Judy Dyble

For much of her professional life, the singer and composer Judy Dyble was regarded as someone whose involvement with one of Britain’s landmark folk-rock ensembles had been brief yet memorable. At fifty-three, however, she embarked on an unexpectedly productive later phase by stepping forward as a solo artist. In 1967 she joined the pioneering group Fairport Convention and sang on their first album, only to leave the following year. She also worked with the whimsical art-rock outfit Giles, Giles & Fripp and recorded an album alongside the psych-folk pair Trader Horn before withdrawing from music altogether in 1973. Festival reunions with Fairport Convention in 1997 and 2002 encouraged her to issue her debut solo effort, Enchanted Garden, in 2004. From that point she issued a consistent sequence of recordings that fused elements of world music, psychedelia, folk, and electronics; among the most warmly received were 2009’s Talking with Strangers, 2013’s Flow and Change, and 2017’s Summer Dancing, the last of these a joint project with Andy Lewis.

Born in London on 13 February 1949, Dyble studied piano in childhood and learned recorder at school, yet she did not treat music as a serious pursuit until 1963. That year she became acquainted with several students who shared her growing interest in folk, and together they formed Judy & the Folkmen, a short-lived ensemble that gave only a single public performance. One colleague urged her to try the autoharp; after the group disbanded she began visiting folk clubs and occasionally performed there. Through these circles she met Ashley Hutchings, who introduced her to like-minded enthusiasts Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol. In 1967 Hutchings, Thompson, and Nicol established Fairport Convention; when they sought a female singer, Dyble received an invitation to participate. The band’s distinctive blend of American-influenced folk rock and British traditional material soon attracted attention, leading to a recording contract. She appeared on the 1968 single “If I Had a Ribbon Bow” b/w “I (Stomp)” as well as the self-titled debut album. A brief romantic relationship with Thompson ended, after which she was replaced in the lineup by Sandy Denny. Dyble soon connected with musician Ian McDonald, and the pair began performing together. They placed an advertisement in Melody Maker seeking collaborators and received a reply from bassist Peter Giles, who had previously played with his brother Michael Giles on drums and guitarist Robert Fripp in the trio Giles, Giles & Fripp. Dyble joined briefly, and home recordings from this period later surfaced on the archival collection The Brondesbury Tapes. By late 1968 the trio had dissolved, with Fripp and Michael Giles forming King Crimson the next year.

After moving to Notting Hill Gate, where she taped an unreleased version of the Pretty Things’ “Loneliest Person,” Dyble began collaborating with Pete Sears and Jackie McAuley. When Sears departed for a career in the United States, Dyble and McAuley continued as the duo Trader Horn. They secured a deal with Pye Records’ Dawn imprint and released the 1970 album Morning Way. The demands of constant touring proved uncongenial, and the partnership ended. She then joined Lol Coxhill, Steve Miller, and Phil Miller in a short-lived project that performed under the names Dyble, Coxhill & the MB’s and Penguin Dust; aside from a handful of Dutch concerts, the group disbanded almost immediately.

In 1973 Dyble stepped away from music, later working as a librarian and operating a tape-duplicating service. During the 1980s she appeared twice at Fairport Convention’s Cropredy Festival, yet she remained dissatisfied with her performances and approached a 1997 reunion invitation with caution. The event proved far more rewarding than anticipated and drew favorable press coverage. She rejoined the band for another Cropredy appearance in 2002. That same year Marc Swordfish of the electronic group Astralasia invited her to collaborate; two years later the pair completed Enchanted Garden, an album combining world, electronic, and folk elements that marked her first solo release. In 2006 she issued two further albums, Spindle—which featured Robert Fripp—and The Whorl. The British indie-folk band the Conspirators subsequently proposed a joint recording, resulting in the 2008 single “One Sure Thing” b/w “Take Me to Your Leader,” which spent three weeks in the Top Ten of the U.K. Indie Singles chart. Dyble promoted the release with her first non-Fairport live appearances since resuming her career.

The ambitious 2009 album Talking with Strangers, co-produced by Tim Bowness of No-Man and featuring contributions from Robert Fripp, Ian McDonald, Simon Nicol, and Jacqui McShee, followed. To mark its release she headlined at London’s 100 Club, her first performance in the city in over four decades. Work on another project with producer Lee Fletcher and guitarist Markus Reuter began the same year, but creative differences led to its abandonment; the material finally appeared in 2013 as Flow and Change. Also in 2013 she co-wrote three songs with Oliver Kersbergen of Sleepyard, one of which, “Blue Barracuda,” was recorded by the space-rock band Fuxa for their album Dirty D. A concert recording from a Greenwich club appearance was issued in 2014 as Live at WMJazz. In March 2015 she released the limited-edition three-disc anthology Gathering the Threads (Fifty Years of Stuff). That year Morning Way was reissued, and she and Jackie McAuley staged a one-off Trader Horn reunion concert. In 2016 Dyble published the autobiography An Accidental Musician. Despite ongoing health concerns, she performed several times a year with her group the Band of Perfect Strangers. Acid Jazz issued the collaborative album Summer Dancing with Andy Lewis in 2017, and the label released Earth Is Sleeping the following year. Judy Dyble died on 12 July 2020 after a prolonged illness; at the time of her death she was preparing an album in collaboration with David Longdon of Big Big Train.