Song of the Day: From Annie Briggs to Robert Plant

Little-known Annie Briggs covered by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss--and immortalized by Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson.

It took the latest Robert Plant-Alison Krauss album to introduce me to one of my favorite songs of the past year or so—written by a legendary British trad music influencer who I knew mainly by reputation.

Annie Briggs (who is still living) was a fixture on the Brit folk scene during its ‘60s-70s heyday, writing some songs, “collecting” many others from the deep past, and performing in a spellbinding manner, sometimes with acoustic guitar god Bert Jansch. (Wiki bio here and two-minute video bio here.) A beauty and a free spirit she could not be tied down and had few commercial aspirations, so her albums remained cult items in the U.S. Many here knew her as the close friend of Sandy Denny and subject of her song “The Pond and the Stream.” Or as the inspiration for Richard Thompson’s equally fine song “Beeswing” (also the title of his recent memoir).

The Annie song that really got to me from Plant-Krauss was “Go Your Way My Love.” So below you will find it in that version, and then mesmerizing Annie with Bert Jansch, on record and then a 1993 video clip.

Her pal Sandy Denny (she was born 76 years ago today) here with Fotheringay and her “Pond and the Stream” tribute.

Sandy’s old Fairport bandmate Richard Thompson with his “Beeswing.”

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Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including the bestseller The Tunnels (on escapes under the Berlin Wall), the current The Beginning or the End (on MGM’s atomic bomb movie twisted by the White House and Pentagon), and The Campaign of the Century (on Upton Sinclair’s left-wing race for governor of California), which was recently picked by the Wall St. Journal as one of five greatest books ever about an election. His 2021 film, Atomic Cover-up, drew extraordinary acclaim, and his current one, The First Attack Ads, aired over hundreds of PBS stations this past fall. For nearly all of the 1970s he was the #2 editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. Later he served as longtime editor of Editor & Publisher magazine. He recently co-produced a film about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.