THE Black Swan Folk Club was quick to add a second night after Martin Carthy's December 4 concert sold out, but now the Wednesday show has done likewise.

The doyen of English folk ballad singers and groundbreaking acoustic and electric guitarist, from Robin Hood's Bay, has been one of the great innovators of this traditional music for five decades, whether in the folk clubs that he has always championed, or on the concert stage, or in his television appearances, such as the Originals documentary on BBC2.

Carthy, a much loved, ever enthusiastic and at times quietly controversial figure in folk circles and beyond, has enjoyed trailblazing musical partnerships with Steeleye Span, Dave Swarbrick, his wife Norma Waterson and daughter Eliza Carthy, Brass Monkey, Blue Murder, The Four Martins with Martin Taylor, Martin Simpson and Juan Martin and The Imagined Village project with Eliza Carthy and Chris Wood.

He has featured on more than 60 albums, received the MBE for services to English folk music in 1998 and his settings of traditional songs with guitar have influenced a generation of artists, from Bob Dylan and Paul Simon onwards, on both sides of the Atlantic.