Editorials the more or less complete output, now in chronological order so, when it refes to infomation 'below', it actually means 'above'!

MT with Sound!!

Readers who want to be able to hear the sound clips must have a computer with a sound card and speakers, obviously - but beyond that, all you need to do is to install the FREE Real Audio Player (make sure you're using version 3), available from several magazine cover discs these days - for Mac's too, or it can be downloaded from:

Then, when you see a button like this just click on it.  Your browser will run up the Real Audio player and play you a sound clip.  You can play it again as many times as you want, and adjust the volume too.  This clip is of a group of Sardinian 'á tenores' singers from that Chant du Monde CD (LDX 274760) I'm always going on about - hope you like it.

Sadly, there was a down-side.  Even the Real Audio sound files are pretty large and it was obvious that before long my AOL web site would be full up.  We really needed to get ourselves a proper site of our own, with plenty of space, a dedicated phone line, maybe our own domain name ...

You may have heard that we tried all the obvious sources of funding, but without success.  Either we are not considered to work in the appropriate 'local' area, or we don't want enough money!  So - we were reduced to asking everybody we could think of with a serious interest in traditional music whether they could come up with a donation, however small, to help with the good work.  Astonishingly, almost £1000 materialised within a month!

Then, the good people at U-Net Ltd agreed to provide us with a 30Mb site for the price of a 5Mb one and, in September, the prescribed nine months after MT's inception, this new site at mustrad.org.uk was born.

I would personally like to thank those 'Friends of Musical Traditions' who have already made generous donations.

Rod Stradling - January 1998

We must appologise to readers that the new CD release - advertised a being available "early in the New Year" - has taken so long to appear.  Everything was ready to roll in February, and then Paul Marsh's CD Writer broke down and has taken ages to get repaired.  It was replaced by a new one ... which failed after being used twice!  He's now trying to get his money back, to buy a different make.

However, substitute "in the first half of the New Year", and ...

Bob Hart - A Broadside - Double CD should be on sale in May

New technology now allows a small organisation like ours to create CDs - one at a time! - via computer, and opens up a whole new vista of potential releases of field recordings, or of re-issues of 78rpm material, for which the size of the market would have made such enterprises impossible only a year or so ago.

Our first release is a double CD of Suffolk singer Bob Hart - of whom the great Cyril Poacher once said:

... he's the best singer I've ever heard, myself - and I reckon I can sing - but I'd give him preference to me, yes I would.  I reckon he can sing because it ... it come and he don't raise a hair, it just come like that.  He's the best singer I ever heard yet ... I mean it.

... the nature of Bob's performance, which scarcely utilises any dramatic gesturing or facially expressive devices, but relies on his singing the song in a highly melodic, rhythmic and straightforward manner ... Bob's musicianship is demonstrated: he has perfect breath control, vivacious rhythm and a fluent handling of the narrative.  The audience is enthusiastic and it is clear that, because of his formal control over and identification with the song, he does not need extra-vocal devices.

This production is conceived with the intention of bringing music which would probably never achieve a commercial publication to the small audience which values it.  Collectors with recordings of this sort, who would like to see them published in this way, are welcome to contact the magazine to discuss the possibilities.

Work on a possible MT CD 303 is already in progress.

Sales:

Rod Stradling

The 1998 Free Reed Festival

Take a theme - say, free reed instruments.  Contact everyone you know with a music based website, asking for the filenames of everything they have to do with free reeds.  Make a list of a few of the most interesting looking ones and set up links to them.  Send the webmasters a logo and ask them to put it on each of their selected pages, linked back to you.  Suggest that they might like to create a page on their site linking all their free reed pages.  Decide on a starting date for the festival, and advertise it.  Away you go!

That's what RootsWorld editor, Cliff Furnald, did - and MT was one of the sites he asked to participate.  We were very pleased to co-operate, realising that a lot of our new visitors would have never come across us, or the music we love, before, and that some of them would like what they found.

Cliff says that the response has been most encouraging - even some radio stations want to participate!  He also realises that, if this first one is a success, there is no reason why we shouldn't have a fiddle (or anything else) festival next.  The possibilities are almost endless - and very exciting.

So, when you come across one of these logos elsewhere on the site (with a blue border), it will give you access to the rest of the Festival, and the rest of the world.  Who knows what you might find - Chinese sheng music?  South African concertina bands? Finnish classical accordion music?  Japanese punks using melodeons?

Just a brief interjection here, before getting on with the main business.  I strongly urge every reader to have a look at the Paddy Canny review in out Latest Batch.  What a player!  I have never heard a fiddler like him - judge for yourself from this sound clip.

And now - back to the editorial .............

Logo

The result prompted a new look and colour-scheme for the pages concerned.  MT's new 'corporate image' is being used on most of the Festival pages - and I am gradually changing the rest of the site now, having received nothing but congratulatory e-mails from readers.  Thanks very much - it's nice to know you're there!

If Radio 4 can do it, so can we!  But there will be no 'dumbing down', I promise you.

5.6.98

Advertising

Advertisement:

Drongo Records - The World's foremost label for Ethno Celtic Trance, New Age and Jungle - Meaningless hype ....... blah, blah, blah ....... Flashing animated GIF Logo ....... blah, blah, blah ....... more meaningless hype ....... blah, blah, blah .......

Well, we hope that not many of them will be like this - but that will be the format.  The new computer with CD Writer has to be paid for somehow ...

MT to publish book!

Our most recent Article, on Topic Records and the WMA is, in fact, but one chapter of Dr Mike Brocken's PhD thesis on 'The British Folk Revival' seen as part of the wider popular music genre.  The whole work is likely to be published in commercial book form later this year or next, but he has given us permission to publish it here, first, in its original form.  I realise that a few of our readers will feel that there is, perhaps, little more that they wish to know about 'Folk Music' or popular music, and that MT's remit should be restricted to traditional forms.

Nonetheless, I believe that Mike's encyclopaedic work contains a great deal that should be of interest to all of us - any intelligent and well-written work dealing with something which so informs the culture of which we are part (like it or not) must be of interest and value.  I also think that - while I don't agree with all of them - his insights into the sociological and philological aspects of the wider world of music are both fascinating and thought provoking.

We are publishing the ten chapters, foreword and bibliography (including a complete Topic Discography in another month or two), as a complete work - and you can find it in a separate Index via the Articles page.  I'm sure that most of you will find it very worthwhile reading - I hope so, 'cause it didn't half make my fingers ache - 150,000 words!

Just a brief interjection here, before getting on with the main business.  I strongly urge every reader to have a look at the Paddy Canny review in out Latest Batch.  What a player!  I have never heard a fiddler like him - judge for yourself from this sound clip.

And now - back to the editorial .............

Despite all our trials and tribulations ...

Bob Hart - A Broadside - Double CD is now on sale!

New technology now allows a small organisation like ours to create CDs - one at a time! - via computer, and opens up a whole new vista of potential releases of field recordings, or of re-issues of 78rpm material, for which the size of the market would have made such enterprises impossible only a year or so ago.

Our first release is a double CD of Suffolk singer Bob Hart - of whom the great Cyril Poacher once said:

... he's the best singer I've ever heard, myself - and I reckon I can sing - but I'd give him preference to me, yes I would.  I reckon he can sing because it ... it come and he don't raise a hair, it just come like that.  He's the best singer I ever heard yet ... I mean it.

... the nature of Bob's performance, which scarcely utilises any dramatic gesturing or facially expressive devices, but relies on his singing the song in a highly melodic, rhythmic and straightforward manner ... Bob's musicianship is demonstrated: he has perfect breath control, vivacious rhythm and a fluent handling of the narrative.  The audience is enthusiastic and it is clear that, because of his formal control over and identification with the song, he does not need extra-vocal devices.

The records contain a compilation of the tapes made by Bill Leader, and by Danny and myself, back in 1969.  Full details can be found in a fairly complete version of the booklet text, published as an article in these pages.  A full review will be published as soon as it's available.

The double CD - MT CD 301-2 - Bob Hart - A Broadside - is presently available at a special launch price (see 'Sales' below).  Details of this and other MT releases can be found in the Products page.

A 10% Royalty on sales will be paid to the Hart family, and profits will help to finance the magazine and fund further CD publications.

Sales:

Please don't be concerned if it doesn't arrive for a week or so - I really do have to make them one at a time, and it's a two hour job!

This production is conceived with the intention of bringing music which would probably never achieve a commercial publication to the small audience which values it.  Collectors with recordings of this sort, who would like to see them published in this way, are welcome to contact the magazine to discuss the possibilities.

Work on a possible MT CD 303 is already in progress.

July 1998

An appreciated endorsement

His completely unsolicited comment ... "A nice set of CDs.  I really like them."

A larger web site

Unfortunately, since MT is now 24.3Mb in size, a bigger site is needed!  I'd rather not start taking things off the site until it becomes absolutely necessary - and any decisions about what to remove would be fraught with aesthetic, not to say ethical, difficulties.  Furthermore, most of the space is being taken up by sound files, and since I firmly believe that the opportunity of listening to some of the music being discussed is one of the greatest services we offer our readers, I would be loath to remove any of them.

A way round the problem exists: certain ISPs offer personal accounts with unlimited webspace for around £120 per year.  Unfortunately, they are not able to offer domain name hosting on such sites, causing us untold problems with regular 'housekeeping' tasks.  There are usually 'traffic restrictions' on these sites and it's also possible that they might be less reliable, and/or slower, than our current arrangement.

So, it has been decided that we will continue with the U-Net account, and will take a second unlimited web space account as well.  The older material will be placed on this new site and readers should notice no difference.  This will have the advantage of keeping our e-mail address the same as at present - and I'll just have to put up with the extra workload.

I hope that readers will alert me if I've messed-up any of the new links so that things don't work as they should, if the downloads are any slower, or if the service is unreliable in any way.

This development will double our basic running costs.  I hope that this can be covered by revenue generated from sales of our CD releases.  Nonetheless, donations from readers will continue to play an important part in financing the magazine - to find out more about becoming a Friend of MT, read on ...

Phoebe Smith CD

Since this was one of Veteran's new 'sponsored productions', and since we were one of the sponsors, we have 25 copies for sale - at the normal price of £13 inc p&p, and at the special price of £10 for Friends of MT.  Similar concessionary prices are available on the Bob Hart double CD (see below), and will be so for all our future productions.  To find out how to become a Friend, save money, and help to keep the magazine running, have a look at our Friends of MT page.

To purchase a copy of the Phoebe Smith CD, please send a cheque, payable to Musical Traditions, for £13 (or £10 plus a Donation) to me at the address below, stating the address to which it should be mailed.

Overseas P&P: Europe add £1.00, USA & Canada add £1.50, Rest of World add £2.00.  Payment in Foreign Currency add £1.00.

MT Wins Award!

Furthermore, it was gratifying to learn that:

The Links²Go Key Resource award is both exclusive and objective.  Fewer than one page in one thousand will ever be selected for inclusion.  Further, unlike most awards that rely on the subjective opinion of 'experts', many of whom have only looked at tens or hundreds of thousands of pages in bestowing their awards, the Links²Go Key Resource award is completely objective and is based on an analysis of millions of web pages.  During the course of our analysis, we identify which links are most representative of each of the thousands of topics in Links²Go, based on how actual page authors, like yourself, index and organize links on their pages.

Talking of which - we are now getting over 2,000 readers per month: a tenfold increase in just 12 months.

With over 1,500 readers a month now, it would be nice to get a bit more feedback from some of you!  We really would like to know your opinions about what we're doing here and your suggestions about what else we should be exploring.

We have a Letters page - usually one of the most vibrant parts of any conventional 'interest' magazine - but very few readers seem to need to contribute their thoughts to MT.  It would be nice to believe that we're doing everything right and that nobody has any complaints - but that can't be possible.  A good number of our recent Reviews and Articles have been quite thought-provoking, not to say contentious - does nobody have any comments to make?

We really would like to hear from you - and something rather more analytical than the usual "Well done, keep up the good work" e-mails we regularly receive.  The Internet is above all a democratic, even an anarchic, medium - Contribute!

Melodeon Basics

27.11.98

Sing, Say or Pay!

Part 2, comprising the Tunstall, Snape, Hasketon, Woodbridge & Wickham Market, Little Glemham and Songs from the Eel's Foot Inn chapters includes an updated discography including Veteran and Topic Voice of the People releases..  You can find Parts 1 and 2 of Sing Say or Pay! in our Articles pages - or go directly to its own Index page from here.

Revised FAQ

Important technical stuff

Frames

In the Articles, they enable the text to appear in the top part of the screen while the footnotes appear in the bottom - both parts are scrollable and resizeable.  In the other five categories, they allow you to look at, say, the review of Volume 2, while a click on a link bar at the side of the page will take you directly to Volume 17, or any other, without having to go back to the Index page first.  I hope you will agree, when you try them, that these are worthwhile improvements in ease of use.

However, it is possible that your present browser may not display Frames.  If that is the case, may I suggest that you install version 3 of Netscape or Internet Explorer - both of which are available free from numerous sources.  Version 4s are much bigger and don't provide anything extra - in terms of being able to view MT, that is.  You might also try the Opera browser, available as a 30 day trial - it's very small and fast, but not free - costing around £20, I think.  Better still - and this is inside information - HP are about to release a new FREE browser which will be incredibly small, probably available by the New Year.

Arial Narrow font

Arial Narrow is available on the Windows 95 disc(s), from many widely available font collections, and the latest version is downloadable free from the Microsoft website: www.microsoft.com/typography.

Topic Discography

Mike and I hope that every record that is known about, right from TRC1, has been included, complete with full track listings, but there are still a few gaps.  Any reader with further information about any missing items is encouraged to send it to us for inclusion.  This information, plus new releases, will be added to the discography periodically, keeping it premanently up-to-date as far as we can manage it.

Free CDs

Free Fame and Kudos!

7.4.99

25,000 Readers!

Far more important is the way in which the numbers are escalating.  When we started, back in September 1997, we got around 75 readers per week.  This number grew fairly steadily over the next year to reach around 400 by Sept '98.  It had got to 500 by the start of this year - but has almost doubled in the last two months!  I have absolutely no idea why - but it's very pleasing.

You won't be surprised to know that most of our visitors are from the UK - some 23% are from UK hosts and 53% from .com, .net and numerical addresses (which could be almost anywhere, though UK and USA are the most likely).  USA: 7%, Ireland: 4% and Australia: 3% are the next most common addresses, but we also have readers in such unlikely places as Jugoslavia, Argentina, Malaysia and Hungary.  A total of 38 different countries featured in last week's statistics - a warm welcome to you all!

Cyril Poacher CD out on MT label?

At present, I'm hunting out the tapes that various people have made of him over the years and I have been quite lucky in tracking down several sources - and some 35 songs.  One thing which is emerging is that pretty well all of them were made in the decade 1965 to '75.  What I'm looking for now is some earlier recordings - he began singing in Blaxhall Ship in 1929, aged 19, and my hope is that someone out there (aside from Peter Kennedy) recorded him as a younger man.

If anyone knows of any such recordings, or has anecdotes, quotes, information of any kind on the man and his music ... I'd be extremely pleased to hear about them - my address and phone number are at the foot of this page.  I need your help to make this record as full a portrait of Cyril as the Bob Hart set was of him.

Another year flashes by ...

So much has happened in the last 12 months that I found it hard to believe when checking over the details.  At this time last year MT was around 12Mb in size and we had just moved to our new U-Net site - it is now 35Mb, and spread over two sites.

The magazine now offers readers:

• 25 long Articles
• 6 shorter Enthusiasm articles
• 2 complete books: Sing, Say or Pay! (10 chapters) and The English Folk Revival (13 chapters)
• 135 reviews, many of which are of more than one record
• 466 pictures
• 338 sound clips
• 9 News pages
• A Letters page
• The complete Topic Records Discography
• CDs and Cassettes of otherwise unobtainable music
• A Frequently Asked Questions page to help save you money
• A huge Links directory

I would finally remind you all that we are constantly looking for new contributors of reviews, articles, etc.  If you've just bought an interesting new record which we've not reviewed (we may not even know of its existence), why not write a review of it for us?  (You'll need to send Rod the CD if you want pictures and sound clips included - he will return it promptly).

With our very best wishes for a happy holiday and peace, health - even wealth - in the last year of the millennium ............

Rod and Keith - December 1998

Well, despite one of the most horrible bouts of 'flu I can ever imagine, we seem to have struggled though into the final year of the 20th Century and the good news is that the introduction of Frames and the narrow font seems not to have caused too many problems for our readers, and that only a handful of people each week are still trying to find files on the U-Net site which were moved to the Prestel one back in September.

On a similar point - readers should note that the Topic Discography has been moved to the 'discos' directory: please amend your bookmarks.

Free CDs

When we meet you about the place, you bend our ears mercilessly about this or that wonderful singer, musician or record you've just heard, or how it was dismissed in a few lines in Folk Roots by someone who obviously knew nothing about the music.  Why not write it all down and save yourself £12 to £15 in the process?

Remember, there are still about 80 of the Lomax Collection CDs to be issued in the next two or three years - start writing reviews for us and you could be the first one on your block with one of the 'Deep River of Song', 'Folk Songs of England, Scotland, and Ireland' or 'Caribbean Voyage' issues - free!

Errata:

Firstly - the Silex Air Mail series of records, mentioned in the Cheapes page and the Traditional discography are, in fact, nothing to do with the Silex label.  They are published by Air Mail Music, a division of Playasound, and their range of 25 budget priced releases are distributed by Harmonia Mundi in the UK and Auvidis in Europe.

This information came to me as a result of having finally broken through the curtain of silence surrounding Harmonia Mundi Distribution.  Among other things, I learned that UK readers can get any of the output from the 40+ labels they distribute, via mail order from Dominic Reeves at:

And - contrary to what I was informed by one of our readers, they do distribute Silex.

And lastly - the Session in Stroud mentioned in our Sessions page, is to be on Monday, not Thursday, evenings.

Topic Interview

Carnevale Dancers at Sidmouth?

No one will be sadder than me about this, but it seems unlikely that such a visit will take place in the near future, unless significant changes in the attitude and social organisation of the dancers take place.  They feel that it's important that they put on a very good show - and, for them, this means that the majority of their dancers and musicians have to be involved.  Having just returned from my fifth visit, I can tell you at first hand that at the height on the martedi grasso (Shrove Tuesday) celebrations there were more than 60 dancers and 13 musicians participating!

I really don't see how they can possibly organise a week's holiday for all these people at the same time (plus, undoubtedly, numerous friends and relations as well) - or how Sidmouth could possibly accommodate, feed, pay for ... even half this number.

So if you want to see them - and you should - I fear a trip to Brescia is involved.

The Discography of Recorded Traditional Music

Useful Addresses:

I get several e-mails every week for this sort of information, so I hope that this will make you lives a little easier.  Inevitably, much of the information is somewhat UK centred - so if any of our overseas readers would like to send me equivalent stuff for their part of the world, I'd be happy to include it.

A What's New Page

Some of you may wish to modify your bookmarks to go directly to 'whatsnew.htm', rather than 'index.htm'.

1798 Review

I strongly urge everyone with the slightest interest in Ireland, its music, its history and the relationship between it and Britain, to carefully read Fred McCormick's review of Frank Harte's latest record - 1798: the First Year of Liberty.  This is not just because it's a very good record - which it is - but because of the review itself.  I've long been an admirer of Fred's writings, but I really believe he's excelled himself in this instance.

Frank's booklet notes are a model - thorough, even-handed, succinct, readable - they describe the events of the 1798 Rebellion and their repercussions better than I have ever seen before.  Fred acknowledges this, but then goes on to look at what happened from a British, then a European perspective.  He explores and explains the songs, showing their absolute relevence today - not just for the Irish, but also for the British ... and for humanity.

Every visitor to this site - whether you believe yourself to be interested in Ireland, History, Politcics, or not - needs to read this piece.  Having done so, I do not believe you will ever feel the same about British / Irish relations - or about the relevence of 'folk songs' - again.

An Aside:

So - touching on the theme of the above mentioned McCormick review - it's more than a little depressing that, despite my very best efforts, I have been unable to elicit more than a couple of contributions from citizens of the three other nations who share these islands with the English.

Ethnomusicology article:

It's simply written without too many jargon words.  Why not have a look?

Copperplate Distribution

All over the world these days there are probably as many CDs produced by individual singers and players as there are by record companies - it's just one of the many results of the march of technology ... what Peter Wyper and Patsy Touhey did in the first years of this century almost anyone can do today!  But making the records is not the same as making them available - or certainly not the same as making them available outside one's own locality.  There are some obvious exceptions, but few musicians have found the time, organisation, expertise, necessity ... to set about marketing their products much beyond selling them at gigs.

Into the breach (for Irish musicians, at least), steps Alan O'Leary, an Irishman living in London, who has set up Copperplate Distribution to bring together a selection of such CDs and to make them available as distributed items via specialist record shops, and by Mail Order.

