at his own trial, not being allowed to say more than a few words. The tides of fate wash him to the condemned cell where he waits three sad weeks for his last night on earth. 7:32
5. When it comes, he cannot sleep, but when he does, a strange, prophetic dream comes to him, and helps him to bear the strain of his next day’s ordeal as scaffold and its crew try in vain three times to take his life. 13:20
2004 CD track listing:
1. The Verdict 0:28
2. Little Did I Think 2:19
3. I Was Sixteen (Part 1) 1:29
4. John My Son 0:44
5. I Was Sixteen (Part 2) 1:17
6. St Ninian’s Isle / Trumpet Hornpipe 1:14
7. Sailor’s Alphabet 5:50
8. John Lee 3:04
9. Newspaper Reading 0:46
10. Breakfast In Mayfair 3:09
11. Trial Song 3:55
12. Cell Song 3:35
13. The Time Is Near 2:31
14. Dream Song 5:24
15. Wake Up John (Hanging Song) 5:25
Bonus tracks some post-2004 CD releases, from a 1974 BBC documentary:
16. Farewell to a Poor Man’s Son - 4:55
17. Breakfast In Mayfair 3:59
