FOLK legend Martin Carthy introduced himself to a York audience as "the only living person never to have played in Fairport Convention".

The guitar guru and ballad singer extraordinaire has played in many other significant folk ensembles, including Steeleye Span, the Albion Band, the Watersons, Brass Monkey and Waterson: Carthy, in an influential career that has spanned more than 40 years.

Last night in the upstairs room at the Black Swan, Peasholme Green, York, he dipped into his vast repertoire as a solo artist.

Precise guitar playing combined with heartfelt vocals to produce a heady cocktail of vintage traditional music.

There were several tracks from the eagerly-awaited Waiting For Angels, his first solo album for about five years. They included Bonny Woodhall, about a soldier dying on the field of battle; Young Morgan, inspired by the hanging of a popular highwayman; and Famous Flower Of Serving Men, a ten-minute ballad about bullying, child killing, humiliation, shame, redemption and terrible revenge.

Carthy punctuated these tales of blood, sweat and tears with some Morris tunes, displaying tremendous dexterity on guitar.

He also played a couple of more sombre tunes: The Bloody Fields Of Flanders from the First World War; and the brooding MacGregor Of Rora, which Carthy culled from a Scots Guards tune book.

He got Limbo - a song about a debtors prison - from the memory of his daughter, the gifted fiddle player Eliza Carthy, after originally teaching it to her several years previously.

You can't keep a good tune down.

Updated: 11:53 Tuesday, November 09, 2004