Alan tells me that he plans to be dealing with the following CDs for the moment:

• The McNamara Family: Leitrim's Hidden Treasure
• Tommy Peoples: The Quiet Glen
• Mick O'Brien: May Morning Dew
• Jimmy O'Brien Moran: Sean Reid's Favourite
• Eamonn Cotter: Traditional Music from Co Clare on the Concert Flute
• Eileen O'Brien & Willie Fogarty: The Compositions of Paddy O'Brien
• John Carty: At the Racket
• Neillidh Mulligan: Barr na Cuille & The Leitrim Thrush
• Tommy McCarthy: Sporting Nell
• Tommmy Keane & Jacqueline McCarthy: The Wind Among the Reeds
• Paddy Keenan: Na Keen Affair
• Also the whole Viva Voce label output

Contact: Copperplate Distribution, 68 Belleville Road, London SW11 6PP.  Tel/Fax 0171 585 0357.  E-mail: alogren@atlas.co.uk  All the CDs are priced 12/99 plus 80p postage.

The Kaiso Newsletters

The Kaiso Newsletters appears here as a frames enabled multi-part article and will be updated as and when further issues are published.  I've asked Ray for a Glossary to help explain some of the more arcane areas of Calypso activity.

23.9.99

Kidson article now with MIDI sound ...

New Latest Batch of reviews format:

I hope you will find this a better method of presentation - if not, please let me know.

Summers gets computer!

He can now see the magazine for himself, without me having to print it out for him, and is amazed by the colour and the sound clips.  What's more - he now has an e-mail address:

... so if you'd like to deluge him with mail for the next week of two, it might make him feel as if he's part of something again.

Competition!

He has even more kindly offered a prize - a signed copy of 'We'll Call Once More Unto Your House', a rare publication on Padstow May Day celebrations (published 1982).  Further details and all the questions are on the Competition page.

Recent Letter

A 'complete' Traditional recordings discography

The word 'complete' in the title is obviously a joke - such a work will never be able to be completed, given the way in which many of the major labels habitually licence their recordings to other labels - but I hope that, in time, it will be complete enough to be a useful resource to many readers.  I would like to thank Steve Roud, Malcolm Taylor, John Howson, Neil Wayne and a number of other people for their help in getting this work started.

As with the Topic Discography, I will have to rely on the help of readers in both correcting erroneous entries, completing partial ones and expanding the range of this new work.  Initially, I intend to limit entries to those labels whose records are (or have been) available in the UK.  Should I live so long, this range may be able to be expanded at a later date, but I would prefer to be able to link to other similar Discographies in other parts of the world.

Donations?

MT is utterly unfunded and receives no revenue whatsoever except for the small profits from the sales of our cassettes and CDs.  Our total income for last year was £1,117, which included several donations from Friends of MT.  If you consider that you've been getting a pretty good deal out of the magazine for the past three years, we would very much appreciate your becoming a Friend and making a contribution to help us carry on with the good work.

We don't want to have to make MT viewable by subscription only (a course of action which is open to us) and would far prefer it to be freely available to anyone anywhere in the world who may stumble upon it and become interested by the wonderful music to be found here, and perhaps want to go on and learn more.  What we do ask is that those of you who do read it regularly and are enthusiasts for the music should search your consciences and ask yourselves whether becoming a Friend and making a donation to the magazine's funds wouldn't, in fact, be the decent thing to do.

Cheques or banknotes in any currency will be most gratefully received.

24.12.99

CD sales

1. to make available recordings of important music which is not commercially viable to the small audience, worldwide, which values it.
2. to make the small profits which, together with contributions from Friends of MT, are the only source of revenue for the magazine.

As well as being sold mail-order from MT, these CDs are also available through Veteran Tapes in Suffolk.  In order for Veteran to continue trading they need to make a profit, and so we have to sell to them at a wholesale price some 40% lower than the retail price.  The costs of CD manufacture and booklet printing (roughly 20% of the retail price) remain the same, no matter how many copies we sell.

In the case of the Cyril Poacher release, exactly 50% of the sales have been through Veteran  The results of this are:

• Veteran make a profit and continue their excellent work - a Good Thing
• MT's revenue from the CD is reduced to half of what might have been expected - a Bad Thing
• the Sales Royalty paid to Cyril's family is considerably reduced - another Bad Thing

MT Wins Another Award!

Dear Webmaster:

Congratulations!  Your Web site has received the Web Feet Seal of Approval and will appear in 'Web Feet: The Internet Traveler's Desk Reference'.  Web Feet is the premier subject guide to the best Web sites for students, researchers, and the general public and is the first comprehensive Web guide that is interactive and updated monthly.

A site is included in Web Feet only if our researchers think it is an outstanding site in its subject area.  The Web Feet Seal of Approval tells teachers, librarians, parents, and students that your site is especially valuable for research, teaching, or general interest.

Daisy Chapman CD on MT label

I am extremely loath to publish this CD without a reasonably respectable booklet to go with it - so unless any readers can assist, this project will have to be shelved for a while.  Please ask all your friends for information, even if you've never heard of Daisy yourself.

Seasonal and Millennial Greetings:

Obviously, I had hoped that this would happen with the first one, but people were clearly dubious about this new venture (or didn't hear about it!), and the offers - like busses - came in a rush after lots of waiting around.  We now have some 20 further projects on the cards, all of which have involved some extra work.  Mercifully, the next two involve the collaboration of others, so I won't be as overwhelmed with work as I might have been.  I think things are far enough advanced with these to be able to tell you about them without too much fear of eventual disappointment.

The first is something of a coup for a small organisation like ours.  In 1963/4, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger recorded a series of interviews with Joe Heaney, the outstanding Connemara sean-nós singer, then living in London.  The tapes amount to some 5½ hours and include around 35 songs.  Peggy has allowed us access to the originals, Dan Quinn has transcribed the entire interview, Éamonn Ó Bróithe has transcribed the songs and done a truly beautiful job of translating the Irish ones into English, Liam Mac Con Iomaire has provided a biography of Joe and Fred McCormick has the unenviable task of coordinating everything, editing, and writing an introduction.  The eventual publication, scheduled for May 2000, will be a double CD and very full booklet, plus the entire edited Interview transcript will be published in MT a month or so beforehand - watch this space!

Since this project is not one which could possibly be described as "hoping to bring important music which might never achieve a commercial publication to the small audience which values it", we have decided to forego some of the possibly large profits we might have made from publishing it entirely ourselves.  In the interests of getting the records to as wide an audience as possible, we have entered into a licensing and publication agreement with the Topic and Cló Iar-Chonnachta record companies to achieve worldwide distribution.  MT will continue to cover the Internet sales.

As mentioned below, it would greatly help us if readers would attempt to to buy from us rather than retail outlets - helping to fund both the continuing publication of the magazine and further CD publication projects.

The second CD will be the long-awaited Daisy Chapman record, which had stalled for a long while due to insufficient information for the booklet.  An appeal on Radio Scotland finally put me in touch with Daisy's niece, further recordings came to light - and the project is now back on track with Pete Shepheard coordinating and editing the booklet.

Then a reader put me in touch with someone "who used to take a tape recorder around the pubs in north Sussex in the late-'50s".  This seemingly innocent act resulted in my receiving a box of eight 5" reels of tape - jammed full of songs! - all of which need to be copied onto DAT, edited, noise-reduced and stored on CD ready for eventual publication.  Pop Maynard, Jim Wilson, George Townshend, Brick Harber, Sarah Porter ... are among those whose singing will see the light of day on the MT label before too long - if I'm spared .........

And if all that were not enough, I foolishly decided to publish the Musical Traditions of the 20th Century CD-ROM - and even more foolishly, said that I'd include some of the articles from the old 'paper' version of the magazine .......  I didn't realise just how many there were!  But if the scanner, OCR software and my typing finger hold out, the CD-ROM should be available early in the New Year, price £10.00.  Again - watch this space!

We hope that our fourth year will prove even more productive of top quality journalism and music than have the last three.  So - once more - Happy Christmas and other appropriate seasonal greeting to all our readers.

Rod and Keith - 24.12.99

Two New Sites:

Our regular ISP, U-Net, informed me (in breach of their contract) only three days before the subscription fell due for renewal - that we would be required to pay the full commercial rate for their service in future.  At £650 + VAT, this is obviously out of the question!

I was luckliy able to find an alternative home of the main site at slightly less than we paid last year - so every dark cloud has a silver wassname!  As far as I can tell, the transfer went without a hitch and there was no interuption of service.

However - my E-Mail address is now changed to: rod@mustrad.org.uk

You can possibly imagine just how furious I am about all this.  I really hate the shoe-string nature of the operation I am forced to run with MT - not only for all the extra work and worry it causes me, but also because of the way our readers are being messed about.  If you share these concerns, please read on ...

Donations?

MT is utterly unfunded and receives no revenue whatsoever except for the small profits from the sales of our cassettes and CDs.  Our total income for last year was £1,117, which included several donations from Friends of MT.  If you consider that you've been getting a pretty good deal out of the magazine for the past two and a half years, we would very much appreciate your becoming a Friend and making a contribution to help us carry on with the good work.

We don't want to have to make MT viewable by subscription only (a course of action which is open to us) and would far prefer it to be freely available to anyone anywhere in the world who may stumble upon it and become interested by the wonderful music to be found here, and perhaps want to go on and learn more.  What we do ask is that those of you who do read it regularly and are enthusiasts for the music should search your consciences and ask yourselves whether becoming a Friend and making a donation to the magazine's funds wouldn't, in fact, be the decent thing to do.

Cheques or banknotes in any currency will be most gratefully received.

Cyril Poacher CD now available:

This new record contains 31 tracks - pretty well every song he is ever known to have recorded - and the A5 booklet is very comprehensive, including song notes this time.  I think the whole thing is even better than our Bob Hart publication from last year.  The track listing is as follows:

The Booklet notes are now available as an Article and further details can be found on our Products page.

MT CD-ROM now available

The CD-ROM runs without any problems on all computer platforms and operating systems.  It contains everything ever published in the on-line version of the magazine - including all the photos and sound clips - in exactly the same configuration as on the Web, so you should have no problems in finding your way around.  Also included are various fonts and viewers to enable purchasers without Net access to see the magazine properly for the first time.  See the 'Read-Me' file for further details.

The UK price is £10 inclusive of p&p (£8.50 for friends of MT).  Foreign readers can pay in their own currency, but we need to make a small extra charge for the transaction and the p&p.

• Thus the US price is $22 inc p&p.
• The EC price is the equivalent of £12 in your local currency - ask your bank for the rate.
• The Rest of World price is the equivalent of £13 in your local currency - ask your bank for the rate.

MT Expands

So it is with great pleasure and some relief, that I announce an addition to the Editorial board; Fred McCormick - who has contributed so much excellent journalism to the magazine over the years - has agreed to become a Co-Editor.  Fred is currently engaged on the coordination and production of our Joe Heaney double CD, due for launch in May.  Full details of this release can be found below.

Fred's acceptance of the job is extremely gratifying; Keith and I are very pleased to welcome him aboard and look forward to his valuable contributions to our continuing efforts in making MT the world's foremost publication on traditional music, in any medium.

... and now, a message from our Founder:

Is it really seventeen years ago that I wrote that in the first editorial to Musical Traditions in 1983?  The magazine was my brainchild to explore the enormous amount of traditional music then being researched, recorded and presented both at home and abroad and to give me the opportunity to promote some of the performers I held most dear and to give a platform to like-minded enthusiasts to do the same.

Not that MT was at that time at the cutting edge of technology - far from it!  In those days articles and reviews, once submitted, were typed up on a word processor by Jacqui (who ran our firm's computer department) for me to photocopy-reduce and then cut and paste (the smell of cowgum still affects me!)  Once printed, it was my task to address by hand all the envelopes (from a water damaged consignment I had acquired cheap).  Initially this was hardly a time consuming exercise as the original response was fairly underwhelming but gradually interest grew, some fascinating contacts were made and Musical Traditions gradually established itself as a serious contributor to the study of our music.  Enthusiastic and knowledgable reviewers such as Chris Smith, Ray Templeton and Keith Chandler could be relied upon, record companies like Topic, Rounder and Arhoolie were most generous and latterly Graeme Kirkham's desk top publishing skills were to prove invaluable.

However a series of domestic disasters and job changes gradually reduced the amount of time and money available to continue with the mag and so when in 1998 Rod approached me with a view to putting MT on the Internet my immediate view was - what the hell?  Go for it!  But where was the audience and who would write for a journal that no-one had access to?  Well, for once my powers of prophesy were completely up the wall, for in the space of a couple of years virtually everyone who wishes to has access to this media and countless excellent articles, reviews and comments have poured forth.  Rod's IT skills have astounded me time and again but more so his boundless enthusiasm - and that is the key.  Musical Traditions was born out of enthusiasm and, with the ongoing support of current and doubtless future enthusiasts will continue to champion the great musics of the world.

They deserve nothing less.

Keith Summers - 18.1.00

New Articles?

I've just spent a long time getting old material from ten years ago ready for HTML publication - but where are the new articles?  Looking back over the recent inclusions I have to go back to April '99 to find the first - Jonathan Stock's piece on Ethnomusicology - which was actually written for MT, and back to December '98 to find one about a traditional performer!  This causes me considerable concern!  I don't want MT to become little more than a recycling site for old material.  I'm very pleased to be able to include articles which are no longer publicly available, but a revised, updated version from a third millennium standpoint would be so much better.

There must be many of our readers who know about a tradition with which they have some connection, or a performer they know (or knew) - and could put together an article which would be of interest to other readers.  There must be many of those who have written one for us who could contribute another.  I can't offer any financial rewards for your work, but surely the interest of thousands of readers in over 40 countries spread across the face of the globe is something worth considering?  Please let me know if you might be able to write something for us.

18.1.00

Modern Technology up to Speed?

As something of a contrast, another reader told me, in the second week of February, that the Rounder/Lomax Songs of Seduction CD - the first in the Folk Songs of England, Ireland, Scotland & Wales (Caedmon) series - was available through CDNOW.  I e-mailed Rounder asking for a review copy.

On the 18th, Rounder's boss-man i/c traditional releases replied that he'd only seen them himself two days before.  He suggested that I should get one via Direct Distribution in London, as they'd be over here "very soon".  He was clearly correct in this, because, a few days later, another reader told me that he'd come across the CD in a shop in England on Saturday (20th).  Pretty efficient distribution there!

However, Rounder's distributors in the UK - Direct (now Proper) - seemed to be entirely in the dark as to these developments and have only just got their review copies.  MT's arrived on the 15th of March - some 3½ weeks after I could have bought it over the counter in a UK shop!

What's more, I'm told that several shops now get their Rounder issues from a "distributor in Europe who is much cheaper and quicker than Direct".  So if readers continue to find records available in UK shops long before MT reviews them - it may not always be our fault!

If any readers are having problems getting Rounder CDs, they might like to know that Veteran have the following in stock:

• 1087  From Galway to Dublin - Irish music from 1921-1959
• 1123  Milestone at the Garden - Irish Fiddle Music from 78s
• 1741  World Library of Folk & Primative Music Vol. 1 - England
• 1742  World Library of Folk & Primative Music Vol. 11 - Ireland
• 1743  World Library of Folk & Primative Music Vol. 111 - Scotland
• 1774  I Sang Through the Fairs - Margaret Barry
• 1720  The Queen Amongst the Heather - Jeannie Robertson
• 1839  What Will Become of England? - Harry Cox
• 1775  Classic Ballads of Britain and Ireland Vol.1
• 1776  Classic Ballads of Britain and Ireland Vol. 2
• 1778  Songs of Seduction

MT CD Release Schedule Changed:

Keith Chandler's CD of Scottish music on Beltona 78s has been cancelled because the sound quality of the discs he had access to was not good enough, and too little of the material was what he felt to be traditional.  A great pity, since I'd like our output to be wider than the wholly English material we've been able to release so far.

The double CD of Joe Heaney is pretty well ready, but Topic have decided to delay its release until September for scheduling and commercial reasons.  I'll keep you informed of the definite release date as soon as it's know.

But the good news is that the George Townshend CD, which I hinted at earlier, is now a reality, as is the double CD of Walter Pardon from Mike Yates' recordings.  This release is intended as a supplement, or even a counterbalance, to the Topic A World Without Horses record, and contains pretty well every song he ever recorded not currently available on various CD issues.  I'm extremely pleased about this collaboration with Mike - and hope that it will be the first of several ...

13.6.00

Articles from the 'Paper' editions of MT:

Making the assumption that most of our regular readers who want to spend a tenner to free up some hard drive space have already done so, I don't think many people will object if the old articles start appearing here for the benefit of our more casual readership, worldwide.  And, since Bampton practices have just started for the new season, I thought I'd begin with Keith Chandler's excellent piece covering 150 years of fiddle playing and morris dancing in that Oxfordshire village.  It is now in place on the Articles page.

Except when a new article arrives to interrupt the schedule, one of the old 'paper' articles will appear here each month, until all 30 have been published.  June's will be Mike Yates' The Socio-political songs of Walter Pardon - to coincide with the launch of our new double CD, Put a Bit of Powder on it, Father ... the other songs of Walter Pardon.

MT Walter Pardon double CD available

All prices are inclusive of p&p.  The UK price is £15 (£12.50 for friends of MT).  Foreign readers can pay in their own currency, but we need to make a small extra charge for the transaction and the p&p.

• Thus the total US price is $27.
• The EC price is the equivalent of £17 in your local currency - ask your bank for the rate.
• The Rest of World price is the equivalent of £18 in your local currency - ask your bank for the rate.

Stand Up, Ye Men of Labour

Peter Kennedy letter:

My pleasure turned to sadness after reading it through several times.  Most of the 'bloomers' (to be honest, the numerous serious charges which have been levelled at Mr Kennedy in these pages over the years) are not even mentioned, let alone commented upon.  As far as I can see, he only deals with the 'date of Harry Cox's discovery' issue directly, and 'general inaccuracies in the notes' indirectly.  He also raises the matter (not mentioned in MT) of "inappropriate artwork" on the Harry Cox CD; namely, the inclusion of the Union flag.  He, rightly, "deplores any unnecessary nationalism", but seems unaware that the artwork was also flawed by the, presumably American, assumption that the Union Jack is the English flag.  In all three cases he seeks to place the blame and responsibility for these failings upon others.

Now, I have absolutely no doubt that some, even all, of his stories of changes being made by others and of the final version not being what he'd hoped for are absolutely true.  But he is - and is publicly acknowledged to be in the booklet notes - the Series Editor for the British part of the Alan Lomax Collection.  As such, the responsibility for the final outcome of the project is his.

It seems to me obvious that an important part of that prestigious job is to ensure that the final version is exactly what he'd hoped for - and to insist that he be given the authority to achieve this end. If this authority was not forthcoming, then he should have resigned the post on that ground.  He might even have made a public statement about his decision, which we would have been happy to have printed.

As it is, he presumably remains in the post and, equally presumably, we may look forward to further volumes in the series exhibiting the same flaws as those we've seen already.

I Never Played to Many Posh Dances - book

These copies - the last remaining stock - are now available for sale at £5 including UK p&p to MT readers.  Since they are strictly outside the financial sphere of MT on the Net, we would ask any prospective purchasers to contact Keith directly at: keith.summers@virgin.net or at: 49 Crossfield Road, Southend on Sea, Essex SS2 4LS, UK, and to make cheques payable to him.

Topic Records:

Thus readers can have access to pretty well all the UK production of traditional music CDs from one place, with just the one letter, e-mail, phone call, and cheque.

It is also hoped that a reciprocal arrangement with Topic can soon be finalised, so that Credit Card purchases of MT records can be made from them.  Watch this space for further details.

Record Price increases:

Moreover, the change in status mentioned above means that I now hope to sell MT records through other mailorder outlets and shops.  The reaction from some of these has been that our prices are well below the 'standard' CD price, meaning lower profits than is normal, yet more work and p&p costs because of our A5 size booklets.  MT record prices have also remained the same since 1998.

Accordingly, I have decided to raise our prices on August 1st this year.  I can't be doing with these silly £11.99 prices - so from that date MT single CDs will cost £12 and doubles £16 - both inclusive of UK p&p.  I hope most readers will agree that they still represent extremely good value.

MT Records - changes:

If everything goes to plan, we will have released three single and two double CDs by the end of the year - George Townshend, Walter Pardon, Daisy Chapman, Joe Heaney and the Smith Family.  The records side of the operation will be profit-making in a real sense - and thus needs its existence declared to the taxman.  Such a declaration would be enormously complicated if it included the non-profit-making magazine aspect of our work.  For this and several other more complex reasons, I have decided to separate the two parts - and from the 1st of January this year, the record company and the magazine have been keeping separate accounts and operating independently.

Musical Traditions Records will continue to fund the Magazine as and when necessary.

Topic Records - sales arrangement:

I Never Played to Many Posh Dances - book

These copies - the last remaining stock - are now available for sale at £5 including UK p&p to MT readers.  Since they are strictly outside the financial sphere of MT on the Net, we would ask any prospective purchasers to contact Keith directly at: keith.summers@virgin.net or at: 49 Crossfield Road, Southend on Sea, Essex SS2 4LS, UK, and to make cheques payable to him.

14.11.00

CDs of Italian Traditional Music:

It now seems fairly clear that the only way anyone in the UK will be able to easily buy some of the truly wonderful music I've reviewed here is if I start selling it myself ... so I shall!  Within the next few days, the following CDs will be available from our Records page, along with Topic and our own productions.  May I stress that this is not 'difficult' music - if you enjoy the Coppers or the Watersons, you'll love the singing, and if you like British jig-time dance music played by a fiddle-led band, you'll love the music!

