JOHN CEE STANNARD & BLUES HORIZON – Stone Cold Sober

jcslp2015A cult figure on the British folk circuit in the late 60s, John Cee Stannard was a founder member of Tudor Lodge, whose 1971 LP (released on Vertigo Records) has a reputation of a cult classic. Alongside Stannard, the Lodge included Pentangle’s Danny Thompson on bass and an earlier line-up even included vocalist Linda Peters…who went on to find greater fame as Linda Thompson.

Stannard continued to record as the decades rolled away, but penned surprisingly little himself until finding inspiration in 2011. In 2014, his ‘Bus Stop Blues’, a collection of acoustic based blues tunes recorded with Blues Horizon, found favour upon release with a few blues-oriented websites. The following year, he repeated the same formula on ‘Stone Cold Sober’, an album which so often has an understated style, but also a maturity in its song-craft and a laid back feel, resulting in a record that fuses the blues with Stannard’s folk rock roots and even has an almost country leaning in places.

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