Dave Waite

Dave Waite and Marian Segal earned their primary recognition as two-thirds of the little-known early-'70s folk-rock outfit Jade, whose lone album echoed the stylistic direction of Fairport Convention’s initial pair of records featuring Sandy Denny on vocals during the closing years of the 1960s. Before Jade existed, Waite and Segal had already performed together as a folk duo whose repertoire overlapped with the pre-folk-rock phase of Denny’s career, yet drew more heavily from the pop-folk approach associated with groups like the Seekers and, toward the end of their partnership, from the work of Joni Mitchell. Because Segal served as the duo’s principal vocalist and songwriter, producer Jon Miller took notice and supervised several 1969 recordings intended for a prospective Polydor single. At the time, however, no material appeared, since Miller urged the pair toward a stronger rock orientation and connected them with Rod Edwards, who completed the lineup that became Jade. Three of those original Polydor-session tracks eventually surfaced on the 2004 compilation Paper Flowers, a disc that also gathered twenty-two additional previously unheard Waite-Segal performances dating from 1967 to 1970 and captured in studio, home-demo, or radio settings.