• Pas en Amùr - Compagnia Sonadùr di Ponte Caffaro - A C Barabàn ACBCD05  Review
  the complete Ponte Caffaro carnevale repertoire of 30 tunes, superb 1993 live recording
• Polyphonies de Sardaigne - Various - Le Chant du Monde LDX 274760   Review
  the superb 1979-85 benchmark field recordings of the cantu á tenores genre, plus some other types of Sardinian polyphony
• Su Banzigu - Tenore 'San Gavino' de Oniferi - A C Kunzerto K001CD  Review
  the best modern cantu á tenores I've ever heard, 2000 recordings
• Ballos Sardos - Various - Taranta Ethnica TA015  Review
  a brilliant anthology of Sardinian dance music - accordions, launeddas, guitars, cantu á tenores, etc. 1987/96 recordings

MT's Wiggy Smith and Family CD released:

Gloucester's Wiggy Smith and his father, Wisdom, will be quite well known from appearances on various Topic LPs of Traveller songs.  His uncles Denny and Biggun (Jabez) however, have never before appeared on record - and the four of them present a fine and broad repertoire of songs, ranging from Lord Bateman and The Cruel Ship's Carpenter, through The Deserter and Oakham Poachers, to Ikey Moses and That Little Old Band of Gold.  Even Wiggy's granddaughters, Jean Johns and Rachel Butler contribute a great little playground song, My Boyfriend Gave Me an Apple.

The CD contains pretty well every song (33 in all) that they are known to have recorded - and few of these particular performances have ever before been published.  The tapes come from as far back as Peter Shepheard's 1966 recordings of Denny and Biggun, Mike Yates' 1970 recordings of Wiggy and Wisdom, and move right up to date with Gwilym Davies' and Paul Burgess' of Wiggy in 1994-99.  The accompanying 24-page A5 booklet describes Wiggy’s life and music in some detail, and contains the texts of all the songs, including complete versions of some of the longer ballads.

As usual, the Notes from this now appear as an Article in these pages, and details and a printable Order Form are to be found on the Records page.

Joe Heaney double Topic CD now available exclusively from MT

Rice Girls deleted!

Harry Cox double Topic CD now available from MT

It is now available from the MT address and full details and printable order form appear on the Records page. The Bonny Labouring Boy costs £16 (the same as it will from Topic), but our price includes UK p&p.

Seasonal and Millennial good wishes!

A happy holiday, a peaceful and musical New year, good stuff to read, great stuff to listen to ... What more do you need?  Friends across the world to share it with!

Rod, Keith and Fred - 23.12.00

MT reviews - a point worth making:

It is something of a paradox that, as the audience for real traditional music appears to be dwindling, the quantity and quality of what is being published is increasing.  In the last couple of years an unprecedented number of extremely important publications have appeared which have dealt with traditional music in a fuller, deeper, wider ... a 'better' way than almost any in the past.

What's more, instant global communications via the Internet have allowed the small number of people actually interested in such things to keep abreast of these developments and in touch with each other.  Most of us understand that new standards are constantly being set - and realise that any new publications must live up to these standards.  MT reviews should attempt to reflect these developments, since we are now addressing what has become an extremely educated audience.

Like the reviews in any other music magazine, ours tend to fall into a few broad categories:

1. The 'ordinary' review - "I listened to this CD/read this book; it was good/average/poor of its type; these were its outstanding features; I do/don't recommend it to this or that interest group."  There are lots of these.

2. The 'enthusiasm' review - "I knew nothing about this music before I heard this CD but now I can't live without hearing lots more of it.  Every sentient being on the planet needs this for Christmas!"  There are rather fewer of these.

3. The 'informed' review - "This is an extremely important/disappointing publication for the following list of reasons; this is the background information you need to know about this music; this is how it compares with previous publications; these are the ways in which it succeeds in broadening our knowledge of the subject; these are its failings; and here are some peripheral ideas it's got me thinking about."  There are rather fewer of these, too - although they are really what MT should be about, in my opinion.

4. The 'fan' review - "This is the very latest fantastic album from the wonderful ....... augmented in this instance by ethereal vocals of ....... and the groovy synth work of ....... and so, of course, it is absolutely brilliant!"  I hope there are almost none of these.

Personally, I would far rather hear about the possible failings of a CD before I encounter it as an enticing looking, shrink-wrapped (and thus unexaminable) object in my local record shop.  I would rather know that the glossily produced booklet actually tells me very little about the music or the performer before I shell out £13 of my hard-earnt!

Rather more difficult to answer is the charge that, since the publication in question really is very good and well worth buying, "Why did your reviewed have to go picking holes in it?"  Here, I can only refer back to the point about the constantly improving quality of publications and the standards they inevitably set.  Our own Musical Traditions CDs are a case in point - whenever I'm presented with a new project, one of my major worries is that I won't be able to do as good a job on it as I did on some of the previous ones.  Also worth remembering is the way in which small flaws in an extremely good piece of work stand out far more annoyingly than they would in a mediocre one.

Anyway - I will continue to publish, indeed to encourage, critical reviews (in the best sense of the word) - though I will try to exercise rather more editorial control over those I consider to be needlessly so ... and attempt to do the same with my own contributions as well!  But MT, although an e-zine, is not a fan-zine - and has no intentions of becoming one.

Another year done gone ...

But, as the 'real' Millennium draws to a close, the MT team will have produced four single CDs and five double CDs in 12 months - and, with a bit of luck and a following wind, will have published all but the last of these doubles before December 31st.  Nor has the Magazine been neglected - having now grown to a staggering 116Mb in size.  This will mean that a big chunk of the older material is going to need shifting to our 'second' site at UK Online - probably in late January.  Keep an eye on this Editorial page for further details of when the move takes place and how it will effect you.

For anyone trying to figure out what all those CDs were/are, the list goes like this:

• MTCD304 - George Townshend: Come, Hand to Me the Glass
• MTCD3050-6 - Walter Pardon: Put a Bit of Powder on it, Father
• MTCD307 - Wiggy Smith: Band of Gold
• MTCD308 - Daisy Chapman: Ythanside
• TSCD518D - Joe Heaney: The Road from Connemara
• SFO 001 - Various: Women's Songs from the Ricefields and Farms of the Padana plain
• MTCD400-1 - George 'Pop' Maynard: Down the Cherry Tree
• MTCD309-10 - Various: Just Another Saturday Night: Sussex 1960

The aforementioned 'fifth' double will be an overview of the Mike Yates Collection and will feature tracks which are no longer available - almost a score of them have never been released before, including three complete Child Ballads he collected only a couple of months ago!  It is likely to be available early in 2001, as is the new version of the Musical Traditions CD-ROM, complete with all this year's magazine output.

This might also be a good time to remind readers that the new Gordon Hall CD, all the Topic traditional CDs and a select range of Italian ones are available from us (see our Records page), and to remind overseas readers that all the MT CDs are available for Credit Card purchase from Topic in London (44 [0]20 7263 1240).  Ask for Mail Orders.

Also, the last remaining copies of Reg Hall's superb book on Scan Tester, the Sussex anglo concertina player, I Never Played to Many Posh Dances, which was published by MT back in 1990, are now available for sale at £5 including UK p&p to MT readers.  Please contact Keith directly at: keith.summers@virgin.net or at: 49 Crossfield Road, Southend on Sea, Essex SS2 4LS, UK, and to make cheques payable to him.

It's Moving day ...

The reason for this is that the sound files associated with the reviews account for more than twice as much space as all the files I will be moving in total.  Since all of these older Reviews will have already been read by those of you who were interested anyway, it seems to me unneccesary to go to all the trouble and cost of such a time-consuming and space-hungry transfer.

The only real result of all this will be that any Bookmarks you've created pointing to older Articles or Reviews will no longer work. This does not mean that the file in question no longer exists (they ALL continue to exist!) - merely that it is now in a different place, so you need to go to the Articles or Reviews index page first, to find it.

By the time you read this the move will have been completed and all the links from the magazine's Index pages will have been altered to point to the new file locations.  This process usually goes through without too many glitches, but there will inevitably be the occasional missed link somewhere in the 2,000 or so pages - if you do notice a link which isn't working any more, please let me know.

So - in brief: All pre-2000 files are now moved to our other site.  If you can't find a file, go to the appropriate Index page and get to it from there.  Don't rely on bookmarks for the older material.

18.1.01

West Virginia University Press CDs from MT

MT is extremely pleased and excited at having been selected to make this wonderful music available in the UK.  See News and Comment No 21 for more details.

5.2.01

MT Supplements

The third MT Supplement is currently in preparation - the writings of world-expert Keith Chandler on Morris Dancing in the English South Midlands 1660-1900 will appear on CD-ROM in mid-2001.  This will bring together his two books Ribbons, Bells and Squeaking Fiddles and A Chronological Gazetteer, plus numerous other published and unpublished shorter works on the subject into one essential volume.  Every piece has been revised and updated for this new MT publication, reflecting Keith's continuing research into the Morris tradition.

This CD-ROM will be The Morris publication of the decade.  I would ask all readers to pass on information about this impending release to any friends interested in the Morris, since many of them will be unaware of MT's existence, and getting the information to them by means of normal publicity methods would be extremely expensive.

Keith has very generously donated all profits from the CD-ROM to MT funds.  A Friend indeed!

23.3.01

"He'll be taking his ball home, next"

Some four months ago, I was happy to publish Dáibhí Ó Cróinín's letter responding to Fred McCormick's review, and extremely pleased by its calm tone and magnanimous approach to the matter.  As may be imagined, Dáibhí and I exchanged several e-mails over the following few weeks, and my opinion of him was further enhanced by an offer he subsequently made.  I'd had the temerity to ask if he fancied contributing anything for publication in MT, and he replied:

"I wonder would you find it useful if I sent the texts of some Bess Cronin songs that I was given when I was in Cúil Aodha a week ago - two or three are 'new' (i.e., either not known to me before or else noted by title in the book from one of her song-lists, but no text then to hand).  One or two already in the book, but these (handwritten versions, from a copybook of my father's dated 1939!!) are slightly different."

"Fred mentioned that you might write asking for a listing of the actual sources for the printed texts in my book.  I'd be delighted in principle to oblige, but fear that it'll take a while ...  I'll be happy to post it on your site.  It's work that should be done anyway ..."

So I was very surprised by an e-mail from him last week (now published in out Letters page) telling me that he was unhappy about my publication of Mike Brocken's letter:

"[Your] publication of the ignorant and offensive letter by Dr Mike Brocken of Liverpool University seems to me to indicate that there is, in fact, no meaningful moderatorship of the letters at all.  I'm at a loss to understand why the views of a self-declared ignoramus in the subject should be given the freedom of your pages ...  His comments are just too silly to merit any reply, but in view of the fact that he was allowed to air them at my expense, I must - reluctantly - withdraw my previous offer to publish the newly-discovered Bess Cronin material in your pages."

Nor, to be frank, do I see much in Dr Brocken's letter, or in my publication of it, which could be construed as being 'at Dr Ó Cróinín's expense' - let alone ignorant or offensive.  For the most part, it merely reiterates points which have been raised before - and, for the most part, not answered!  Let's be specific:

• That there is a lack of quality written material on Irish music - that a significant proportion of it is of a poor standard revealing a singular lack of original ideas and a general refusal to at least question conventional wisdom and accepted modes of thought.

• That the book purports to offer "a comprehensive account of an extraordinary singer and her distinctive singing style" - but fails to.  Indeed there are only eight lines constituting a thumbnail sketch of the first couple of decades of Mrs Cronin’s life.

• That there is an almost total lack of any social or historical background to Mrs Cronin's singing persona and no comprehensible picture of the community into which she was born, or of the tradition which that community supported.

• That there are no sections dealing with Mrs Cronin's adult life, or her singing style.

• That folk tradition and revivalist interest in folk tradition are two separate things, and that a serious work like this should have tried to keep them apart.

• That a serious publisher managed to get so disconnected from its author that some of the tracks on the CDs are not those transcribed in the book.

• That there are countless typos and several instances of the 'same' information being 'different' on another page.

• That sometimes, when correct information is given, it is not placed where it's pertinent but has to be hunted for in indexes and notes, and that the reader should not have to delve for information in this way.

• That a glossy, expensively-produced, heavily-subsidised, 21st century publication from one of Ireland's leading publishers; its author a professional historian, with countless high-status collaborators; dealing with one of the best and most important traditional singers in the country ... really ought not to have had so many flaws.

These are the important criticisms which Fred McCormick's review levelled at the book part of The Songs of Elizabeth Cronin.  These are the criticisms which Dáibhí Ó Cróinín has failed to even discuss, let alone attempt to answer.  Maybe he would now care to do so?

These are also the points which Ó Cróinín's and Moulden's letters have essentially side-tracked - a pity, as I believe they need discussion.  The tone of the review has already been discussed, explained and apologised for ... it does not need to be covered further, I think.  The MT Letters Page is a forum for people with an interest in traditional music to share their thoughts with other such people.  There is no requirement for them to be experts.  MT is not an academic Journal and its correspondence pages are not moderated.  I will both welcome and publish any contributions discussing some or all of the above matters.  That, at least, would be a positive outcome ............

Throughout my life, I've attempted to share my great enthusiasm for (and moderate knowledge of) traditional music in every possible way.  One of the results of my re-publication of MT on the Net has been to help others in doing the same.  I see this as being positive and helpful.  I believe most readers would agree that we all benefit from it.

So I'm sorry that Dáibhí Ó Cróinín has decided to take his ball home.  I don't see how it is any way positive or helpful.  Nor do I (as yet) see who benefits from it.

9.4.01

Three new articles

The Tommy Talker Bands of the West Riding, by Ronnie Wharton and Arthur Clarke, was the very first article to be published in MT, back in mid-1983.  It's an account of what I would call an English folk music rather than a traditional one, and as these are pretty few and far between, it makes very interesting reading.

The other was John Howson's piece on The Barber Family, of Wingfield, Suffolk, which is rather more central to what I know to be the interests of most MT readers.

And then - just like the proverbial London busses - another one turned up!  Georgina Boyes offered me a piece on Alice Gomme, who was an influential collector, advocate of the Revival and associate of Sharp.  It was her work on children's singing games which convinced Sharp that England wasn't a land without music, but that folksong might still exist here.

I was extremely pleased, as we have very little on women (collectors or singers) in the magazine, so I was glad to have it on that score alone - apart from the fact that it is also well written and interesting.  It's a great pleasure to get contributions from writers of Georgina's distinction, and hope for further collaborations in the future.

14.5.01

HTML Coding article:

So, you will now find this piece available here, or via a link in the bottom section of the MT Home Page - under the first of the green divider lines . It is not a 'course' and doesn't include lessons or exercises, but it is - I hope - presented in a logical order, and if the reader follows it through, experimenting with the examples of code I've given, I'm reasonably sure s/he will emerge at the end with a fair level of competence at writing plain, simple HTML Web pages.  Little knowledge of the subject is expected, but I do assume a basic understanding of how to access files on a PC.

I hope that those of you who are interested in such things will find it helpful.

2.6.01

My Name is Napoleon Bonaparte review/article:

True to that intent - though with some trepidation - I'm pleased to be able to publish another long review, this time of the new double CD, My Name is Napoleon Bonaparte, from Frank Harte and Dónal Lunny.  The writer in this instance is the co-author of the much-acclaimed Rough Guide to Irish Music, Geoff Wallis - who is also an historian with a long-time interest in Ireland and political history.

As so often seems to be the case, Geoff was happy with the CDs, but not with the booklet notes.  As he comments: 'Since such notes have a tendency to enter the canon, it became necessary to challenge their contents.'  Readers with an interest in Napoleon, or with Irish history, should find the review a fascinating read.

7.7.01

Joe Rae - The Broom Blooms Bonny

Joe Rae is an exceptional man.  A joiner, who now lives near the small Ayrshire town of Beith, he carries with him a store of folksongs and stories that he inherited from his family and neighbours, including unique versions of classic ballads and ancient Celtic folktales.  Ayrshire is not well-known for its folk performers - certainly not as well-known as the North-East of Scotland - and Joe Rae represents a tradition that has all but vanished today.

Joe was born in 1937 into a community of rural farmworkers and shepherds who, for generations, had been responsible for their own entertainment.  Many of Joe’s songs came from his grandfather, John Rogerson, a shepherd who had worked in the Galloway Hills.  John learnt the rare ballad Achnachie Gordon from a fellow Scot whilst fighting in the Boer War.  Other ballads, such as William and Lady Marjorie and Katharine Johnston, came from another shepherd, Edward ‘Ned’ Robertson, who was retired and living in the village of Sorn when Joe knew him.

Many of Joe’s songs and ballads refer to local events - You’ll Gang tae the Pawn was learnt by a young Joe Rae in the ‘jiner’s shop’ where he was apprenticed, while Oor Young Lady relates to the Maxwell Family who have lived in Nithsdale since the time of the Scottish King David the 2nd (1329 to1371) - though some ballads, such as The Bonny Hind, are known throughout Europe.

The area around Beith is scattered with Gaelic place-names, so it should come as no surprise to hear Joe retelling some of his grandfather’s stories of mermaids and kelpies - malevolent underwater creatures - stories that are common to both Ireland and the West Coast of Scotland.

The Broom Blooms Bonny, Joe Rae’s first album, contains a choice part of Joe’s heritage.  It will be valued by all who love and appreciate Scottish traditional music and culture; and it is a significant document, and memorial, to a way of life seldom seen today.

The CD and 20-page booklet are priced at £12.00 inc p&p, and can be ordered via our Records page. As usual, the CD's Booklet Notes appear as an Article in these pages.

7.7.01

Eva Tagliani : la voce delle mascherate - booklet translation

Danny Stradling has now completed this challenging and lengthy task and her translation appears as an Article in these pages.  Now you can not only buy a CD of a superb ballad singer, but also read all about her and see her entire song texts, in English.

Reinstated articles:

Not an easy read in places - but something that everyone really needs to think long and hard about.  Do have a look.  And I hope you come to value it as much as I do.

Also, since the musics they deal with are mentioned in passing in the Keil article, I've reinstated John Harrison's Damn Society! ... an Introduction to Greek Rembetika and João Dos Santos' The Gangster Reformed ... a study in musical parallels, which looks at the Fado of Lisbon and the Tango of Buenos-Aires as well as the Rembetika of Athens.

Loads of interesting stuff for your summer reading!

28.8.01

Useful Addresses:

One result of this is that I tend to get a great many requests for information about where to buy the CD concerned ... since I have been foolish enough to include my contact details at the foot of every page.  Some three years ago, whilst spending far too many happy hours assembling the Traditional Discographies, I decided to include a list of what I hoped would be 'useful addresses' of record companies, distributors, shops, etc, to enable readers to find this information for themselves.  This has been kept up to date subsequently, as and when further contact info came to hand.  So it's a pity that most of the queries I receive concern information which can be found on the Useful Addresses page - it certainly takes up a considerable amount of my time, trying to find pleasant ways of saying "Well, why not look where I've already put the address you want?" to several people every week.

So - regulars will notice that I'm now including a note to this effect at the head of each review and the Latest Batch page, in an attempt to minimise these pointless requests a little.  I do realise that almost everyone who reads this present piece will already know how to find out the address of Rounder, Felmay or whoever - but could I ask you to spread the word about the Useful Addresses page to other, less frequent, readers?  They (or even you) might very well find something of interest - or actually useful - there.  To make it doubly easy, I've now put a link on the Home Page, too.

11.10.01

MT Cassettes:

18.10.01

Ray Andrews: Classic English Banjo (MTCD314)

Ray Andrews (1922-87) was a well known musician and entertainer in the Bristol area.  He learned to play the banjo from his father, who had been a boiler-man in the Navy in the First World War.  In the 1930s, Ray was sent as a boy to a teacher, Harold Sharp, who taught him to play in the classic style, a tradition which dates from the mid/late 19th century.  Ray won a talent contest at the Theatre Royal Bristol, and performed at variety shows as Bristol’s 'Boy Wonder banjo player'.

After the Second World War, he became a stalwart of the Bristol Banjo Mandolin and Guitar Club, whose band won many national competitions.  Ray was well known as a pub and working men’s club musician, and when the BMG orchestra declined, he worked with Erik Ilott (the Bristol Shantyman), and was also involved with a club band, The Swingers, and a charitable concert party, The Volunteers.  He taught others to play the banjo, and was interested in a wide range of music.  He recorded himself on countless cassette tapes, for his own amusement and for his musical friends.  Ray performed solo and with Erik Ilott at a number of Folk Festivals in the 1970s and 1980s and became known beyond the ‘classic’ banjo world.

This CD is made up of a number of Ray's own recordings, some private recordings made at festivals, a few studio tracks, and reissues from a cassette, Banjo Maestro, made in the late 1970s by Erik Ilott.  It illustrates Ray’s repertoire, both live and in the studio.  We hope you will agree that it gives a flavour of Ray’s approach - as an entertainer who enjoyed playing before an audience, most of whom were new to the English banjo tradition.  The CD contains 26 tracks, with a running time of 74 minutes, and is accompanied by a 24 page A5 booklet including a biography of Ray’s life, information on the musicians with whom he worked, and a section on the history of the ‘classic’ banjo in Britain and its origins.  Once again, we are able to offer a wealth of material otherwise unavailable on CD, much of which will be entirely new to most listeners.  As usual, the CD's Booklet Notes appear as an Article in these pages.

