In 1974, Melody Maker ran a Best Female Singer readers' poll.
It featured Elkie Brooks, Sandy Denny, Shirley Bassey, Olivia Newton John and, at number five, Bridget St John – folk-poet and distinguished guitarist also hailed as "the best lady song-songwriter in the country" by John Peel.
Four decades on, St John remains a cult figure in the folk-rock canon, and her 1972 release Thank You For- is a lost classic. Yet her sonorous vocals and musicianship continue to strike a chord, as evinced at this rare (and reverential) Glasgow show.
St John's unconventional guitar tuning and technique owes a debt to her friend and mentor, John Martyn, who discovered her busking in France in the late 1960s (she paid tribute to him with a wistful rendition of his homecoming psalm, Back To Stay), and to another long-term ally and fingerpicking maverick, Michael Chapman, whose Rabbit Hills she covered.
St John's early material shone the brightest, particularly when she was joined onstage by the sublime National Jazz Trio of Scotland (not a trio, nor strictly "jazz", but rather an evocative pop troupe as helmed by indie maverick Bill Wells). Her wonder-filled aria, Fly High, was gorgeously embellished by the harmonies of NJTOS's Lorna Gilfedder, Kate Sugden and Aby Vulliamy, while Ask Me No Questions (from St John's Peel-produced 1969 debut album of the same name) took on a new life thanks to Vulliamy's viola, Wells's piano and guitar from Teenage Fanclub's Norman Blake.
The climax, however, was an eight-strong rendition of avant-folk epic Lazarus, which included Belle And Sebastian's Stevie Jackson, trumpeter-extraordinaire Robert Henderson, and suggested that St John has discovered her Bad Seeds. More of that please.
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