Judy Dyble

Remembering the late former Fairport Convention and Trader Horne vocalist.

When Judy Dyble died on July 12, 2020, the prog world lost one of its shining lights. The ex-Fairport Convention and Trader Horne singer and instrumentalist was loved in prog and folk circles alike, having also collaborated with Robert Fripp, Tim Bowness and, more recently, Big Big Train’s David Longdon. Prog looks back on her life.

Judy Dyble once told me that although she’d left music behind, music kept on trying to find her. This comment was typical of her self-effacing personality, down-playing her contribution to various line-ups and combinations. In discussing her time with Fairport Convention, a pre-King Crimson Giles, Giles & Fripp, the slow-burning cultish success of Trader Horne or the late flowering of her solo career from the 00s, Judy was always very generous about her collaborators past and present, frequently giving the impression that she couldn’t quite understand why all these people wanted her to work with them. Her self-deprecating instincts aside, people wanted to work with Judy primarily for her beautiful voice with its gorgeously precise diction: shimmering purity threaded with a hint of vulnerability. Through her poems, lyrics, and her beloved autoharp, she captured something that was quintessentially English, partly romantic, partly pastoral, and an ineffable quality that was suffused with a lightness of touch and a warm generosity of spirit. She was a talented musician who had lived and worked through a scene. Her worth and importance still resonate with artists and listeners today, securing Judy’s active participation that might have been seen as a way of making a vicarious connection to that original burst of creative energy.

Perhaps most importantly, it was simply the opportunity to be in the company of someone who seemed to glow with happiness. Not gregarious exactly, although she could be that in the right place and time, but someone who always wanted to see the best in things and could be depended on to speak sense and clarity.

Judy was a luminous presence on Fairport Convention’s 1968 self-titled debut, her voice providing a soaring counterpoint to the West Coast psychtinged twang that informed their sound. Their version of Joni Mitchell’s Chelsea Morning brings forth a surging, revved-up energy to the song with Judy’s giddy vocal netting the whirling excitement of the times.

Her departure from the band to make way for Sandy Denny was a blow to Judy’s confidence, something that knocked her off balance for a while but she held no enmity toward the new vocalist, recognising her talent and the impact Denny would make, and this speaks to Judy’s other quality: resilience.

Picking herself up, she and then-boyfriend

Ian McDonald fell into the orbit of Giles, Giles & Fripp. Her recording of the McDonald and Peter Sinfield penned I Talk To The Wind in 1968 is a true gem. Although the song would be taken up by King Crimson for their 1969 debut, the version recorded the previous year is, for many fans, a definitive reading.

With no space for Judy in the formation of King Crimson, she paired with ex-Them member Jackie McAuley to become Trader Horne. The duo produced just one album, Morning Way, in 1970. While clearly of its time, there remains an eternal charm to its whimsical interludes and softly delivered vocals. Somewhat overlooked on its release, the album’s reputation as a ‘lost’ classic has grown and it’s since been recognised as an important record. It was also one that Dyble and McAuley were delighted to be reunited with for Morning Way’s 45th anniversary celebration in 2015.

A significant part of Dyble’s life and times was her partnership and marriage in 1971 to DJ and music journalist, Simon Stable. Although she stopped performing, her connection with the industry continued in part after she helped co-found a tape duplicating firm, Somewhere Else, with Stable. They ran the business together until Stable’s death in 1994. “He always liked to go around saying he was the man from Somewhere Else,” she told me.

The couple also took in lodgers at their house, which included drummer Ian Wallace and, for the time around the recording of King Crimson’s Islands, Robert Fripp. “He moved into our flat, filled up the fridge with melons, and told us off for using coloured toilet paper,” she once told me.

Judy also revealed that Fripp would occasionally join them in a card game called Spite And Malice. “It’s a bit like double-handed Patience. You can really throw your opposition by fouling their next move. Robert was really very good at it – he was vicious and would really knock you off the board. He was very private but his eyes would light up when you’d say, ‘Spite And Malice?’”

In March 1997, she attended the Epitaph playback celebrating the original KC line-up and was reunited with Ian McDonald and others from the period. She mentioned to McDonald that she had received an offer to play with Fairport Convention at their Cropredy Festival in August. It was to be the first time since she’d parted company with the band nearly 30 years previously. “I was unsure about doing it after so long but Ian said to me, ‘You’ve got to do it!’ And he even rang me from New York afterwards to tell me to do it. But if I hadn’t have gone to that playback and talked to the people there I’m not sure I would have done the Fairport thing again.”

That appearance with Fairport marked the beginning of a return to music for Dyble that continued into the 2010s. The delicate, mellifluous strains of Judy’s songs and vocals can be followed like some elusive ley line burrowing through sometimes tangential discographies that include progressive rock, folk, trance, ambient, electronica, indie pop, the Canterbury Scene, post-rock, and acid jazz. Her solo albums Enchanted Garden, Spindle and The Whorl – all recorded with producer Marc Swordfish – saw her growing in confidence, displaying her openness and ability to lend her sound to diverse settings. Her 2009 release, Talking With Strangers, was perhaps a major statement of arrival from an artist who had been seriously underrated but was now just getting into her stride. On a personal note, I was surprised but thrilled when Judy got in touch to ask if she could use one of my photographs of a sunrise in my hometown of Whitley Bay for one side of the picture disc she was releasing with Tim Bowness and Alistair Murphy in 2010. Like many others before me, I was thrilled simply to have a small connection to her work.

Aside from enjoying partnerships and TV appearances with Bowness, in producer and arranger Alistair Murphy, Judy had found someone who really knew how to get the best from her as a writer and performer. Flow And Change from 2013 and 2018’s

Earth Is Sleeping provided yet more proof of her abilities to bring grace and refinement to superior material. Reading Dyble’s 2016 autobiography, An Accidental Musician, one really got a sense of the person who took chances, never gave in to bitterness and had triumphed over significant adversity and personal setbacks. Judy was nothing if not an optimist, always looking for the best in people and looking out for others. Simply put, as any of her friends and admirers will tell you, she was a joy to be with.

Days before her death, there was a frisson of excitement at the announcement that she would be releasing a new album with Big Big Train’s David Longdon, Between A Breath And A Breath. That recording, like those before it, will now serve as a tribute to her many talents. She may have finally left music, but let’s be thankful it never left her. She has given us so much to savour and celebrate.

Between A Breath And A Breath is due out on English Electric on September 25.

“She captured something

quintessentially English,

partly romantic,

partly pastoral.”