18.10.01

No more files moved to second site:

I won't promise, but I shall seriously consider moving all the old material back onto the main site and restoring the sound clips (totalling 20Mb) which had been removed.  A job for the New Year - if I still have me strength .......

8.12.01

Kevin and Ellen Mitchell: Have a Drop Mair - double CD

Readers of the CD reviews in Musical Traditions Internet Magazine will know that I, among others, have had cause to criticise the recordings of some of the younger generation of singers - people who are, like myself, to some extent products of the 'second British folk song revival', and of the folk club and festival scene.  In far too many cases the singer has come away from the traditional source having learned little beyond the text and a simple approximation of the tune.

But I am also aware that there are a good number of singers who share this heritage, yet are well able to be judged by the same criteria as traditional singers without being the losers by it.  For several years, it has been my intention to produce some CDs of such people, as well as of traditional singers - live people as well as dead ones!

However, intentions don't automatically translate into reality: some ideas had to be shelved because commercial labels were considering something similar; some didn't produce enthusiastic responses; and some, like this present one, took far longer than I had anticipated to bring to fruition.  This has been much more a function of the distance from Stroud to Glasgow than of any lack of enthusiasm on the part of Kevin, Ellen or myself - they have worked less frequently in the southern half of England than I was expecting, and I have travelled northwards rather less often than in the past.  For whatever reasons, it has been almost three and a half years since I first suggested the idea ...

Nonetheless, here we are with MT's first double CD from people who I don't wish to call revivalists - not only has it become a pejorative term, it's also inaccurate - successors might be better.  Call them or it what you will; I think it's a superb record!

As usual, the CDs' Booklet Notes appear as an Article in these pages.

Musical Traditions Virtual 5th Birthday!

Things soon changed, and we outgrew the AOL site in the first eight months - particularly after I found out how to do sound clips!  Two years with U-NET followed, and them a final change to our current ISP at NicNames, who have now made their site provision unlimited - so no more old files need be moved to the second site (see below).  The entire online magazine now amounts to almost 86Mb!

One of the many things I never dreamed of in 1996 was that I would become a record producer.  Keith Summers had produced a number of cassettes for MT, but I certainly wasn't thinking of making any more.  Then digital technology took a few strides forward and I found that I could afford the necessary kit to make CD-R publications, and after some help from Paul Marsh, that I could do the whole process myself, at home!  The result of that has been a total of 6 single CDs, 6 doubles and a CD-ROM.  Another double, a quadruple (truly!) and another CD-ROM are scheduled for early in 2002.  Plus there is a very exciting development currently being worked on - and which I'll tell you about in due course, once the details are ironed out.

So it only remains for me to wish you all a very Happy Christmas and an even better New Year than the last, and to assure you that I will do my best to live up to, or exceed, the standards we've set in the past.

22.12.01

George Dunn: Chainmaker double CD now out

Also, Volume 3 of The Complete Musical Traditions CD-ROM is now out, containing the entire output of the magazine - from the articles in the 'paper' editions of the magazine of 1983 onwards, right up to the last files uploaded to the Website on December 31st 2001.  It's an ideal way of accessing the bulk of MT without having to go online, contains a number of articles still not available on the Net, has all the sound clips, saves you a load of disc space (over 108Mb), and only costs a tenner!

Become a 'Toner Donor'

Put simply, empty laser printer toner cartridges and inkjet cartridges are used in the 'compatibles' market place and this scheme gives the Hospice at least 50% of their eventual resale value.  Thus you can help both the recycling movement and the Hospice at no cost to yourself!  I've signed up - and it occurred to me that, as you all have computers, there must be a great many toner and inkjet cartridges ending up in the dustbins of MT readers, which could easily be put to good use.

You can get FREEPOST envelopes for the inkjet cartridges and/or a bin for laser printer toner cartridges which will be collected free when full - or you can post either to me at my address below.  For the former, write to Envirocare, FREEPOST SWB 978, Bristol BS1 5ZZ, or you can contact St Peter's Hospice, Bristol Recycling on 0845 458 8822 or e-mail sph@tonerdonor.co.uk for further details of the scheme.

12.1.02

Outdated Links

May I ask all site owners with links on MT's Links page to check that your link goes to where it should, and to tell me if your URL is now different to what it was when you first asked me to include it.  If a reader tells me of an outdated link, it will be deleted - and I'll need convincing of your integrity before I reinstate it.

Competitions Nos 4 and 5

Reasons to be Cheerful

This household currently contains three avid fans of more-or-less everything the Coen Brothers have produced to date (we're talking films/movies here, not some little known klezmer combo - lest any of my readers with rather limited horizons should misunderstand).  A couple of years ago when the first UK reviews of O Brother Where Art Thou? began to appear, we were surprised to find an only moderately favourable review in the Guardian, and actually looked in a few other papers for something more positive; but to no avail.  Further, we discovered that the film had bombed in the States a few months earlier.

Working on the "Sod the critics, I'm sure we'll enjoy it" thesis which has proved reliable so often in the past, we went to see the film and were utterly delighted - most particularly with the sensitive and imaginative use of music (and folk music, at that!) as an integral part of the story.  Indeed, we felt that the music was, in truth, one of the main characters in the story.  This was particularly surprising in that not one of the several reviews we'd read had mentioned the music at all!

Naturally, we encouraged all our friends to go and see it - as did a great many other people, it seems - and before too long we began to hear that it was gaining some kind of underground cult status; popular despite all the critics had said.  Then the CD of the soundtrack came out; began to sell in millions; the film suddenly began appearing on Screen 1 of multiplexes all over the place; Gillian Welch became a star; and the next thing we know is that the CD has won a score of Grammies and other awards.  How nice the see the pyramidical hierarchy structure working in reverse for a change - pressure from the grass-roots finally filtering all the way up to the top!

(As an adjunct to that, do go and see the film Down from the Mountain if it's ever on anywhere near you.  After the O Brother soundtrack had been recorded, the Coens put on a couple of charity concerts by the performers concerned, and this is the film of one of those concerts, together with lots of stuff of the singers and musicians talking and playing together beforehand.  For the music lover, it's even better than O Brother.  The Cox Family, in particular, are absolutely superb.)

Then: an article appeared in the New York Times a couple of days ago.  It began:

On a mid-September day in 1959, an inmate in the Mississippi State Penitentiary named James Carter led some of his fellow prisoners in singing "Po Lazarus," a bluesy, melancholy old work-song about a man who is hunted and gunned down by a sheriff with a .44.  In the course of a long, hard life that followed, Mr Carter, a sharecropper's son, forgot about that day, the song, and the man who captured it on tape, Alan Lomax.  Until about two weeks ago, when two people visited him in his Chicago apartment to give him some amazing news - and a $20,000 check.

James Carter appears to have been one of the lucky few for whom the US penal system actually worked; after four spells in jail he managed to get back into ordinary life, settled down, married a preacher woman, and now lives quietly in moderate prosperity at the centre of a large family in Chicago.  The story of how Burnett and Anna Lomax found him is an unusual one in an industry rampant with tales of swindled royalties, corruption and stolen song credits - you can read the whole thing here.  My thanks to Derek Schofield for passing it on to me, and for making the world seem, if only momentarily, a much nicer place.

6.3.02

New MT CD-ROM

7.2.02

What do you think?

The next MT publication will be Volumes 1 & 2 of Far in the Mountains, Mike Yates' 4-CD Appalachian collection, and it will be ready quite soon.  We're intending to package these in a double DVD case (7½" x 5½") with the booklet included inside the case.

Both Mike and I think that this method of packaging is a considerable improvement on the current one:

• The CD and its booklet shouldn't get separated in the customer's home.
• I can use coated paper for the case graphics, and glossy for the booklet cover, resulting in near-photo quality printing.
• These DVD cases are slightly flexible, and should be more or less indestructible - no more cracked jewel cases or broken hinges.
• The new booklet is about 1" smaller, but narrower margins mean that the print size has only had to be reduced by 1 point.
• The new booklet will also be properly sheared to size, making it easier to flip through the pages without missing some, as is the case at present.

22.3.02

Far in the Mountains : Volumes 1 & 2 now available

Both CDs are full of excellent stereo recordings - 80 tracks, 150 minutes - of ballads, songs, tunes and stories, which Mike made in Virginia and North Carolina.  As usual, the complete booklet notes are available as an article in these pages, and ordering details and an Order Form are to be found on our records page.

25.4.02

Far in the Mountains : Volumes 3 & 4 now available

Both CDs are full of excellent stereo recordings - 58 tracks, 149 minutes - of ballads, songs, tunes and stories, which Mike made in North Carolina and Tennessee.  As usual, the complete booklet notes are available as an article in these pages, and ordering details and an Order Form are to be found on our records page.

Anyone purchasing all four volumes at the same time can do so at the Set price of £30.00

23.5.02

A Catalogue Sampler (MTCD319) now available

So it’s now almost exactly 4 years since MT started issuing CDs.  In that time a startling 31 discs (8 doubles, 6 singles, plus 4 CD-ROMS and a few peripherals) have emerged from my little wind-powered forge here in Stroud.  The recent change to a new packaging format (DVD case with integral booklet) prompted me to think that this 4th birthday might be a good time to publish a ‘sampler’ CD ... particularly as one track from each of the 22 records might just about fit on to an 80 minute disc!

The result has been A Catalogue Sampler - 25 tracks and 79 minutes of song, music and a story from: Bob Hart; Cyril Poacher; George Townshend; Walter Pardon; Wiggy Smith; Biggun Smith; Denny Smith; Daisy Chapman; Jim Wilson; Sarah Porter; Pop Maynard; Freda Palmer; Frank Hinchliffe; Joe Rae; Ray Andrews; Kevin Mitchell; Ellen Mitchell; George Dunn; Pug; Allen; Evelyn Ramsey; Doug Wallin; Cas Wallin; Benton Flippen.  All of the text for the accompanying 32 page internal booklet is drawn from those accompanying the CDs, suitably edited for this publication.

The selection has to be seen as nothing more than my current favourite tracks; at least one from each release and more from some - but I’ve made no attempt to be representative of any particular singer’s repertoire or style.  Even then it has been a very difficult selection and a number of lovely things from the several ‘various performers’ CDs have had to be omitted for lack of space.

A Catalogue Sampler (MTCD319) costs just £10, inc UK p&p.

My hope is that this full and inexpensive sampler may find a wider audience than any of the individual publications have, and may open a few eyes to the riches to be found within MT’s ‘small but very valuable catalogue’.

23.6.02

VotP Song Notes and Performers and Song & Tune indexes

Part Two is the song and tune notes themselves.  These are now complete, and you can find them in the new VotP Suite of pages which contain everything on the site relating to this 20-CD series - reviews, comments, interview, etc, in an interlinked, updated and re-edited format.  You'll find the whole thing in a new link off the Home Page.

15.9.02

Canti e Suoni d'Italia

The Canti e Suoni d'Italia CD contains selected performances from the 2002 Ponte Caffaro convegno internazionale sulla musica popolare, and is published by the same Compagnia Balarì e Sonadùr di Ponte Caffaro who delighted all who saw them at Sidmouth this year.  It has 19 tracks, plays for 71 minutes, and costs just £12.00.

And for those who didn't manage to buy one at Sidmouth, we also have the wonderful Pas en Amúr CD of the Ponte Caffaro carnevale ritual dances from martedi grasso (Mardi Gras) 1993 on sale at the same price.

2.10.02

New Records page layout

4.11.02

The return of sounds

The result should be considerably faster downloads of these older files.  I have left the old files in place on the ukonline site so that readers who have Bookmarked them won't be showering me with "Where's the xxx review gone, then?" e-mails.

In the process, I have generally tidied up the presentation of the older files, added the current logos, headers and bottom-of-page links common to all other MT pages.  Finally, I'm in the process of including the remainder of the old 'paper version' articles in the on-line magazine.  Most are now there, and the process should be complete by Christmas.

It will be almost inevitable that, somewhere in the process, I will have missed out on changing one or two links.  If any reader notices their browser being pointed to web.ukonline.co.uk for a page, please let me know where the offending link is.

16.11.02

Whoops!

Since this was obviously out of the question, I had to quickly start looking for an alternative home for MT - and found one at 1&1 Hosting which offered all the facilities and more than the previous one did, plus a 10Gb traffic limit, for about the same price.  The mustrad.org.uk domain name was transferred to them (rather more quickly that I had been told to expect) and then I found that I couldn't access the new site by FTP to upload the magazine's files!  My change to a new password had not been implemented, and it took several phone calls to discover the problem.

Anyway, I've now now uploaded the entire site - heartfelt thanks to Roger Grimes for the use of his broadband connection!  Please inform me if anything's not available or working properly.

Whilst doing all this uploading, I thought it would be sensible to include all the old articles from the 'paper' editions of MT (as mentioned below), so you should find that everything ever published here is now available, on-line, at the same site.  This should result in a much quicker access time for all the pages and, I hope, a better service for all our readers.

Oh - and while I'm at it - please do not use my old mustrad@ukonline.co.uk e-mail address any more; it doesn't get to me now.  Always use rod@mustrad.org.uk

10.12.02

New MT Records site with VISA and Switch payments

So - at last - I've got Credit/Debit Card purchasing facilities available on the Records pages.  These are now accessible from a new domain name - mtrecords.co.uk - so you can get directly to them by entering www.mtrecords.co.uk in your browser.  Alternately, the Records link anywhere in the magazine will take you there, as usual.

I should explain that, due to the additional costs which Credit/Debit Card purchasing incurs, plus the impending rise in UK postal rates, I can no longer include p&p costs in the catalogue prices of the CDs when bought using plastic - though they still are if you buy with a cheque or cash.  So - for Credit/Debit Card purchases only - £1.00 is added to the price of single CDs and £1.50 to doubles, to cover these costs.  This is still cheaper than most other sources of these and similar CDs, as far as I can tell.

Put very simply, cheque or cash is cheaper but less convenient and takes a day or two before I get your letter, while Credit or Debit Card is a little more expensive but is more convenient and I know about your order within seconds of your having placed it - the choice is yours.  In either case, I will post the CD(s) within 24 hours of knowing about your order.

Why not check out the new site now? ... I'm rather proud of it.  And you might just decide that there's something there you've been meaning to buy for some time - but somehow haven't got round to writing the letter.

14.1.03

From Puck to Appleby (MTCD325-6) now available

Jim and Pat have been working with me for the last few months in producing a double CD set (in a DVD case with internal 40-page booklet) including all 15 of the cassette tracks, plus 30 more from the same source.  I'm extremely pleased to announce that the result of our labours, From Puck to Appleby (MTCD325-6) is now available - and it really is superb!

As usual, the complete booklet notes, including tracklists, photos and sound clips, is now presented as an Article here.  The CDs are available for purchase by cheque, cash or Credit Card from our new Records website at www.mtrecords.co.uk priced £16.00 inc UK p&p.  There is a £1.50 surcharge for Card purchases, but it does include foreign p&p.

14.2.03

Joseph McLawrence article reinstated

So I promptly set about digitising it.  If only I'd had the modern software I now have back in 1999 when I did all the rest of the old articles ... it took about half an hour for the entire job!  So - other readers with an interest in such things will now find the Joe McLawrence article available in these pages.  I only hope I didn't miss any others.

20.3.03

Here's Luck to a Man ... (MTCD320) now available

Here's Luck to a Man contains additional material to the presently available Yates recordings on Topic's My Father's the King of the Gypsies (TSCD661).  For aficionados, 16 of the 39 tracks are by Mary Ann Haynes!

Like all our new releases, it comes in a DVD case with an integral 36 page booklet, and is priced at only £12.00.  You can order your copy, by cheque or credit/debit card, from the Records page.

3.4.03

Joe McLawrence with sound

So when he saw that I'd reinstated the Joe McLawrence article (see below), he asked whether I'd care to add some sound clips.  "They may be a bit rough", he added.  Well - if this is rough, give me excess of it!

There are now four examples of Joe's excellent playing included and - since the 'kwadril' tradition of St Lucia will probably be new to most readers - I do urge you to go to the article again and check it out ... lovely stuff!

15.4.03

More old pictures

However, the lamentable state of day-time TV has meant that he's not being idle, and several new MT CDs are in their compilation stages down in Southend.  But a dysfunctional CD player has temporarily put a brake on this activity and so I had a letter the other day saying "In the meantime I have been sorting out my photo archive and have pulled out the enclosed 'vintage' items for possible inclusion in the old Pictures Page."

No sooner the word than the deed - and you can now find these little gems in thumbnail and full-size form on the aforesaid Pictures Page.

27.6.03

Caption competition

15.4.03

"And I say I did hear horses!"  Henry Peacock - 20.7.03

Ritmia - forse il mare

The truly wonderful Italian/Sardinian quartet of Riccardo Tesi, Alberto Balia, Enrico Frongia and Daniele Craighead, first published forse il mare in 1986.  This may be the most effective attempt at making European traditional music accessible to the modern listener without recourse to pop or rock gimickry and, more importantly, without diminishing the original stuff in the slightest.

Believe me when I say that anyone, no matter what their tastes, will just love this record.

20.7.03

No more MT records through Topic

I would like to publicly thank Tony Engle and Dave Kuznetts of Topic for their help in this respect over the last four years, and hope that readers will realise that both Topic and fRoots magazine have been extremely generous towards MT since its move to the Internet, in offering assistance and facilities.  I would like to make it clear that this has been done not out of personal friendship to me, but out of a genuine love of the sort of music we support at MT.  I hope all readers will remember this and act accordingly the next time they hear someone disparaging either fRoots or Topic.

22.7.03

MT's American Old Time Music series now on CD

'Years rolled on since it happened' and we now find that he has run out of copies of some volumes - so the transfer process was started.  Moreover, I have recently bought a piece of noise reduction software which seems to do a pretty good job - given that we can't afford Cedar - and so I have cleaned up the original cassette tracks whilst digitising them.

The results are now available from the MT Records site at £10.00 each or £40.00 for the complete set of five - click on the 'Ex Cassette CDs' catalogue button.

The series comprises:

• MTCD101 - Push Them Clouds Away - Old Time Country Music 1924-38
• MTCD102 - Old Ship Sailing for the Promised Land - While Gospel Music 1926-38
• MTCD103 - Yearlings in the Canebreak - Texas Fiddle Music 1924-30
• MTCD104 - Where the Southern Crosses the Dog - Mississippi Fiddle Music 1928-35
• MTCD105 - John 'Seven Foot Dilly' Dilleshaw - Georgia Bust Down 1930

And Keith asks me to remind readers that he still has lots of copies of Reg Hall's wonderful book on Scan Tester, I Never Played to Many Posh Dances, available for only £5.00 inc p&p.

1.8.03

FAQ / Mirror pages removed

They were first published in the days of pay-as-you-go ISPs, small hard drives, and before the appearance of the MT CD-ROMs of the entire magazine.  Today, with most ISPs offering either free or unlimited access to the Net and so many people taking the Broadband option (several of which are quite a lot cheaper than BT's, by the way), most of the information in the FAQ has become redundant.  Similarly, I can't imagine anyone wanting to go through the complicated procedures of setting up a mirror of the site 'by hand' on their hard drive when using one of the many freeware programs available will do it all for them.  Or they can set Internet Explorer to 'Work Offline' - or they can get the whole magazine on a CD-ROM for just a tenner!

Accordingly I have now removed both the FAQ and the Mirror pages from the site.

18.8.03

P&P Charges on MT Records Site

Purchaces priced under £10 are charged 15% for 'Shipping'.  The only items under £10 are the Snatch'd from Oblivion CDs at £5 each; these (ordered singly) now attract a shipping charge of only 75p rather than the £1 they did before.  Any other order totalling (necessarily) £10 or more is charged at 10% for shipping.  The overall effect of these changes mean that small orders cost a little less than they did before; medium sized orders cost either the same or a little more; while larger orders can cost quite a bit less.  This more fairly reflects the actual system charges and additional shipping costs I incur for what are, in the main, orders from overseas.

I hope this meets with everyone's approval.

21.9.03

C J Bearman's Open Letter

1. Since I have publicly declared that the MT Letters page is open to all, it seemed to me that I should not refuse a request to publish a letter, even though I strongly disagreed with the views expressed in it.  I would rather not have a Letters page at all than have a censored one - I only draw the line at letters which I consider to be just plain silly.
2. I decided that, if I refused to publish the letter, he would probably manage to have it published elsewhere - perhaps in a medium where it would be more difficult for readers to publish their responses, at least, in any number and within a reasonable time-frame.
3. Since the three main targets of C J Bearman's letter are personal friends of mine, I was concerned that I might be being unfair to him in some way because of my own feelings, and so I agreed to remove his 'first draft' and replace it with the second, some 24 hours later.

He replied: 'Dear Mr Stradling, I have just read your e-mail.  I am at a loss to understand your attitude - it is not as though your website is overburdened with correspondence.  You just seem to want to shut up people with whom you disagree.  If you will not publish my letter, will you at least make public your refusal so that people will know how you deal with opposing points of view.'  So I have.

