Notwithstanding one or two isolated exceptions, it wasn't until
the mid-Sixties that independent female voices really began to be
heard within the music industry. The feminist movement naturally
coincided with the first signs of genuine musical emancipation.
In North America, Joan Baez and Buffy Sainte-Marie emerged
through the folk clubs, coffee-houses and college campuses to
inspire a generation of wannabe female singers and musicians with
their strong, independent mentality and social compassion, while
the British scene's combination of folk song revival and the
Beatles-led pop explosion saw record company deals for a new
generation of pop-folkies including Marianne Faithfull, Dana
Gillespie and Vashti Bunyan. Within a year or two, the burgeoning
counter-culture saw the arrival of psychedelia and folk-rock as
the likes of Pentangle and (in the US) the Linda Ronstadt-fronted
Stone Poneys emerged from the clubs and into the charts. But in
America at least, burnout soon set in, and the era's excesses
duly gave way to a quieter, more reflective musical and lyrical
style. The LA rock and folk communities decamped to Laurel
Canyon, in the Hollywood Hills region of the Santa Monica
ains, to chill out in bucolic, soul-searching introspection.
With Sixties stalwart Jackie DeShannon's 1968 album Laurel Canyon
leading the way, workers from the hit song factories of the
publishing companies joined the dyed-in-the-wool folkies in a new
movement of singer/songwriters that reached its zenith in 1971
with the release of seminal albums like Joni Mitchell's Blue and
Brill Building refugee Carole King's multimillion-selling
Tapestry. In the last two or three years of the decade, the
demarcation lines in British music had become similarly blurred,
with amplified rock bands becoming attracted to the more pastoral
strains of the folk idiom, and traditional folk club performers
developing an affinity with the underground. Folk clubs evolved
into Arts Labs, and the burgeoning college/university circuit
provided equal rtunity for heavy rock bands, electric
folk-rock acts and the introspective acoustic singer/songwriter.
Suddenly, the scene was awash with female performers looking to
become the British answer to Joni Mitchell, a huge influence on
the scene ever since exiled American record producer Joe Boyd had
circulated Joni's songs amongst British musicians in late 1967.
Mitchell quickly became established amongst aspirant performers
as the singer/songwriter template. Over the course of four hours
and sixty tracks, Milk Of The Tree focuses on the music made in
the late Sixties and early Seventies in both Britain and North
America by either female solo artists or acts with featured
female vocalists. Along the way, we encounter San Franciscan
psychedelia, LA folk rock, Swinging London pop-folk, electric
folk, progressive folk and even folk club folk as well as (of
course) a plethora of singer- songwriters (including various
ladies of the Canyon) from the movement's golden age. As well as
featuring most of the leading figures from both sides of the
Atlantic, Milk Of The Tree includes many performers who received
little attention at the time but who now have a cult reputation
amongst collectors. A significant number of tracks were
unreleased at the time, while the set also includes the
first-ever appearance by pioneering female rock duo Emily Muff,
two American girls who were based in England during the period in
question but failed to land a contract. With a 44-page
booklet crammed with rare photos and details of the various acts
featured, the clambox-housed Milk Of The Tree is not only a
fascinating social document but, we hope, a hugely entertaining
snap of a particular time, place and frame of mind that
produced some enduring, spellbinding music.