Hello and welcome to Sodajaker on songwriting. I'm Brian, accompanied as always by Simon, and joining us for our 299th episode is a celebrated British singer-songwriter, musician and poet.

As this arrives in your podcast feeds, he's just released a new two-disc best-of compilation album, a personally curated selection from an exquisite songbook spanning

three decades. It's a remarkable collection of tracks from a singular artist, and we're very

honoured to welcome that artist, the wonderful Labby Sifery, to the show. Labby was born in Hammersmith, London

in 1945, to an English Barbadian mother and a Nigerian father. The fourth of five brothers,

he grew up first in Notting Hill, then moved with his family to Hampstead. He received his

early musical education via his elder brother Colley's record collection, where he discovered blues

and jazz artists like Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, Thelonious Monk, Ella Fitzgerald and Wes Montgomery. However, it was while listening to one of his dad's Frank Sinatra LPs that 11-year-old Labby stumbled upon old blue-eyes spine-tingling rendition of one for my baby and one more for the road. struck not only by its sound but also its lyrical sentiment, he became obsessed with the record, played it over and over for weeks,

and became convinced his Futulean music. He picked up the guitar in his mid-teens, took classes at the

Eric Gilda School of Music in Soho, and gigged around London, including in the houseband of the

jazz club Annie's Room in Cobb and Garden. He was also writing his own songs, but it was actually

in late 60s Amsterdam, not London,

that he first performed his own material. It was while he was in the Netherlands that his demo tape

found its way to Australian manager Peter Gormley, who swiftly signed him to his own festival

international label. After a distribution deal with Pye Records was secured, Labby released a string

of beautifully crafted albums during

the first half of the 70s, including his self-titled 1970 debut, 1971's The Singer and the Song,

1973s for the Children, and 1975s Remember My Song. In spite of this stunning creative hot streak,

easily de-equal of any other great artist of the time,

and subsequent covers of his material by bands like Madness,

by the 80s our guest had pretty much withdrawn from the music business.

It was midway through that decade that he was encouraged by China Records Derek Green

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