My own response to his Open Letter, which I thought better to withhold until others better qualified than me had had their say, was as follows:

Firstly to declare my own support for Malcolm Taylor, Georgina Boyes and Vic Gammon, and my distaste for this far-too-frequently employed tactic for gaining attention and academic kudos.  Secondly, to suggest that he has misunderstood the intention of Seeds of Love and the nature of the medium in which it appeared.  Thirdly to suggest that, however good Bearman's research (and I understand that it is very good), it is, I believe, entirely peripheral to the central understanding of Sharp's work - as is, I believe, all this discussion of his life, politics, motivations, strengths and weaknesses.  Particularly since most of them are mere reflections of the time and society from which he came, and should be fairly obvious to anyone examining his work with any seriousness.

Finally - and it's probably just this bloody Centenary - but I've been getting heartily fed up with all the stuff about Sharp recently.  What irks me is that nobody appears to have any interest in the people who sang for these collectors or, more importantly in my view, what they sang - the styles, the subtleties, the manner of performance - and how these reflected the subcultures within which they operated.

Because what I want to know about is how, why, when, where and with whom to sing these songs.  I want to know about ways of making the singing of these songs more effective, more communicative, more resonant - and the sort of situations we need to set up for these things to happen more easily ... today!

Frankly, the proportion of Sharp's singers who were working class, or whether the Morris Ring was Fascist, etc, is of very little interest to me at all.

22.9.03

Freddy McKay, Billy Harrison and Peta Webb cassettes now on CD

If you visit the MT Records website and click on the 'Ex-Cassette CDs' catalogue button, you will find them, priced £10.00 each, below the American Old Time releases, complete with links to track listings and reviews.

14.10.03

MT Records Site problems:

6.10.03

MT Discographies

You'll find, for instance, that the Leader catalogue is now both complete and in the right order, and details of the numbering system are explained and, I hope, clarified.  Thanks Alistair.

16.10.03

More new old pictures

Keith Summers has also discovered an interesting picture of a Very Important Person - it's the top right-hand thumbnail on the Pictures page.

Enjoy!

7.11.03

Only 40 Shopping Days to Christmas

Well, it may not be such a new idea - but it's new to MT!  You can now send that friend/relative who always says "Oh yes, I like folk music,too" whenever you're unwise enough to mention your tastes in music - and who you know very well has nothing but that 1974 Spinners album in their collection - an MT Gift Vulture Voucher, and bring them some of the real thing this Christmas.

MT Gift Vouchers are available in £5, £10, £12 and £16 values, and in two flavours: turquoise (above), which cost their face value and include p&p for the UK; and pink, which cost £1.00 more and include p&p for the rest of the world.  I should stress that these Gift Vouchers are only redeemable against Musical Traditions CD-Rs and/or CD-ROMs and Snatch'd From Oblivion CD-Rs.  They do not exchange for Topic, UWVP, Kyloe, Italian, or any other labels whose CDs we offer in the MT Records catalogue.

They will be available by post from me at the address below, and each will be accompanied by a sheet listing the CDs with which they may be exchanged, and simple instructions for their use.  The recipients of your generosity may, of course, send me an additional cheque, should they wish to buy a more expensive item, or more than one.

Please use this special

to make life simpler.

Seriously - you probably all have someone for whom you ought to buy a present, and who might well like one of the MT CDs, but you're not sure which.  Make their day with an MT Gift Token - and don't forget to get a pink one if they live outside the UK.

As a further aid to would-be purchasers, the whole MT Records catalogue is now available in both PDF and HTML formats on a CD, so you can print it off for friends/relatives without Net access.  It's free, too!

16.11.03

Older MT CDs begin the move to DVD cases

Having found it not to be too arduous a process, I have decided that I'll be doing the same for all the MT CDs as the current shelf stocks run out and I need to make more.

Currently both the Bob Hart and George Dunn CDs are available in DVD cases, and others will follow as time and sales permit.

1.12.03

Season's Greetings!

This year has been a little calmer than the previous two.  Although fourteen CDs have emerged from my little wind-powered forge in 2003 (two doubles, nine singles and a CD-ROM), eight of those singles have been CD re-issues of the old MT Cassettes, and so have not required anything like so much work as new productions do.

It has also been a great relief to find that our web host (1&1 Internet) have not sprung any unexpected horrors on me (as the previous lot did), and so the magazine has been able to develop gently and steadily - and seemingly without too many glitches.

It's always tempting to use this message to tell you about new things in the pipeline but, since these are almost always dependent upon the co-operation of others, I've become a little wary of saying too much in advance in case that co-operation fails to materialise.  However, I think I can say that a double CD of Irish songs from Jim Carroll and Pat Mackenzie's collection looks pretty certain - this is being produced in collaboration with Dublin's Goilín Club.  We are also hoping to have a couple of releases from Keith Summers' extensive collection out in the not too distant future.  Watch this space!

Looking back over the year's News items, it's profoundly depressing to see how many great traditional performers have died recently - Fred Jordan, Jasper Smith, Will Atkinson, Bob Hobkirk, Paddy Tunney, Snake Chapman, Donald MacLellan ... to name just a few.  And we shouldn't forget important collectors like Alan Lomax and Roberto Leydi.  All of which sad news just serves to remind me that, aside from the CD releases mentioned above, I don't have a single new CD project featuring a traditional performer in the production pipeline at the moment; ie. nothing from a collector with whom we have not already collaborated.

So, may I suggest a really worthwhile New Year's resolution for 2004?  If you know anyone who might have old tapes sitting in their attic, see if you can persuade them to contact me with a view to getting them out on CD, so the rest of the world can share them.

It only remains for me to wish you all a very Happy Christmas and an even better New Year than the last, and to assure you that I will do my best to live up to, or exceed, the standards we've set in the past.

24.12.03

New Volume 5 Magazine CD-ROM now available

For anyone who's not tried it before, the CD-ROM is a really good way of having all the 266Mb of the magazine instantly to hand, with no ISP charges and no waiting for downloads - a very pleasant user experience.  Everything is presented as Web pages, exactly the same as on the Net - so you already have all the software required, and you know how to navigate to what you want.

Just pop a tenner in the post to me, or go to the MT Records website if you want to use a Credit/Debit Card, and yours will be on its way to you the same day.  You know it makes sense!

1.1.04

Friends of MT

When I started producing CDs of traditional music in 1998, I decided that it was pay-back time and offered substantially reduced prices to Friends wanting to buy the records.  Almost inevitably, this produced problems.  Some of them didn't ask for the special prices and, if I didn't remember that they were Friends, they got charged the full amount.  Then I had to contact them again to explain and say that they now had a credit against their next purchase - and if they didn't buy something else in the near future, it probably got forgotten again by one or the other of us.

But by the year 2000 it became apparent that I was making far more CDs than I'd expected to be, and that the profits from these made any further contributions from Friends unnecessary.  I duly pointed this out in an Editorial and donations became less frequent.  The last one was made almost a year ago.  It is also impossible to make provision for special prices for bona fide Friends on the MT Records website.

So may I now suggest that the Friends of MT scheme has ended as of 31st December 2003?  For anyone wishing to contribute towards the future of the magazine and its record company (and who doesn't feel able to do so by writing reviews, articles, etc) may I suggest that you buy a few more MT Records CDs.  That way, we all benefit.

14.1.04

Alphabetical articles

Accordingly, I have now added an alphabetical version of the Articles Index, accessible from the Home Page, in the hope that this will make life easier for everyone.

3.2.04

Changes on the MT Records website

11.3.04

The Hardy Sons of Dan

Even more of a shock was the sheer quality of what was on offer!  Anyone who was impressed by Seán Corcoran's Here is a Health cassette will be sure to enjoy what Keith has put together from his six years of intermittent working in the north of Ireland: 1977-1983 recordings of 14 singers from Fermanagh and surrounding areas.  It includes the likes of Maggie Murphy, Phil McDermott, James and Paddy Halpin, Mary Ann Connolly, Big John Maguire ... and is titled The Hardy Sons of Dan - football, hunting and other traditional songs from around Lough Erne's shore

I would hasten to assure more sensitive souls that it is the 'other traditional songs' which comprise the great majority of the 37 tracks, and that there are only two football and four hunting songs included - but all are excellent examples of the genre.  (The 'Hardy Sons' were the ‘Drumlane Sons of O'Connell’ a Gaelic Football team, formed in 1886, and named after Daniel O’Connell [1775-1847] the Kerry-born politician known as ‘The Liberator’ who founded the Catholic Association in 1823, aiming to secure Catholic Emancipation in Ireland.)

As usual, it comes in a double DVD case with a very informative 40-page integral booklet including lots of colour photos and full song texts.  The CDs can be bought from me at the address at the foot of the page, or by credit/debit card from the MT Records website, priced £16.00 inc UK p&p.  The booklet contents are also available online here as an article.

12.3.04

An on-site Search Engine for MT

Actually, it's a good question!  The answer is really to do with the fact that there are so many pages - and most of them, being a bit larger that the web average, contain quite a number of things which ought to be found in a Search.  Add to this the fact that I like to be able to make things work the way I want them to - which has meant that I've not considered any of the 'off-site' search engines available (many of which seem very slow).

But technology does advance, and a recently introduced product, called AeroTags Search Expert, appears to do the job I require.  It indexes only the parts of the MT site I want it to, and stores it, together with the interrogatory engine, as a couple of Java files on the site itself.  This enables me to adjust the way it behaves exactly to my requirements - making the files you're most likely to want appear at the top of the search results, just as Google does.  It also seems to be pretty quick about it.

So - you'll now find a 'Search the Entire Site' button at the head of the Home page ...  See Part 2 (above) for the current situation.

1.4.04

MT's on-site Search Engine - Part 2

So you'll now find four buttons: 'Search the Magazine'; 'Search the Articles'; 'Search the Reviews'; and 'Search the Discographies', at the head of the Home page.  Click any one of them and you get a blank page with a Search box at the top (plus Help and Back links).  Type a word or phrase (see * below) in the box and click the 'Search' button, or hit the Enter key, and you'll quickly be presented with a list of the first 10 matches found.  The output is very like the Google one: it tells you the number of matches on this page; the total number of matches; how many pages of 10 there are; and details of each match.  These include a Title of the page, the 'hits' this item scores, a Description, and the URL of the page concerned.  Both the first and last of these are hyperlinks to the page found.

Regarding the 'hits' mentioned above: if your search word(s) occurs in the 'title', it scores 4; in the 'description', 2; elsewhere in the text ('other') just 1.  The results are displayed in descending order of hits - so the most likely suspects come at the top of the list.

* Regarding your 'search phrase'.  Firstly, it is case insensitive.  Secondly, you can imagine that the ballad 'The Two Brothers' would throw up thousands of instances of these three words; only a few of which would be relevant to you.  In this case - where you're looking for a whole phrase rather than several individual words - put a + sign before the first, thus: '+two brothers'.  Then you should find what you're looking for quite easily.

Like most Search Engines, the links take you to the page within which your search word/phrase has been found; it is then up to you to find it.  Since many of our pages are pretty big, the best course of action is to then use the browser's Find facility - Ctrl+F or Edit/Find (on this page) will do it for you.

I have not indexed the contents of stand-alone single pages or the more obvious Index Pages (like Links, Sessions, Small Ads, etc) because you can see what they contain immediately.

As usual - if you have any problems, please let me know about them.

20.4.04

Enter Java!

On the MT Records pages, I've added pop-ups to display the track listings of all our CDs and a drop-down calalogue list, while in the magazine itself there are now a few headers with drop-down menus replacing the old lists of content items which used to disappear from view as soon as you scrolled down the page.  The Reviews Index page is a little different, too - the Latest Batch is automatically displayed, and the various geographical Index pages are available from the drop-down menu.

I hope these additions will enhance the ease of use of the website.

14.5.04

Another Ballads Index

It is described by its authors as 'an annotated bibliography of the folk songs of the English-speaking world' and uses the pleasingly broad definition of a ballad - songs in which things happen!  Unlike Roud, it is an Internet resource, and so it is free to access, and its on-line search implementation at: www.csufresno.edu/folklore/BalladSearch.html is fast and easy to use.

A valid criticism of almost any reference work is 'incompleteness' and - like Roud - it does have holes in its data set.  However, being created on opposite sides of the Atlantic, each have different areas of incompleteness, and so each is a useful adjunct to the other.  They also treat their base data in different ways: with Roud you're given numerous instances of the occurrence of a single song and have to make your own interpretation of the data; with Waltz, you get a digest of the data in a single coherent statement about the particular song.  Depending on the song and how much is known about it, some items can be quite lengthy - and extremely interesting, containing as they do comments by members of the team regarding the provenence and history of the songs.

As well as the on-line search, users can download the complete Index as an HTML file.  This is merely all the entries in an alphabetically sorted list, so it is pretty big - over 8MB!  On it's own, it isn't particularly useful unless you're prepared to do a great deal of scrolling up and down to find what you want.  Accordingly your editor - ever eager to be of use to humankind - has devised a little support application (also in HTML) which minimises the task and so makes the Index file rather simpler to use.

Simply put, it displays a horizontally split screen (the split-point is dragable) with all the song titles in the top half of the screen, and the Index in the bottom.  All the titles are hyperlinked to the appropriate point in the Index.  Since the titles file is much smaller (only 10,437 lines rather than the 105,035 lines in the Index), it's far easier and quicker to find the title of the song you need.  In addition, there's a set of A to Z buttons at the top of the upper window.  Click on the, say, D button and the Titles file jumps to the start of the titles beginning with D, thus minimising the scrolling you need to do.  Then you merely click on the title in the top window and the Index immediately jumps to the appropriate entry in the bottom one.

If you'd like to try the accessory (it's only 4 files - in a 212Kb ZIP file) it's downloadable here - together with instructions as to how to set it up in the Read-Me file.

14.5.04

Scan Tester book

These are available from me at the very reasonable price of £5.00 inc p&p, or from the MT Records website.

16.5.04

A Singers' Songbook

So the Songbook now exists, and contains some six songs - most of them ballads or ballad-type narrative songs.  You can have a look at what we've done here (the URL is: www.mustrad.org.uk/songbook/s_index.htm), and you'll also find a link on our Home Page - down at the bottom, below the first green line.

All the contributors (both putative and actual) have expressed great enthusiasm for the project so - if you're a singer - you might find it interesting too.

23.6.04

The Birds Upon the Tree

In the process of publishing its review, by Keith Chandler, yesterday, I realised, with some horror, my mistake.  So - better late than never ...

MT is pleased to announce it's latest CD publication - The Birds Upon the Tree ... and other traditional songs and tunes (MTCD333).  It comprises a further selection from the Mike Yates Collection, featuring Fred Jordan, Packie Manus Byrne, George Fradley, Charlie Bridger, Scan Tester & Rabbidy Baxter, Archer Goode, George Spicer, Bob Blake, Debbie & Pennie Davis, Freda Palmer, Harry Cockerill, Ray Driscoll, Jacquey Gabriel, Alice Francombe, Ivor Hill & family.  22 of the 27 tracks are previously unreleased.

As usual, it comes in a DVD case with a 24 page integral booklet, and costs just £12.00  The complete booklet notes are published as an article in these pages.

11.11.04

Around the Hills of Clare CD now available

This is a compilation of songs and a recitation from Jim Carroll and Pat Mackenzie's 1973-2004 recordings of 16 singers from west Co Clare, and includes Tom Lenihan, Nora Cleary, Straighty Flanagan, Ollie Conway, Martin Howley ...

Not only is this our second collaboration with Jim and Pat (From Puck to Appleby was the first), but also our second collaboration with another record company (the first being with both Topic and Cló Iar Chonnachta, over the Joe Heaney double CD, back in 2000).  In this case we are working with Dublin's An Góilín traditional singers' club, so the CDs also bear the number Góilín 005-6.  We did the booklet and packaging, they did the CDs and production/printing.  They are selling them in Ireland, whilst we deal with the 'rest of the world' from the MT Records website.

The CDs come in the familliar DVD case together with a 44-page integral booklet.  You get 2 CDs, with 47 tracks in total, and 156 minutes of singing - and a recitation! - all for just £16.00 inc. p&p.

The complete booklet notes will be available here as an Article in the near future.

1.12.04

Keith Summers' missing LPs

During the course of the removal from Essex to Merseyside, the removals firm which Peta and Fred employed managed to 'lose' two crates of blues LPs ... and then to deny that they had done so.  Fortunately, Keith had been meticulous in his collecting, and had all the records' details entered in a database, so it was very easy to prove that some records (some 400 records actually) had not been delivered to Fred's house, and to give the precise details of what they were.  Since they were blues records, they have a real and readily disposable value, so it appears very likely that they have been stolen rather than simply lost in transit.  Unfortunately, since the removals company will not admit to a theft - or even a loss - Fred cannot go to the Police about the case without some proof of criminality.

This is where you come in; those readers who collect blues and similar records, or who frequent second-hand record stores, websites, fairs, etc, are asked to read Fred's appeal in Recent Letters, to print out the list of 'missing' LPs accessible by a link there, and keep an eye open for any of them in your travels.  If you do come across anything suspicious-looking, please contact Fred with the details he asks for.  If nothing else, it may enable him to bring the thieves to justice, and to sue the removals firm - who are being completely obstructive of this matter.

Please do all you can to help bring this sickening affair to a rather happier conclusion than is presently the case.

6.12.04

Season's Greetings!

2004 has been a fairly quiet year, all told.  After some pretty hectic activity in the first three months to get Keith Summers' Hardy Sons of Dan published whilst he was still here to see it (thanks particularly to Geoff Wallis, Finbar Boyle and Peta Webb for all their hard work), things seemed to get very quiet after his death at the end of March.

I then had another busy patch in late-summer, working on the Jim Carroll and Pat Mackenzie compilation, Around the Hills of Clare.  We were trying to meet a deadline for a launch at the Milltown Malbay singing weekend in October ... I managed my bit but, sadly, technical problems in Ireland resulted in it being a week or so late.  This was followed, almost immediately by the Mike Yates compilation, The Birds Upon the Tree.  I've been getting my breath back since then ... and am only working on three projects simultaneously at the moment!

On the Magazine front, things have also been fairly quiet.  There have been about 70 Reviews and 16 Articles added to the site this year - around two thirds of the normal number.  This has been partly due to the paucity of releases of traditional material this year, and partly because the pool of writers I'm able to call upon has been slowly but surely dwindling.  Were it not for Roly Brown's sterling efforts on 19th century ballads, things would have been in a sorry state.  Fewer people have volunteered new Articles or Enthusiasms ... more people have failed to review the CDs and books I've sent them.  I'm not sure of the reasons for this trend, but it's certainly an alarming one.

Looking to the future, it's always tempting to use this message to tell you about new things in the pipeline but, since these are almost always dependent upon the co-operation of others, I've become a little wary of saying too much in advance in case that co-operation fails to materialise.  And perhaps because most of the CDs where ready co-operation has been available have already entered MT Records' catalogue, it seems far more difficult to get projects finished these days without months (years, even!) of struggling against logistical and institutional difficulties.

However, I think I can say that a double CD of Aberdeenshire singer Lizzie Higgins looks pretty certain - as do the other two I'm presently working on.  I mentioned in last year's Christmas Editorial that we were hoping to have some releases from Keith Summers' extensive collection out in the not too distant future.  The Hardy Sons of Dan was the first, and my stated intention remains true but, obviously, Keith's untimely death has meant that his records are now much more difficult, and slower, to produce, particularly in terms of the booklets' contents.  Two new releases in Keith's Old-Time Country Music '100' series are currently being worked on by Tony Russell, and I hope they will materialise during the first half of 2005.  CDs memorialising Keith's Suffolk collecting will definitely appear, but I can't even begin to envisage a time-scale for their release at this stage.

It only remains for me to wish you all a very Happy Christmas and a better New Year than last, and to assure you that I will do all I can to live up to, or exceed, the standards we've set in the past.

24.12.04

New Volume 6 Magazine CD-ROM now available

For anyone who's not tried it before, the CD-ROM is a really good way of having all the 215Mb of the magazine instantly to hand, with no ISP charges and no waiting for downloads - a very pleasant user experience.  Everything is presented as Web pages, exactly the same as on the Net - so you already have all the software required, and you know how to navigate to what you want.

Just pop a tenner in the post to me, or go to the MT Records website if you want to use a Credit/Debit Card, and yours will be on its way to you the same day.  You know it makes sense!

2.1.05

New MT Records Catalogue Sampler now available

That original sampler featured one track from each of the 22 records then published, plus a few extra tracks to fill up an 80 minute CD.  Since then another four doubles and a single have been added to the catalogue, so this new 2005 version includes examples from the complete list.

My hope is that this full and inexpensive CD may find a wider audience than any of the individual publications have, and may open a few eyes to the riches to be found within MT's catalogue.

Test-drive 'some of the best collections available of traditional music' available from the MT Records wesite ... one hour and twenty minutes worth for only a tenner!

10.3.05

Revamped What's New Page

Accordingly, I have now set out the page as a chronological list, with the most recent new or changed file at the top, and with each item having its date beside it.  You can see what I mean here.  New items will now always appear at the top of the list, and those older than a couple of months will drop off the bottom as time passes.  In addition, I have decided to reinstate the two Discographies and Links page in this listing when appropriate.

