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Karl was a guitar genius
• REGARDING the quote attributed to me in Karl Dallas’s obituary on Davey Graham (The strings fall silent as a guitar legend passes on, January 18), it didn’t reflect the breath of my appreciation of a man I considered a personal friend.
I had pointed out that he was a guitar genius, a travelling troubadour with a repertoire of world music. He was a complex man, a polymath who spoke several languages and while often wilful, witty and eccentric, exacerbated by drugs and depression, could become irascible, annoying, but would always win you with his charismatic charm.
One example of his generosity was his ability to entertain people wherever he went, and, as I said, singing lullabies for my daughter at the foot of our stairs. He also balladed my mother on one of her rare visits to London.
I first met him in 1964 and we didn’t meet up again until I moved in 10 doors away in Lyme St in 1975 and was honoured to collaborate with him at Morning Star events in the 1970s and 1980s and in my last installation at the Novas Gallery in Parkway in 2006.
I wrote the following poem on hearing the sad news:
Davey, guitar genius & traveling troubador,
Thank you for your eccentric wilful, witty wisdom (in strange tongues) & wild (exotic) imagination will be missed,
Especially the exchanges along our street, our homes like book-koob ends
Complementary contrasts in hats & caps,
A man of music & the bloke with the pictures
JEFF SAWTELL
NW1
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