Canterbury Fair issued only scant recordings amid the late 1960s, yet the Fresno-formed group captured extensive sessions—much of which surfaced on CD roughly thirty years afterward—whose classical leanings and lack of a bass player set the music apart from typical California psychedelia. Beginning with a female singer in the lineup, the ensemble later stabilized as a trio of keyboardist John Hollingsworth, brother Philip Hollingsworth on bass, and drummer James Holley, who was eventually succeeded by Sean Corsaro. The Hollingsworth siblings supplied the original songs, allowing the band to merge the brooding, heavy-rock textures then in vogue within late-’60s psychedelia with Baroque keyboard flourishes reminiscent of similarly inclined acts such as the Mandrake Memorial and Ars Nova. Despite regular performances throughout San Francisco during those years, the group never secured label interest and continued until 1980. Sundazed finally issued a 1999 CD drawn chiefly from previously unheard 1967–1969 tapes, appending the A-side of the band’s late-’60s single “Song on a May Morning.”