I hope that readers will find this arrangement far more helpful in keeping up to date with the site as a whole - even if it does now involve more work for me!

11.3.05

Articles Renumbered

It's a long story, but basically it was because: firstly, several articles have been removed from the site when they have subsequently been commercially published; and secondly, because all the 'old' articles from MT's 'paper' days have been added, two or three at a time, during the period 2000 to 2003.  These were all scanned from the originals and converted into HTML back in 2000 and given appropriate numbers then, but these did not necessarily fit into their chronological position in the Articles Index page.  Nor did simply counting the number of files in the Articles directory tell me exactly how many there were, since several of the bigger articles have three or four files each, and many have more than one.

So I've now renumbered all the articles to match the order in which they have been added to the website, and am able to tell you that there are exactly 154 of them.  Do I hear mutterings of "Get a life!"?

14.3.05

Folk Music Journal's future under discussion

But I heard some news today that got me wondering.  Readers may have noticed that my recent review of The Bismarck's new CD included the line '... when I'd again taken up the membership I resigned some 40 years ago!'  The membership concerned was that of the EFDSS.

And now sources close the Society inform me that its National Committee will be looking into the future of the FMJ.  It seems that at a recent meeting they have agreed to let the next issue be printed, but the following issues look as though they could be on-line only.  This, only a couple of days after receiving the minutes of the AGM, wherein I was informed that subscription rates are set to rise next year.

Knowing the general mind-set of MT readers, I guess that most will feel that their annual copy of the FMJ is pretty central to their investment in the EFDSS, and that its removal to an on-line-only availability might well make then think twice about renewing their subscriptions thereafter.  They would certainly feel that this change of medium ought to be reflected in a commensurate fall in the subscription rate.  And what about those Society members who don't have, or want, a computer and Internet access?  Rather obviously, as the editor of an on-line-only magazine, I have no objection in principal to the FMJ's being published in this way but, clearly, since the costs of so doing will be almost nil, I would expect the EFDSS subscription rate to fall accordingly.  Moreover, I know very well that many - even most - people do like to have a physical book to refer to and keep on their shelves along with all their other reference materials.

I hear that the FMJ's Editorial Board are 'up in arms about it' and that mass resignations may be in the offing - and I can't say I'm surprised.  I wonder what other people think?

For my part, I shall be writing to Jerry West, Chairman of the NC, (at: jerry.west@ntlworld.com), raising my concerns.  Maybe some of you will wish to do the same?

16.3.05

Lizzie Higgins photos?  Please help!

Exactly why I cannot fathom, but no one I have asked seems to have any.  All the obvious sources who don't want commercial fees have been approached, but only Derek Schofield has been able to provide me with any at all.  I had been pinning my hopes on Lizzie's husband, but his house suffered a break-in last year and, inexplicably, his photos were amongst the things stolen.

So, the time has come for a more general cry for help; if anyone out there has any photos of Lizzie - particularly from her earlier years, pre-1975 - please let me know.  I can now scan both negative strips and slides, as well as actual photos, and will guarantee to post them back to you within 24 hours of their receipt.

Alternately - if you don't want to trust them to the Post, and have the ability to scan them yourselves - please do so at 300dpi, in colour (even if they're monochrome), and save them as TIFF files.  Your assistance will be greatly appreciated.

4.4.05

Re: Jim Carroll and Pat Mackenzie's letter

This is particularly true in the case of MT, since it is really the only one of its kind, and people are unsure of how 'heavy' or invasive my editing is.  Generally, it's as light as possible; if I foresee problems I discuss them with the writer - as I did with Geoff Wallis in this instance - but I leave the final decision with him/her since, as MT's Home Page states 'The views expressed in all articles, reviews, etc, are those of the author of each piece, not of the Editor.'

When I'm sent a CD for review I have to make a decision about who to send it to.  I send it to the person I believe is best capable of writing that particular review.  My first choice in the case of Around the Hills of Clare would have been Tom Munnelly - but he was ruled out by his involvement in the project anyway.  My second choice was Geoff Wallis, whose knowledge of Irish music is first-rate.

I had no idea that Geoff would find fault with the CD's booklet, since my knowledge of Irish music is pretty basic.  Nor was I able to suggest the correction of any of the errors he mentioned, when I was designing the booklet, for that very same reason.

Jim and Pat say that Geoff has his facts wrong.  If so, I'm sure plenty of people will be writing to correct him ... and I will publish their letters.  Debate is always beneficial.

Jim and Pat have told me that all the other reviews Around the Hills of Clare has received have been glowing - so, in a way, I'm glad of my ignorance, since I might have been tempted to send it to someone less knowledgeable in order to secure another glowing review - which would have been a disservice to us all!  If there are errors, then it's the job of a competent reviewer to point them out ... no one is going to learn anything by ignoring them.

As an editor, I can merely select what I consider to be a suitable reviewer ... and then print what s/he writes, without censorship - even when it's uncomfortable to do so!

And it was particularly uncomfortable to print Jim and Pat's letter exactly as written - as they asked me to do (though I did add their names to the end of it, since they had omitted to do so) - with what amounts to a downright libel regarding my own involvement in the project ... but I did, without the censorship they suggest I should have applied to Geoff's review.

They say 'Originally we undertook to put together 'Around The Hills of Clare' on behalf of The Goilín Singers Club in Dublin. At the request of the editor, and with some difficulty, we brought Musical Traditions on board.'  This is quite untrue.

Mike Yates, in his review of our previous collaboration, From Puck to Appleby, wrote 'Jim and Pat now have a large collection of recordings.  From Puck to Appleby is only the tip of the iceberg.  Is there any chance that there will be follow-up CDs?  I certainly hope so.'  I agreed with his comment, and so subsequently asked Jim and Pat whether there was anything else we could work on together.  They told me of the West Clare project they were just starting with the Góilín Club.  Jim also asked me for details of how to set out the DTP format for the DVD case booklets I use, and I sent him a very comprehensive guide to doing that.  Later I was asked if I would undertake to do the whole presentation side of the project in collaboration with them and the Góilín Club.  Discussions ensued with the Góilín's Jerry O'Reilly, and it was agreed that I would produce the booklet, case cover and record labels in PDF format for their printer, whilst they would handle the CD side of things and the eventual manufacture of the finished product.  It would be published as a joint Góilín and MT publication, and I would receive some free copies to sell.  To reiterate - the Góilín asked me to help with the project!

Their letter goes on 'To say that we now feel that our trust has been betrayed would be an understatement!'  I have a coinsiderable number of e-mails both from Jim and Pat and Jerry, praising my layout, thanking me for my work, and expressing their gratitude for getting it done so quickly.  No indication of any 'betrayal of trust' to be found.  Indeed, I don't quite understand of what this 'trust' might consist.  I was asked to design the project's paperwork; I did so - to the evident satisfaction of all concerned.  I was never asked to ensure that the finished product should receive a glowing review in MT - nor could I have possibly agreed to do so!

Naturally, I would have prefered that the review had praised it unreservedly (it is, after all, a very good pair of CDs of some lovely singing) - but things don't always work out as we'd hope in this life.

25.4.05

No more Topic sales from MT Records website

Accordingly, all the Topic items will be removed from the MT Records website as of today.  Readers can buy them very easily (and sometimes more cheaply) from: www.topicrecords.co.uk/acatalog/index2.html

I would like to thank Tony and Dave at Topic for their help and collaboration over the years - and to let readers know that three new CDs in their World Series have just been released.

5.5.05

Re: Around the Hills of Clare correspondence

However, as Editor, I feel it is legitimate for me to make my own point of view clear - and without any bitchery, I hope!

I consider Geoff Wallis's review to have been that of someone thoroughly disappointed by aspects of a production he had otherwise greatly enjoyed.  I don't see anything dishonest or partial in it, and I believe its criticisms were the result of a desire to put the record straight regarding the many inaccuracies and conjectures included in the booklet.

Further, almost all paper and internet 'folk music' magazines seem to eschew critical comment these days; whether this is through concern for their advertising revenues or through simple ignorance, I do not know.  One result of this is that a great deal of nonsense is published in CD booklets, and passed off as 'fact' to the general public.  This was particularly the case with a couple of recent 'historical' recordings we have had to criticise, where the often ill-informed and sometimes, frankly, racist booklet notes were described as 'a great history lesson' in one magazine!

I also consider that Jim Carroll and Pat Mackenzie are far too ready to attribute personal motives to criticism.  They cite a difference of opinion in the past between Geoff and Jim as the motivation for the negativity of the review.  This competely ignores the very positive review Geoff gave to their previous From Puck to Appleby CD in fRoots.

The subsequent correspondence published in the Letters page has not, in my opinion, refuted any of Geoff's claims regarding the booklet's contents to any significant degree - which makes me assume that they were largely correct.  If so, I see no reason why Geoff should be pilloried for revealing other peoples' inadequacies - indeed, this is one of his jobs as an MT reviewer (see our Policy page).

Finally, I'd like to do what, perhaps, others should have done - and say "Thank you" to Geoff Wallis for making me a little more knowledgeable than I was before about Irish music.

8.5.05

MT magazine and Keskidee back-copies now available from MT Records' website

I have around a dozen each of Musical Traditions Nos 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12, and Keskidee Nos 1, 2 and 3.  The magazines are priced at just £2.00 each, and the Scan Tester book at £5.00 - and when these are gone, that will be it!  Collectors items at knock-down prices!

Since all these items belong to the estate of the late Keith Summers, not MT Records, all the proceeds of their sale will go to the Keith Summers Memorial Fund - which promotes the Festival and other good causes.  Thus I have to ensure that proceeds are kept separate - which is so much easier to do when I have electronic records of the sales.  Accordingly, these magazines and book will be available only via the website by credit/debit card purchase.

23.5.05

Postage rate increases

The most recent rate increase (April 2005) didn't initially seem much worse that previous ones, but it has become apparent that, at the heavier end of the scales, and particularly for overseas deliveries, the increases are really quite substantial.  I have just returned from Stroud Post Office having sent a 'Small Packet' to the USA, weighing only 1.4Kg and containing magazines and CDs worth just £28.60 ... yet I was required to pay £13.70 in postal charges!  This cannot go on!

So it's been necessary to increase the 'Shipping' rates on the MT Records website by a further 5%.  Sorry about this, but there seems no real alternative.

Be aware - for purchasers living in the UK, paying by cheque and using the printable Order Form is now a substantially cheaper option.

10.6.05

Cantometrics: a response

We tend to assume that the Internet means instant communication - but then forget than there is so much information there that it's the simplest thing in the world to miss it completely ... for years!  This was the case here; Fred McCormick's article on Cantometrics appeared as Article No.002 in the new on-line version of MT back in 1997 - yet Victor only saw it for the first time last month!

He was impressed, saying 'It's an excellent piece of work and deserves a thoughtful, if belated, response'.  So I'm very pleased to tell you that his commentary on Fred's original article now appears as a new article in these pages.

Victor went on to say 'I've recently become interested in Cantometrics again thanks to certain new developments in genetic anthropology.  Many things which had puzzled Lomax and myself about the distribution of musical styles worldwide are now making sense, thanks to the ability of these researchers to reconstruct some of mankind's earliest migrations from strands of DNA' and pointed me to a web page where he outlines some of the ideas he's been developing.

Whilst I'm no academic myself, I have to tell you that (assuming I've understood the somewhat technical nature of his arguments correctly) there are some truly earth-shattering ideas emerging from the work he's been doing with various genetic anthropology researchers.  And I promise you that 'earth-shattering' is not an exaggeration!  What's more, he has agreed to try to put together a user-friendly, non-academic version of it in the not-too-distant future, for publication in MT.  Watch this space!

24.7.05

Scan Tester books sold out

Remember, these magazines are available only via the website by credit/debit card purchase.

9.7.05

Re: Scan Tester books

25.7.05

New MT Stephen Baldwin CD

It contains all the 59 known recordings of Gloucestershire's Stephen Baldwin - village and Morris dance fiddler.  The 28-page booklet contains pretty-well all that is known about him and his family, as well as some information about his musical neighbours in the Forest.  There are also 13 photos, including three previously unpublished ones from 1947, and an examination of Baldwin's unique fiddle style.

As Philip Heath-Coleman writes in the booklet: 'Not only do these recordings provide a wonderful snapshot of the playing of a traditional fiddler with a repertoire which predates both the age of recording and broadcasting and exposure to the influences of more formal forms of music and musicianship, but they also preserve the interface between the more static and conservative forms of country dance music for interactive sets of dancers, which were already moribund, and more dynamic and innovative forms of music for solo (and fundamentally exhibitionist) dancers, exemplified by hornpipes and the step dancing they were inextricably associated with'.

No one interested in English fiddling can afford to be without this CD and its excellent booklet - priced £12.00 inc UK p&p, from: www.mtrecords.co.uk

25.7.05

New MT Songs from the Golden Fleece CD

In 2001, Musical Traditions Records published what I described as 'our first CD from people who I don't wish to call revivalists - not only has it become a pejorative term, it's also inaccurate - successors might be better'.  That was the double CD from Kevin and Ellen Mitchell.  Another double from Oak followed it in 2003, and now we have a third - from a modern-day song tradition, rather than a performing entity.

I hope that this present double CD publication will prove to be as acceptable to the public and critics as the previous two have been and, most particularly, that it may encourage others to attempt to create the sort of 'Fellowship of Song' which we've all so enjoyed in Stroud's Golden Fleece.

The CDs contain a selection of songs, ballads and a story from one of today's singing pubs - featuring Bob Bray, Audrey Smith, Roger Grimes, Ken Langsbury, Chris Molan, Harry Langston, Martin Graebe, Shan Cowan, Danny Stradling, Rod Stradling, and Jeff Gillet.  All tracks are newly recorded in digital stereo.

It's available from the MT Records website, priced £16.00.

9.9.05

A Veritable Dungheap, by Dungbeetle

For those of you who've not encountered it, the Dungheap, written by Steve in the guise of Dungbeetle, is an on-going series of short articles about broadside ballads and their interrelationship with ballads and songs in the oral tradition.  Naturally, I jumped at the chance of publishing this often extremely interesting series.

So - Dungbeetle has now moved from EDS to MT.  The first article is now on-line and the other 18 will follow over the next few months.  Further, Steve has agreed to continue contributing new articles once the existing 19 have been published here.  The unusual name for the series is explained in the introductory page which you get to first from the above link.

12.9.05

NAT Series Booklet Notes and Mondegreens

Over the past few years we've published several selections from the booklet notes to CDs from Rounder's North American Traditions series, produced by Mark Wilson.  Due to changes in the US economy and Rounder's response to them, it appears that the NAT series is no longer available in record stores, but only from Rounder's website (where it's all but invisible).  Further, the booklet notes are no longer printed, but included as PDF files on the CDs.  Neither of these changes please Mark very much - and they tend to mean that these valuable and important CDs will remain unknown to most people who might be interested in them.

So MT comes to the rescue again and will be publishing all the new NAT booklet notes here as articles (and, coincidentally, as advertisements for the CDs).  The first three are from Cape Breton, and Mark has written an introductory page which will serve as a linking point for the three articles.  It and the first of them are now on-line here; the other two will appear in the next week or so, when I've converted them into HTML.

We spent much of this last weekend very enjoyably in a pub in South Armagh.  At one point, the Sunday lunchtime conversation drifted onto the subject of Mondegreens, via a line from a song Ken Hall had sung earlier: And there upon the gilded poop stood Mr Doyle and Gorgeous Raymond.  Cries of "Gorgeous Raymond?  Who he?"  (Of course, it was actually Mr Doyle in gorgeous raiment.)

The idea of mis-heard or mis-understood phrases has long been explored in a general sense via the concept of the 'Gladly' - as in Gladly, my cross-eyed bear.  Its folk equivalent is the Mondegreen, which emerged from a line in The Bonnie Earl o Moray:

Ye Highlands an ye Lowlands, oh whaur hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl o Moray and Lady Mondegreen.

The entire company then proceded to amuse us all with examples from their own experience or recollections, and a jolly half hour ensued.  What finally emerged was the demand that I immediately set up a Mondegreens page in MT, to which readers could add their own favourites from the genre.  Always eager to be of service to the community, I agreed - and so here it is.  Please e-mail me your own contributions.

11.10.05

Reviews of 'invisible' CDs

It's amazing - I wrote to them a couple of years ago complaining that they didn't send me stuff, and got a very nice reply from someone quite senior in the company, plus a package of about 6 CDs - only two of which were remotely appropriate (and we reviewed both of them).  Since then - nothing.  This despite the fact that I've been in correspondence with one of their head-office personnel over the last 3 or 4 months regarding our up-coming Lizzie Higgins project.

Topic are the same - I just got their latest e-newsletter promoting the new June Tabor album, and noticed that they've got three new World Series releases out.  I checked up and found that I was missing the last 6 of these!  So I had to ask for some review copies - which have now arrived.

Also in the last week I've received two recent releases from the Rounder / Lomax Italian Treasury series - not because Rounder wanted them reviewed in MT, but because I had asked Mark Wilson to organise it for me.

So that's a total of 10 CDs which you would have probably expected major record labels to have sent to MT for review ... but they didn't.  And somehow I don't really see it as part of my job to be scouring record company websites to see if they've just released something which we would be interested in reviewing.  Rather, I think that they should be looking out for appropriate places to send promo copies - after all, this last week, MT got 10,168 requests for pages from its Reviews section! (this is for actual pages, and does not include pictures or sound files).  Which is a damned sight more than the readership of some of the conventional magazines they pay to advertise in.

And before any of you start to wonder whether this may have something to do with the nature of the reviews we publish in MT - ie. sometimes critical ones - there's another factor to consider.  Mark Wilson (see below) has made it plain that Rounder is no longer distributing its traditional CDs, but rather selling them cheap(er) from its website, yet making them all-but invisible there.  If you look at Topic's website, you'll see that they are selling their World Series CDs at only £5.50 - and this for a fully-featured CD with a 16 to 20 page booklet!  Nor do they appear to advertise them in any of the usual places.  Smithsonian Folkways' European distributor refuses to send out review copies of their traditional CDs, and neither does it advertise them anywhere I've looked.

So where does that leave us?  Three major US and UK record labels are making their traditional publications more or less invisible to the public, and two of them are discounting them immediately they are released.  Is it paranoia to think that it won't be long before they stop publishing them at all?

23.10.05

MT Records site no longer requires PayPal membership

This sounds like a 'good thing' in a world where speed is of the essence ... however, it has implications which may not be immediately apparent.  Whilst the first-time experience will be quicker, it will have to be repeated every time you want to use PayPal - on any PayPal enabled site in the world.  Joining is, indeed, a slower process - but all subsequent purchases from any PayPal site are extremely quick - all you need to enter is your e-mail address.  Since so many websites now offer PayPal payments, you will probably find that you're actually saving time very soon after joining.

However, this is not what I consider to be the greatest benefit of PayPal membership.  Have you ever tried to send money to a friend in a foreign country?  Whichever of the several methods you choose, it costs an absolute fortune!  Suppose you plan to go to Italy, say, and would like a friend there who you plan to visit to book you a nice B&B near his home for a couple of nights, organise a car hire, buy you a train / theatre / concert ticket ...  If you both join PayPal (free), you can send him the money, in his currency, immediately, and without any cost whatever to either of you.  This is enormously empowering to you as an individual, taking you out of the hands of the Banks and other financial institutions, and is a huge step towards making us all 'world citizens' in a way scarcely imagined just a few years ago.

Alongside e-mail, I consider PayPal to be perhaps the greatest benefit the digital age has to offer to the ordinary person ...  That it also allows people anywhere in the world to purchase things from tiny enterprises like MT Records is really only a coincidental dividend.

27.11.05

Season's Greetings and Review of 2005

True, some 760 files have been added or updated on the magazine website, and one single and two double CDs have been produced - but this is pretty small beer when compared with some earlier years.

It has been a great shame that so many of our News items have been reports of deaths, the closure of events and venues - a general shrinking of our already tiny world of traditional music.  But, at the same time, there have been a few positive items.  I've been very pleased to be able to add Steve Gardham's Dungbeetle articles to the magazine site - and already there's a new, never before seen, addition to it, with more planned for the future.  Roly Brown has kept up his astonishing output of 19th Century Ballad Trade articles.  Not only that, but the publication of three new articles based on the booklet notes to Mark Wilson's NAT Series releases on Rounder are just the first of many which will be appearing here.

In addition, one of the double CDs mentioned above was a charity release, which had both positive as well as negative aspects associated with it.  Martin Carthy at Ruskin Mill (MTCD403-4) was recorded on Saturday 4th December 2004 at Ruskin Mill, Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, where Martin Carthy gave a concert for the benefit of Richard Valentine, who was suffering from Cancer.  Richard was a well-known and very well-loved member of the local community who had contributed, principally in musical and educational ways, over many years.  He was also more widely known as a superlative piano player with The Old Swan Band during its glory years in the late-Seventies and early-Eighties.  Some 100+ people attended the concert and most agreed that it was one of Martin's finest solo performances ever.  Several hundred pounds were raised.

