AUSSIE BLUES #7
Margret RoadKnight - Decade '75-'84 (Festival Records FEST601015)
01. Living In The Land Of Oz
02. Girls In Our Town
03. Minuet I & II
04. Love Tastes Like Strawberries
05. House In Central Park
06. Ballad Of Dancing Doreen
07. Did Jesus Have A Baby Sister
08. Two Ways
09. Ice
10. Never Quite Catching The Tune
11. Prepare Your Bed For Sleeping
12. Winter In America
13. Another Spring
14. In The Heat Of The Night
15. Cakewalk Into Town
16. Sweet Misery
17. Raw Deal
18. I Ain't Never Heard You Play The Blues
19. Misery Blues
20. Young Girl Blues
21. Masculine Women, Feminine Men
22. All Blues
23. Ain't Gonna Play No Second Fiddle
24. Tears Their Toll Can Take
25. I'll Be Gone
26. The Moment
Tracks 2-6, 26 previously released on "Margret Roadknight".
Tracks 7-16, 17, 25 previously released on "Out Of Fashion, Never Out Of Style".
Tracks 19-23 previously released on "Ice".
Tracks 1, 17, 24 first appeared on album on the previous compilation, "Living In The Land Of Oz".
Margret RoadKnight is an Australian singer-guitarist. In a career spanning more than five decades, she has sung in a wide variety of styles including blues, jazz, gospel, cabaret, and folk.
Margret RoadKnight was born in July 1943 in Melbourne. She had no formal singing lessons and her earliest inspirations were Harry Belafonte, Odetta and Nina Simone. Her first performance was on Mother's Day, May 1963 at the Emerald Hill Theatre. RoadKnight replaced Judith Durham (who was joining rising folk quartet The Seekers) as lead singer of the trad jazz band Frank Traynor's Jazz Preachers.
In the 1960s and 1970s, RoadKnight appeared on numerous television programs including Folkmoot, hosted by Leonard Teale, Dave's Place, hosted by the Kingston Trio's Dave Guard, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's national weekly current affairs program, Open-End. RoadKnight's debut album was a live set, People Get Ready (November 1973), which was recorded at Frank Traynor's Folk Club. Her backing band for the night were Ian Clarke on drums and percussion; Martin Doley on guitars and backing vocals; Peter Doley on flute, kazoo, maracas and backing vocals; Peter Howell on bass guitar; and Bob Vinnard on piano, organ and backing vocals. According to Australian musicologist, Ian McFarlane, she provided "covers of material by the likes of Curtis Mayfield, Duke Ellington, Joni Mitchell and Malvina Reynolds."
RoadKnight and Dutch Tilders issued a split album, Australian Jazz of the 70s Vol 5: The Blues Singers (1974). The Canberra Times's Michael Foster described her as a "big, big-voiced and big-hearted woman" and she "sings with that same gut-tearing intensity but tends to give more prominence to the traditional blues, the songs which blossomed in the dusty earth of the plantations." He felt that "Of all the women I have heard singing the blues Miss Roadknight comes closest to the sound of the great exponents of another generation, Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith." At the end of that year, she received a government travel grant to study contemporary music in the United States.
In January 1976 she released a cover version of Bob Hudson's album track, "Girls in Our Town", as a single, which reached the Kent Music Report Singles Chart Top 40. According to Rachael Lucas of Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Open the track "painted a cruel trajectory for teenage girls living in country towns; teenage school drop outs, lonely cashiers and factory workers, with nothing to keep them entertained but vanity and promiscuity." RoadKnight included the single on her third album, Margret RoadKnight, which was issued in October 1976. It appeared on the Infinity label via Festival Records.
From August 1977 the singer travelled and performed across Europe and the US for six months. Her fourth album, Ice, appeared in 1978. Also in that year she issued "Raw Deal" as a non-album single, the theme song for a feature film of the same name from the previous year.
In 1980 RoadKnight and two friends formed the promotional group Honky-Tonk Angels (which also became the name of her record label) to mount the first Australian solo tour by the acclaimed American singer-songwriter and slide guitarist Ellen McIlwaine, who toured Australian capital cities in November 1980 (with RoadKnight as the support act) to great critical acclaim.
Her next album, Out of Fashion... Not Out of Style (1981) included another single, "I'll Be Gone". The album was co-produced by RoadKnight with Warren Barnett. Her backing group were Judy Bailey on keyboards; Bob Hudson on harmonica; Sandy Kogan on Jew's harp and washboard; Graham Lowndes on vocals and acoustic guitar; Ellen McIllwaine on vocals, slide guitar and organ; Steve Murphy on guitar; Chris Qua on bass guitar and Willie Qua on drums.
RoadKnight's first compilation album, Living in the Land of Oz, appeared in 1984. During 1984 RoadKnight also acted as promoter for the second Australian tour by Ellen Mcilwaine.
In February 1987 she was a member of Je Ne Sais Choir, along with Jarnie Birmingham, Mara Kiek and Moya Simpson. That choir supported Frankie Armstrong's tour of Australia. Also in 1987 and 1988 RoadKnight, as well as performing, was the musical director of Deep Bells Ring, a musical theatre presentation of Paul Robeson's songs and biography.
By October 1993 Je Ne Sais Choir were renamed as Girls in Your Town and they undertook their own tour, as a cappella quartet singing songs of the '50s and '60s along with gospel, jazz, drinking, and barbershop songs and African chants.
Now in her 80s Margret RoadKnight is currently living in Melbourne and although retired from the music business she still occasionally performs.
