19 Rupert Street

Recorded at a friend’s house in Glasgow in 1967, the songs on 19 Rupert Street show that by age 19, Sandy Denny had an innate and utterly natural mastery of the British folk idiom. The house belonged to Scottish folk singer Alex Campbell and his girlfriend Patsy, who accompany Denny on several songs. (Thankfully, Carston Linde, a visiting folk fan from Denmark, was there with a tape recorder.) The performances are stunning in the way that only private home recordings can be. Much like the home recordings of Nick Drake—made at the same time under very similar circumstances—these songs highlight a compulsory love of American folk and blues, but they truly start to glow on traditional English and Irish ballads like “The Leaves of Life,” “Balulalow,” and “She Moves Through the Fair.” Denny’s voice shines in a way that makes everything else in the room disappear. Like Drake (who also played songs by Jackson C. Frank, Denny’s onetime lover), Denny has a presence that's timeless but also profoundly personal. Her hurt might have echoed through past centuries, but it arose directly from her heart’s deepest drawer.