Following the concert, I had the idea of putting it on to a CD for sale in the local community, to raise some further funds.  I must express my gratitude to Martin Carthy for agreeing so readily to the idea, and to Tony Engle of Topic Records Ltd for allowing this informal and unscheduled release of material by one of their principal recording artists.  My agreement with Topic was that no more than 200 copies should be made and that they should be sold principally in the local area - although I was allowed to include it on the MT Records website, to allow for credit card purchases.

Sadly, Richard died a few months later, but I was able to send him (and, subsequently, his widow) cheques totalling £1,300 - being the proceeds of the CD sales.  At around the 200 mark I stopped producing the records and removed them from the MT Records website.

And although this has been a fairly lean year for MT Records releases, I have been working on a number of new projects during the latter half of 2005 which should see the light of day in 2006.  I don't normally like to talk about future releases in these end-of-year Editorials, but I'm reasonably confident that all, or most, of the following will be released during the course of the next year:

1. a double CD of Lizzie Higgins, most of the recordings for which are previously unreleased.

2. a single CD of Suffolk fiddler, Pip Whiting, as a follow-up to our Stephen Baldwin one, again prepared by Phil Heath-Coleman.

3. a 4-CD set of songs and music from Tennessee, prepared by Mark Wilson, and which may be seen as a partner to our Far in the Mountains set.

4. a double CD of the Brazil Family from Gloucester, using recordings from Pete Shepheard, Gwilym Davies & Paul Burgess and Mike Yates.

5. a double CD of Suffolk recordings from the Keith Summers Collection.

Rod Stradling - 24.12.05

Obituaries page

10.2.06

Proposed Mechanical Copyright extension

However, there is currently a consultation exercise, or Review, initiated by the Government, regarding Intellectual Property - that's Copyright, Patents, etc, to you and me - and to legislate some more up-to-date law on the subject.  A small part of the new proposals includes a move to extend the Mechanical Copyright from its present 50 years to 95 years and to make it retrospective.  Mechanical Copyright is the copyright of the recording company in the actual physical recording - as opposed to the copyright of the performer in what was recorded.

If the 95 years copyright extension becomes law, and is applied retrospectively, the only people allowed to re-issue recordings made in the past 95 years will be the companies who now own the copyrights.  Due to multiple takeovers in the past, these 'parent companies' are now giants like EMI, Polygram, etc.  What chance do we have that they will ever reissue any of these old recordings?  Their collective track record of re-issuing archive recordings in the last 30 years is between nil and negligible.

There are two simple reasons for this - firstly, the vast majority of the material has no commercial value whatsoever.  Secondly - and this may surprise you - these record industry giants don't actually have copies of most of the 50-year-old records whose copyright they still own!  They've thrown them away!  Why?  Because they have no commercial value whatsoever.  Add to that the inevitable losses due to breakages, mistakes, etc, during takeovers.  Even the BBC has lost a substantial proportion of its archive.

So we are faced with the ridiculous proposal that a huge multinational should be allowed to own a copyright to something they have already discarded as worthless years ago, for a further 45 years!

The current situation is as follows: small companies, even individuals, spend years collecting records (often sole remaining copies) and tapes relating to their own specialist interest which, thanks to modern technology, are now able to be published on CD or DVD for the small audience which values them.  A copy is also usually lodged with the British Library.  A not inconsiderable part of this CD re-issue programme involves material which is now out of copyright and has not been recently re-issued by the copyright owner.  These recordings have sold in tiny quantities of typically under 100, just about covering costs, but enthusiasts will continue to reissue them if allowed to.  This is a task which no commercial company will ever undertake.

To leave responsibility for the re-issue of historically important recordings in the hands of concerns with solely commercial interests will be fatal.  Their track record speaks volumes.  Enthusiasts have re-issued several thousand professionally re-mastered CDs so far - the tip of the iceberg, but already far more recordings than the majors have between them re-issued in the past 60 years.

To make any extension of copyright retrospective will be disastrous - we know that the major labels will not (could not afford to) re-issue the vast majority of their archive material - even if they actually still had any of it!  The only effect would be to stop enthusiasts from publishing it, as they currently do.  What we have to consider here is part of our country's collective heritage.  This decision will determine whether future generations will thank us for our efforts to preserve a disappearing part of our country's culture, or curse a short-sighted decision which will deprive them of that valuable resource.

If you have any views on this subject, you are entitled to make them known to the Review Committee, and its head, Andrew Gowers MP.  To do so, send an e-mail to: gowers.review@hm-treasury.gov.uk - but be sure to do so before the closing date for submissions ... which is this coming Friday, 21st April.

Act now, before it's too late.

17.4.06

Temporary Censorship

However, the letter from Jim Carroll which I removed, contained not 'inaccuracies or misunderstandings', but downright lies and intentional misinformation - as I discovered when looking up the Mudcat Cafe discussion threads to which his letter actually directed its readers.  Having digested, albeit with some difficulty, the pages of abuse I found there, I decided to write this editorial, and to reinstate the letter for your perusal.

I don't normally check up on the accuracy of a letter's content, but Jim Carroll's seemed both unusually temperate for him - as longstanding readers of MT will be aware - and attempted to absolve himself of any blame for the nearly six years' campaign of vilification of which Fred McCormick was complaining.  I was immediately reminded of school days - whenever evidence of a misdemeanour was presented to the class, it was inevitably the culprit who was first to jump up and cry "It weren't me, Miss!"

Carroll's letter claims 'I was drawn into the discussion when my name, along with two others, was incorrectly identified as one of the correspondents'.  First lie - he was one of the correspondents, and actually signed one of his posts with his own name.  In some other posts he used the alias 'Mary' - although with someone who writes with such vehemence and at such length, it's perfectly simple to spot the stylistic similarities - often even the same phrases are used!  He also used similar phrases during his various denunciations of both Fred and Geoff Wallis on the IRTRAD-L newsgroup.  The affectation of an alias when traducing another seems, to me, utterly despicable.

Carroll then touched on the matter of an e-mail (see Fred's letter) which was widely circulated last year in which some nameless individual took Fred's MT review of the Elizabeth Cronin book, removed all the positive aspects and doctored the rest to make it look complete.  He stated 'I did not respond [to the e-mail] as I did not wish to be involved in what I had made clear to the reviewer was a fairly distasteful affair'.  Second lie - he did respond, forcefully and at length, on Mudcat, in the course of which he quoted statistics based on this doctored version of the review.  What's more, it's obvious from the comments which accompanied these statistics, and those made elsewhere on Mudcat, that Jim had either never read the entire review, or was pretending that he hadn't.  In other words, the vendetta of which Fred complains was pursued by someone who was ignorant of what had actually been written.

He then states 'I withdrew from the Mudcat discussion ... As far as I am concerned the matter is closed and I have no more to say on it, apart from the fact that this is not why I became involved in traditional music'.  This, from someone who actually started the present Mudcat 'squabble', as he terms it.  What happened was that Malcolm Douglas had corrected a bit of sloppy scholarship on the part of Jim Carroll and Pat Mackenzie, commenting 'That sort of laziness is best avoided.'  Carroll's reply 'You must be a friend of the Musical Traditions' reviewers Wallis and Grommitt' was the start of the whole torrent of abuse, and fully substantiates Malcolm's observation that 'Jim and Pat don't take criticism well'.  In my opinion, people who don't take criticism well might be best advised not to make their work public.

As I have said on countless occasions in these pages, it is the job of a reviewer to alert the potential purchaser to both positive and negative aspects of the publication which might not be immediately apparent upon cursory inspection, and to raise related issues which are likely to be of interest to MT readers.  Fred did just that in his review of the Elizabeth Cronin book, and raised several issues which I summarised in my own comments on the affair - see Enthusiasm No 26.  To my knowledge, none of these points have ever been answered in the ensuing five years and eight months.  And I've just re-read the review (for the first time for some years) and agree with Fred that it is every bit as objective and unbiased as anything else he has written.

Finally, I must respond to a statement Carroll made in a post (one he signed himself) to Mudcat.  He wrote:

Having completed Around The Hills of Clare we had more-or-less decided to prepare our Walter Pardon interviews for issuing.  The natural place for this seemed to be Musical Traditions and we had discussed approaching Stradling with the idea.  Now this is out of the question ? we wouldn't trust Musical Traditions wwith the milk money as far as the corner shop.[sic]

Regarding trustworthiness in general, I could give numerous quotations from Carroll's e-mails thanking me for my work and helpfulness over the two CD projects in which I have collaborated with him.  Maybe I was trusted to see to it that the Clare CD received a positive review?  If so, no one told me - and nor would I have agreed, if they had.  Indeed, I trusted him to produce an accurate booklet text for the Clare CDs - and it was my trust in him which was unfulfilled!

20.4.06

Re: previous item

I completely agree - and will not be publishing it, or anything else on the subject(s), by anyone.

However, it did include one paragraph covering a new topic, which does need to be made public:

I did not intend to suggest, nor do I believe that your financial dealings with us were ever anything other than straightforward.  I have always been perfectly satisfied with your honesty regarding our work together.  The question of finance has never been an issue with us; any money raised from projects we are involved in is donated to the Irish Traditional Music Archive.  Nor have I been anything but pleased with the work carried out by you on the two albums we co-operated on.

23.4.06

MT and the UK Web Archiving Consortium

We are seeking permission to make an archival copy of your website Musical Traditions Internet Magazine currently hosted at http://www.mustrad.org.uk.  The British Library is a founding member of the UK Web Archiving Consortium consisting of the British Library, JISC, the National Archives, the National Library of Scotland, the National Library of Wales and the Wellcome Library.  The Consortium is undertaking a two-year pilot project to explore the long-term feasibility of archiving selected websites.  We would like to invite you to participate in this pilot project by allowing us to archive your website.

We wish to preserve your website in the archive for these reasons:

1. The website contains information with long-term value to the UK education and research community, which should not be lost.
2. The website is representative of UK documentary heritage and we would like it to remain available to researchers in the future.

On completion of the pilot, the archived copy of your website will subsequently form part of The British Library's permanent collections in the UKWAC archive.  The archiving programme, if you're agreeable to it, would take place under the terms of the attached permissions form.

The British Library will store the website contents in a secure storage facility owned by the UK Web Archiving Consortium.  We will also take necessary action to maintain its accessibility over time and ensure its future integrity.

However, therein lies the rub - the magazine is the collective work of some hundreds of contributors since it started in paper form in 1983, all of whom retain the copyright on their writings (as stated on our Home page).  Therefore I am not in a position to sign the 'permissions form' mentioned above, since I only own the copyright to my own contributions and to the magazine as an entity as it exists on the Web.

I should stress, by the way, that the Consortium is asking only for permission to archive the material - copyright will always remain with the authors.  It's just that I have neither the moral nor the legal right to grant this permission.

A few of our contributors I know are now dead, many more (mainly from the Keith Summers period of editorship) I have no way of contacting.  Writing to all the others for their individual permissions would be a huge task.  I raised this with the BL Web Archivist, and she said that in this situation they would like to archive the magazine anyway - and remove it if anyone complains.  Unfortunately, legal and software issues mean that they would have to remove the entire magazine, even in the event of just one complaint.

Further discussion resulted in the compromise you now see before you: I publish this Editorial explaining the situation, and invite anyone who objects to their own article/review/news item/letter/whatever being archived by the UK Web Archiving Consortium to contact me and tell me so.  After one month - say by June 30th - I will make the Archivist a special version of the magazine on CD-R, with any material by the objecting authors removed.  If I have not heard from authors by June 30th I will assume that they have no objections.  For the future, I will now advise any new writers in the magazine that their works will be archived.

Please let me know if you object to a portion of the magazine for which you hold the copyright being so archived.  I would also be very grateful if you would pass on this information to anyone who might be involved, but who you think doesn't look at MT regularly.

Naturally I hope that no one will object, and that we will all feel proud to have had the value of our work recognised.

23.5.06

Re: MT and the UK Web Archiving Consortium

I received no such objections, and instructed the Consortium to go ahead with the archiving.

Last week, however, they contacted me to say that 'separately, we have received a notification from a contributor that there is uncleared third party material on the Mustrad site and so at this present time we are not in a position to archive the site.'  Their rules of confidentiality mean that they are unable to tell me who this contributor is.

Clearly, this contributor must have read my Editorial - otherwise s/he would not know of the Consortium's intentions.  Equally clearly, by contacting them directly, rather than me, s/he has made it impossible for 'information with long-term value to the UK education and research community, which should not be lost' to be professionally archived.

Naturally I am extremely sorry that our superb corpus of contributors will not now have their work recognised in this way.  Further, I cannot imagine that any of them would have been anything other than proud that their writings should be included in the UK Web Archive.  Who, I wonder, would - in order to prevent their own work being archived - condemn the work of literally hundreds of others to exclusion?  I can only assume that whoever 'separately notified' the Consortium must bear a grudge against MT and all that it stands for.

Do any names spring to mind?

26.8.06

New MT Lizzie Higgins double CD

As it has turned out, this has resulted in a publication comprised mainly of recordings which have never been available before ... initially it was to have been a reissue of some of her LP tracks from the '70s and '80s.  So all the years of frustration have been worth it in the end!

It has been my belief that all the MT Records publications have been important and worthwhile, but I think that this one may be seen as one of the highlights of 'this small but very valuable catalogue'.

MT Records is very pleased to announce its latest release: Lizzie Higgins - In Memory of ... (MTCD337-8) + 36 page integral booklet in DVD case.

A memorial album of this great Aberdeenshire singer and daughter of Jeannie Robertson, containing 34 recordings of the best of her songs not currently available on CD, many of which have never been published before.

The 36-page booklet contains a brief biography and an appraisal of Lizzie's singing style by Dr Ian Olson, full song notes and transcriptions - and lots of photos.

As usual, the full booklet text is available as an article in these pages, and the double CD can be purchased, price £16.00 inc UK p&p, from the MT Records website at: www.mtrecords.co.uk

11.11.06

Season's Greetings and Review of 2006

That I might still be doing this ten years hence would certainly not have entered my head back then.  But with a small (and, sadly, getting smaller) band of writers and collaborators, we have produced an astonishing amount of work: 197 Articles, 55 Enthusiasms, 780 Reviews, three-quarters of a megabyte of News, half a megabyte of Letters, together with approximately 2,600 pictures and 1,300 sound files.

Nor could I have imagined that Musical Traditions would have produced all those splendid CDs of such important music and song.  The most recent of these is MTCD337-8 ... so that's 38 CDs in our main '300' series, plus 12 others in the '200' and '400' series, plus 9 CD-ROMs.  And we produced that double CD of Joe Heaney for Topic/Cló Iar-Chonnachta.  A further 8 in the '300' series are in preparation.  My very sincere thanks goes out to all the numerous contributors and collaborators whose efforts have made these publications possible, not to mention all the singers and musicians (most of whom, sadly, are no longer with us) whose performances grace the records.

In 2006, things have been extraordinarily quiet on the records front, and only one double CD - Lizzie Higgins: in memory of ... 1929-1993 - has been issued.  Of course, work has been ongoing on several others - but it looks as if we'll have to wait 'til 2007 for their release.  It would seem that most of the sets of recordings for which straightforward collaboration is available have now been issued - either by MT or by others.  There will, of course, be lots of other material which could (should) be published - but I don't know about it.  If you do, please let me know.

The magazine, though, has been a hive of activity ... as well as some 60+ record and book reviews, 22 full articles have been added to the listings.  For these, Roly Brown and Keith Chandler are particularly to be thanked - as is a newcomer to the magazine, Chris Holderness, for his five contributions about Norfolk music and musicians.  For the reviews, the majority of them have come from Ray Templeton, Geoff Wallis, Fred McCormick or myself.

All of the 22 articles have been remarkable for the depth of research which has gone into them, along with the broad-based knowledge of their subject displayed by the authors.  This has also been true of many of those 60+ reviews.  This is not to imply that this is unusual for MT contributions - but I think it has been particularly noticeable this year.  Of course, I am very pleased that this should be the trend (what editor would not be?), but there is a downside.  Several e-mails I've received have contained phrases along the lines of 'Of course, I couldn't hope to compete with the academic standards of ...'

Now, clearly, I wouldn't wish to be any part of the dumbing-down plaguing so much of the media these days, but I would like to make it clear that MT is not an academic publication.  It is, and has always been, open to all kinds of input from potential contributors.  Articles and shorter Enthusiasm pieces from people with information and/or enthusiasm to impart are always welcome - and continue to be.  Unsolicited reviews of CDs or books which have moved or excited you remain both wanted and welcome.  Citations of sources and footnotes are not a requirement.

Musical Traditions Internet Magazine exists to share our love of traditional music and musicians; if you have something to say about any traditional activity with a musical content, from anywhere in the world, please send it to me - the contact information is at the foot of the page.

So - in hopes of an even more active 2007, may I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year.

24.12.06

New Volume 8 Magazine CD-ROM now available

For anyone who's not tried it before, the CD-ROM is a really good way of having all the 242Mb of the magazine instantly to hand, with no ISP charges and no waiting for downloads - a very pleasant user experience.  Everything is presented as Web pages, exactly the same as on the Net - so you already have all the software required, and you know how to navigate to what you want.

Just pop a tenner in the post to me, or go to the MT Records website if you want to use a Credit/Debit Card, and yours will be on its way to you the same day.  You know it makes sense!

8.1.07

New MT CDs - Meeting's a Pleasure: Folksongs of the Upper South

We are now proud to announce what may be seen as its companion volume, a 4-CD set of songs, ballads and tunes from Kentucky and nearby areas, specially compiled by Mark Wilson, editor of the Rounder North American Traditions series.

A 4-CD set, available in 2 parts, of songs, ballads and tunes from Kentucky and nearby areas, from the collections of Mark Wilson, Gus Meade and John Harrod.

Featuring: J P and Annadeene Fraley, Buell Kazee, Sarah Gunning, Jim Garland, Blanche Coldiron, The Dixon Sisters, Asa Martin, Nimrod Workman, Roscoe Holcomb, Snake Chapman, Mary Lozier and many others.

Both double CDs come with huge booklets; introductory articles, notes on the performers and the songs and tunes, complete text transcriptions, and lots of photos.  They are available from the MT Records website - www.mtrecords.co.uk - along with the entire catalogue, for credit/debit card purchase, at £16 for each double CD, or £30 for the complete set.

7.2.07

Brazil Family photos?

Whilst I have more than sufficient recordings, and most of the booklet notes are done, the only photographs I have are the two of Danny Brazil as found on the Enthusiasm No 14 page.

The two members of the present generation of the family with whom I am in contact are both still parked (after several years), on the side of the road beside land they already own but are not allowed to move their vans on to.  Most of their non-essential belongings are in storage ... including any family photos.

So this is a general plea for help - if anyone has any photos of Danny, Harry, or Lemmie Brazil (or of anyone else in that generation) please get in touch with me as soon as possible.

27.3.07

New Keith Summers Suffolk Collection double CD

This is issued as a complement to the Veteran Keith Summers VT154CD ... 2 CDs, 75 tracks, 160 mins + 52 page integral booklet telling the story of Keith's Suffolk Collecting in his own inimitable words.  Paul Marsh interviewed Keith a few months before his death, and taped his descriptions of his first going to Suffolk and encountering all those wonderful performers for the first time.  The verbatim transcription of these tapes comprises the major part of the 52-page booklet (our biggest yet), and it's just like having Keith sitting next to you in the pub, sharing his excitement, enthusiasm for, and eventually love of, these remarkable characters.  The booklet really is as good as the records!

Featuring: Jumbo Brightwell, Alec Bloomfield, Bob Scarce, Cyril Poacher, Jimmy Knights, Oscar Woods, Percy Ling, Billy List, Charlie Whiting, Font Watling, Fred Whiting, Eley Went, Fred List, Fred Pearce, Geoff Ling, George Ling, George Woolnough, Harkie Nesling, Reg Reeder and many others.

14.5.07

Pointed at with finger's scorn

14.6.07

Apart from the fabulous rates of pay, one of the nicest things about being the top executive of MT Records is that everyone is enthusiastic and grateful for the CDs we publish.  People really do email and phone to thank me for the records and the quick service - and this makes all the hard work seem worthwhile.  It also lulls one into a false sense of security, and the assumption that everyone is on your side.  Sadly, this is not always the case.  A couple of recent incidents have rather undermined my feeling that, while the rest of the world may be going to Hell in a handcart, at least the tiny subculture of traditional music enthusiasts are basically a decent, caring and trustworthy lot.

Les Tucker

Needless to say, I initiated the eBay complaints procedure and wrote to Mr Tucker - but have had no reply from either.  In truth, I don't mind too much; all the singers are dead, so no one's losing out on sales royalties, and I would assume that, at least, some of the songs will be getting back into the communities from which they came.

The slightly amusing irony is that this stupid twat will have the work of copying the CD-Rs and cutting up the cover papers and assembling the final product, plus the cost of the blank CD-Rs, the DVD cases, paper and printing - for a return of £4.99.  Had he asked me for half a dozen at trade price, he could have legitimately sold them, complete with the booklets, with no work at all involved, and made more profit that he does with his illegal scam!

If any of you know this Les Tucker, of Davington Road, Dagenham, Essex, email: les28173@yahoo.co.uk  you might like to tell him what you think of him.

Another person

Two days later, having received the CDs, he cancelled the eCheque!  I wrote to him, pointing out that this was theft and asking for either an explanation, the money, or the CDs returned.  He has not replied.

I feel that this is the far more serious of the two incidents - plain straightforward theft; a con based on my willingness to trust an existing customer.  This person has gained 30 quid ... all the rest of us have lost; clearly I won't be able to offer to trust the rest of my customers again.  I think that this is truly depressing ... I imagine that you will, too.

10.6.07

New 3-CD set from The Brazil Family

A selection of songs, ballads and tunes from the Brazil Family of Gloucester.  A unique compilation of the repertoire of a single English Gypsy family, from the collections of Peter Shepheard, Gwilym Davies, Mike Yates, Hamish Henderson and Peter Kennedy.  Featuring: Danny Brazil, Harry Brazil, Lemmie Brazil, Hyram Brazil, Tom Brazil, Weenie Brazil, Alice Webb and her son, Angela Brazil, Doris Davies, Joan Taylor, Debbie and Pennie Davies.

In his review, Keith Chandler writes: This really is the most important commercial release showcasing the English tradition to have appeared in many a long day.  I cannot stress it enough : absolutely essential.

Pre-production costs have been generously funded by the Greenwich Traditional Musicians Cooperative.  As usual, credit/debit card purchasing, full booklet notes, tracklists and review are available on the Records page.

14.7.07

EFDSS wins Heritage Lottery Grant

But today's wonderful news is of a completely different order of magnitude - six of the manuscript collections housed in the VWML are to be digitised and made available on the Net (see Latest News for more details).  This is really what the EFDSS and its splendid library should be about in the 21st century.  My - and, I hope, our - heartiest congratulations to Malcolm Taylor, Pat Kingswell and Judith Hanson, the team who put this grant application together and saw it through to the end after countless hours of painstaking work.

This is 2007's best news so far ... and there's more to come; watch this space!

2.10.07

The Peter Kennedy Collection and Topic Records

Topic Records has acquired the rights to the Peter Kennedy recordings and will be working towards releases of as much of the material as is commercially viable.  This will obviously take some time but they hope that these releases will happen early in 2009 - Topic's 70th year.

After all the doom-laden predictions about the eventual fate of the Kennedy Collection, I think that this outcome has to be seen as the impossible dream come true.  Profound thanks and congratulations to all concerned.

30.10.07

Baldwin confusion

Elaine's subsequent assumption about Kennedy not needing to be concerned about the cost of the tape was thus incorrect, and also flies in the face of Kennedy's well-known practice of rarely recording any tune more than once-through from his traditional musician sources.

Another point which we didn't labour in the booklet concerns the keys in which Stephen Baldwin played, and the tempo of his playing.  We did make the point that Baldwin, like so many other of the older country musicians, tuned his fiddle one tone flat ... yet the Kennedy recordings are all in the 'standard' keys and played approximately 1/8th faster than the comparable Wortley ones.  Now, a tune actually played in F, speeded up by 1/8th, comes out in G!  Without overtly stating that Kennedy had speeded up his recordings (which we could not prove), we hoped that readers would be able to draw their own conclusions from this information.  If this were true (as I'm certain it is), it might well have a bearing on Elaine's comment that 'he sounds more relaxed in the earlier session.'  As any recording engineer will tell you, the easiest way of making a slightly shaky performance sound better is to speed it up a bit!

Kennedy was well-know for his attitude of knowing far better than his sources with regard to what they 'should' have sung or played - he frequently added lines to 3-line verses, removed them from 5-line ones, and put melodies into the 'correct' keys.  I am certain that the speed and keys of his Baldwin recordings are just another example of this dubious activity.

4.12.07

Season's Greetings and Review of 2007

We started with the double, Keith Summers in Suffolk - a story to tell; Paul Marsh's superb selection from the Summers Suffolk collection and his wonderful transcription of Keith's conversations telling the first-person story of how it all happened.

Mark Wilson's 4-CD set of Kentucky music and song is, in some ways, a very similar piece of work (although Mark is, happily, still with us to tell the story).  Meeting's a Pleasure can also be seen as a companion-piece to Mike Yates' 4-CD set, Far in the Mountains, of Appalachian material we published back in 2002 - two splendid sets of comparatively modern American recordings which clearly show the similarities and differences in folk music and song on either side of the Atlantic.

Most recently, we produced our first 3-CD set ... a project I had been working on for a number of years.  The Brazil Family - Down by the Old Riverside is just the sort of thing which MT Records was set up to publish - important music which is unlikely ever to see a commercial release.  It was most gratifying to find every one of the reviews were extremely positive ... Keith Chandler wrote: this really is the most important release showcasing the English tradition to have appeared in many a long day.  I cannot stress it enough : absolutely essential.

So, nine CDs in a year! - our largest output so far, I think.  Nor did we do badly on the magazine front.  2007 has seen the publication of 19 new Articles, 5 Enthusiasms, 3 pages of Letters, 2 pages of News and 31 Reviews.  Not a bad year's work.

It's also rather pleasing to note that our efforts are reaching quite a number of people - the website had almost one and a half million visitors in 2007!

Once again, I'll remind you that Musical Traditions Internet Magazine exists to share our love of traditional music and musicians; if you have something to say about any traditional activity with a musical content, from anywhere in the world, please send it to me - the contact information is at the foot of the page.

So - in hopes of an equally active 2008, may I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year.

23.12.07

New Volume 9 Magazine CD-ROM now available

And as you will see from the accompanying cover shot, this is the Quarter Centenary edition ... yes, it has been 25 years since Keith Summers first published a paper magazine called Musical Traditions, back in 1983.  Things have grown a little in that quarter of a century: MT now contains 211 Articles; 812 Reviews; 60 Enthusiasms; 21 pages of Letters; 39 pages of News; 2,795 graphics images; 1,366 sound files; plus loads of other things like Links; Obituaries; Mondegreens; Sessions; Picture pages, Discographies ... the list goes on and on.

For anyone who's not tried it before, the CD-ROM is a really good way of having all the 261Mb of the magazine instantly to hand, with no ISP charges and no waiting for downloads - a very pleasant user experience.  Everything is presented as Web pages, exactly the same as on the Net - so you already have all the software required, and you know how to navigate to what you want.

Just pop a tenner in the post to me, or go to the MT Records website if you want to use a Credit/Debit Card, and yours will be on its way to you the same day.  You know it makes sense!

1.1.08

Baldwin clarification

I haven't got your new CD, but I have an old tape of Baldwin recordings (labelled Upton Bishop 1952), and they are one tune once through, generally, but are also on a down-tuned fiddle, and the G (normal key) tunes come out in F.  So, what have I got?  Kennedy's original recordings, before he speeded them up?

I would imagine that it was done to enable players to learn the tunes without having to re-tune their fiddles.  I would have no problem with this, provided that CD 115's insert notes made clear what had been done to the recording and why.  What seems to me to be extremely dubious is to 'doctor' what purchasers would expect to be an accurate field recording of a traditional player.

This being the case, I have now slowed down the Kennedy recordings by one tone, so they now play in F rather than G, and are at the tempo at which Stephen Baldwin would have originally played them.  All new versions of the Musical Traditions CDs will be supplied with these corrected recordings, and I am willing to supply new CDs, gratis, to any customers of mine who bought the Musical Traditions Stephen Baldwin CD.

9.3.08

Fred McCormick

MT punters may have noticed that contributions from myself have been pretty well non-existent of late.  This is due, I'm afraid, to other commitments.  These include my Worlds of Trad Internet Radio Station www.live365.com/stations/oneworldmusic which, infinitely rewarding though it has turned out to be, soaks up far more of my time than I could have imagined.  On top of that there is the work I've saddled myself with, in cataloguing, digitising and systematising the enormous record collection which nowadays permeates every corner of the McCormick household - see Enthusiasm 47 - the final two paragraphs are most relevent.  Also, I'm increasingly fielding requests for advice, assistance and information with various projects, all of which are extremely gratifying and I'm only too happy to help.  But there are only twenty four hours in one day, and before the house falls down altogether, I'd like to devote some time to patching it up, taming the garden and doing all the jobs which other retired folk usually end up bored silly with.

Therefore, rather than remain a co-editor on paper (or perhaps that should be cyberspace), I have reluctantly decided to formally withdraw from Musical Traditions.  That does not mean that contributions from me will cease altogether, and readers may have noticed that I've managed to squeeze at least one review in of late.

It only remains for me to thank Rod for all his patience and co-operation over the years, and to thank the readers of Musical Traditions for putting up with my copy; over-scholastic and long winded though it may sometimes have seemed.

All the best,

Fred McCormick - 18.7.08

18.7.08

New site search

Accordingly, I've been looking around for a replacement for the past month, and have found two possibilities - FreeFind and Search Engine Studio.  The former does the job, and is free - but includes advertising, and will also only index the entire site, rather than giving separate searches for the Articles, Reviews, Discographies and Magazine ... which I feel is far more useful.  Search Engine Studio will give me far more control over both the indexing and the output, and its 'non-profit discount' makes it affordable for MT.

So you will now find a new Search box at the head of the Home Page - for the present, this is the FreeFind one, but it will be replaced by the better system as soon as I get it set up to my satisfaction.  I hope you will put up with the (very few) adverts for a short while.

9.9.08

NEW new site search

At the top-right of the Home page is a link labelled 'Search the entire Magazine'; click on this and a new page will appear containing four search boxes - Magazine, Reviews, Articles and Discographies.  This serves both to make your searches quicker and more accurate, and reduces the size of the database to be searched.  Each search box allows you to search for a word or words, or an exact phrase - equating with AND, OR, or PHRASE logic.  The results page displays all the files in each section containing the search term(s).  Files containing no useful information, like the various Index pages and framed headers or navigation bars, have not been indexed - neither have the Links and Sessions pages, as they already contain their own alphabetical search facilities.

Since the Articles and Reviews do not always retain the date of original publication, I have arranged for this to be displayed in the results for an Articles or Reviews search.  There is no point in doing this for the Magazine or Discography pages, since these are constantly being updated.

I should point out that the MT Search feature (like Google, or any other search engine) only returns the page containing the information you want - not the point in the file where it resides.  You still need to read the page to find it, or - in the case of the huge Discography pages, or indeed any large page - to use your browser's 'Find on this page' facility.

The MT Records website is not included in the Search feature; it already has fairly comprehensive search features anyway, and to include it would break the terms of the Search Engine Studio 'non-profit discount' I have been allowed.

I hope this feature makes your use of the magazine easier and more fruitful ... please let me know of any problems.  The search databases will be updated when there is any significant addition of material, probably monthly - you should still look at the What's New page to see what's been updated recently.

23.9.08

Season's Greetings and Review of 2008

Nor have we done all that well on the magazine front.  2008 has seen the publication of only 7 new Articles, although one of these was the PDF facsimile republication of a complete book - Reg Hall's wonderful account of the life of Scan Tester, I Never Played to Many Posh Dances.  In addition, there have been 2 new Enthusiasms, a large new page of Letters, 2 pages of News and a couple of dozen new Reviews.  Not a great deal for a whole year's work, it would seem - but I can only publish what people send me!

All in all, I suppose this has been rather disappointing for Musical Traditions Quarter Centennial year, but it's pleasing to note that our efforts are still reaching quite a number of people - the website had almost 1.3 million visitors in 2008.  And I did get to set up a far better site search facility than had been available previously.  Onwards!

Once again, I'll remind you that Musical Traditions Internet Magazine exists to share our love of traditional music and musicians; if you have something to say about any traditional activity with a musical content, from anywhere in the world, please send it to me - the contact information is at the foot of the page.

So - in hopes of a far more active 2009, in spite of the credit crunch - may I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year.

22.12.08

New Volume 10 Magazine CD-ROM now available

And as you will see from the accompanying cover shot, this is Volume 10 ... and things have grown a little in those 10 years: MT now contains 218 Articles; 841 Reviews; 62 Enthusiasms; 23 pages of Letters; 42 pages of News; 2,857 graphics images; 1,400 sound files; plus loads of other things like Links; Obituaries; Mondegreens; Sessions; Picture pages, Discographies ... the list goes on and on.

For anyone who's not tried it before, the CD-ROM is a really good way of having all the 514Mb of the magazine instantly to hand, with no ISP charges and no waiting for downloads - a very pleasant user experience.  Everything is presented as Web pages, exactly the same as on the Net - so you already have all the software required, and you know how to navigate to what you want.

Just pop a tenner in the post to me, or go to the MT Records website if you want to use a Credit/Debit Card, and yours will be on its way to you the same day.  You know it makes sense!

2.1.09

Corrupted Sound Files?

I have come across some sound samples that will not play.  Knowing a bit of the technicalities I've had a look at the files and believe they may have gotten corrupted on uploading to the website.  You may, of course already know about them.

But strangely - and worryingly - I then found that none of the sound files would play at all on Version 3 of RealPlayer, which I have used for years.  Why this should be I have no idea, since they played perfectly well locally (on the computer).  I then upgraded to RealPlayer Version 11 and all is now well .

But I do rather worry for you, my readers, who may use earlier versions of RealPlayer, since the error message said 'File Not Found' - which implies that the problem lies with the website rather than the player.  Be assured that all the sound files are online, and that if you have any problems playing them, downloading the free Basic version of RealPlayer Version 11 (from http://uk.real.com/) will solve them.  I still have no idea about the cause of this problem.

21.1.09

Season's Greetings and Review of 2009

It would seem that we've got to the point where pretty-well all the recordings of traditional performers which are reasonably easy to publish have now been done, and I don't know of any others to try ... if you do, please let me know about them.  So maybe I shall start looking at people who I've been calling 'successors' - revivalists who perform traditional material in a traditional way - for future MT Records releases.

Nor have we done all that well on the magazine front.  2009 has seen the publication of 10 new Articles; a few more than last year.  In addition, there have been 3 new Enthusiasms, a large new page of Letters, 2 pages of News and 30 new Reviews.  Again, a rather better show than last year, but not a great deal for a whole 12 months' work, it would seem - but I can only publish what people send me!

Musical Traditions has now been in existence (in paper and virtual forms) for 26 years, and it's pleasing to note that our efforts are still reaching quite a number of people - the website had almost 1.1 million visitors in 2009.  Onwards!

Once again, I'll remind you that Musical Traditions Internet Magazine exists to share our love of traditional music and musicians; if you have something to say about any traditional activity with a musical content, from anywhere in the world, please send it to me - the contact information is at the foot of the page.

So - in hopes of a far more active 2010, in spite of the credit crunch - may I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year.

23.12.09

New Volume 11 Magazine CD-ROM now available

And as you will see from the accompanying cover shot, this is Volume 11 ... and things have grown a little in those 11 years: MT now contains 228 Articles; 890 Reviews; 65 Enthusiasms; 26 pages of Letters; 43 pages of News; 2,999 graphics images; 1,482 sound files; plus loads of other things like Links; Obituaries; Mondegreens; Sessions; Picture pages, Discographies ... the list goes on and on.

For anyone who's not tried it before, the CD-ROM is a really good way of having all the 569Mb of the magazine instantly to hand, with no ISP charges and no waiting for downloads - a very pleasant user experience.  Everything is presented as Web pages, exactly the same as on the Net - so you already have all the software required, and you know how to navigate to what you want.

Just pop a tenner in the post to me, or go to the MT Records website if you want to use a Credit/Debit Card, and yours will be on its way to you the same day.  You know it makes sense!

1.1.10

An avalanche of Articles!

• 14.1.10  George Gardiner, Ralph Vaughan Williams and the Journal of 1909  Article by Bob Askew
•   9.2.10  A's for the Anchor: a unique version of the Sailor's Alphabet?  Article by Mike Yates
• 10.2.10  Wonderfully Curious: some thoughts on the English song tradition  Article by Mike Yates
• 11.2.10  John Barleycorn revisited: Evolution and Folk Song  Article by Pete Wood
• 11.2.10  Birmingham Ballad Printers: Part One: A - J  Article by Roy Palmer
• 12.2.10  Glimpses into the 19th Century Broadside Ballad Trade - No. 35: Charming Mary Neill  Article by Roly Brown

So I thought it appropriate to publicly state my profound gratitude to the five gentlemen concerned in all this work, and the many hundreds of hours of research that must have gone into producing these Articles.  May their example prompt some other good people to send me record or book reviews, pieces of news or comment, letters, or their writings about any traditional activity with a musical content, from anywhere in the world.  Onwards!

12.2.10

More on Sound Files

Hmm! I've just switched to a new computer and didn't have RealPlayer installed at all, so I downloaded and installed the current version - which then told me that it won't work unless I install a new driver for my sound card. Unfortunately my sound card is several years old and the manufacturer is no longer providing new drivers.  Therefore, as far as I can see, I can't use RealPlayer at all.

What's the objection to making sound clips available in a widely supported format such as MP3?

In a word - bandwidth.  When I started MT, back in 1996, my readers had nothing but a slow dial-up connection, so I looked for the best possible sound playing system which was acceptable in these circumstances - and RealAudio was it.

By the time that broadband became widely available in the UK (it still isn't in much of the world, where there are plenty of MT readers) there were some 900 RealAudio soundclips on the site, and in most cases I had no way of re-doing them as MP3s.  That aside, I still have the experienced user's aversion to unnecessary bandwidth.  As an example:

An 11,659Kb WAV file converts into a 1,056Kb MP3 file, but into a 133Kb RealAudio file - that's one eighth the size of the MP3 file.  Most of my readers will be playing our sound clips on the tiny speakers in their computer - and you can hardly tell the difference on them between .ra and .mp3 sound.

I've just installed this Real Alternative player, and it seems to work just fine ... and it's free.  Hope this helps.

22.2.10

May Bradley CD now available

Of the 49 CDs in our main '300 series', it's very difficult to know which are the most important.  I think that those which present the entire recorded repertoire of a singer, rather than a commercial record company's mediated selection of a dozen or so 'greatest hits', must figure strongly in importance.  Likewise those which present a hitherto little known, or poorly represented, singer.  I'm pleased to say that quite a number of our CDs fulfil both these criteria.  This new May Bradley CD is quite definitely one of these.

Very few people would have even heard of the Gypsy singer from the Welsh Marches, May Bradley, before the publication of Fred Hamer's book, Garners Gay, in 1967.  It contained seven of May’s songs: The Outlandish Knight, Sweet Swansea, The Blackbird, Down the Green Groves, On Christmas Day, Cold Blows the Wind, and The Leaves of Life.  When the EFDSS published the Garners Gay LP in 1971, it contained only five of these songs, as did the VWML cassette, The Leaves of Life, published in 1989.  Many of today's listeners will have only heard the three May Bradley songs on The Voice of the People.  This is really very sad, as she’s a stunning singer who really should be far better-known.

It was a considerable surprise to me to find that Mr Hamer actually recorded 26 separate songs from May Bradley; nine of which he recorded twice, and one, three times - making up the 36 track total you’ll find on this CD.  As far as we know, she recorded for no one else.  We have given what we think are the ‘best’ versions first - then, after a 10 second gap, the 10 duplicate recordings.  My judgement as to which are these ‘best’ recordings is, of course, a personal one, and the duplicates should not be considered in any way inferior, or unworthy of your attention.

I started work on compiling this CD almost exactly three years ago, and soon began to wonder if it would ever be published; information on May Bradley proved to be very hard to find.  Eventually Keith Chandler stepped in to help with the booklet, and his skills as a fact-hunter have finally brought the project to completion.  I am extremely pleased, and proud, to be able to publish it.  This is a very important CD - and one which you will certainly enjoy.

10.5.10

250 Articles!

Mike decided to take up the challenge, but also suggested: I contacted Roly and said that I would put pen to paper.  He replied that he had thought about doing a lengthy review of the Veteran double CD.  I have now written my piece and I am wondering if you might like to contact Roly and ask if his piece is ready.  If so, then why not print both items together.  In fact, how about asking others if they would like to write about Fred, so that we could have several pieces printed together at one time.  You probably think it a mad idea ...

Well, I didn't think it a mad idea - but I did think that if I followed Mike's idea to the letter, we might end up with several articles all containing much the same information.  So I'm suggesting a similar approach to what we did with the Ten Records that Changed My Life article a few years ago: I publish Mike's article first, and solicit further pieces from others to be added to the first one as time passes.

Accordingly, you'll find Mike Yates' Fred Jordan article online now (as MT250), and I will add Roly's review when he's written it, and any other pieces which any of you care to send me, in due course.  C'mon then - time for some action!

15.6.10

The Budget

22.6.10

Rounder's North American Traditions series

Mark Wilson, series editor of Rounder's North American Traditions series (NAT) has made it plain that Rounder is no longer distributing its traditional CDs, but rather selling them cheap(er) from its website, yet making them all-but invisible there ..... Is it paranoia to think that it won't be long before they stop publishing them at all?

But some exciting news follows.  Mark Wilson writes:

Many of our earlier NAT projects can now only be purchased (if at all) as MP3s without notes or documentation.  Rod Stradling and I plan to reissue some of these CDs on the Musical Traditions Records label in their original formats, along with several unissued projects, as soon as I find time to collect the original materials together.  But it will probably not be possible to reissue the Cape Breton sets in that mode.

Nontheless, you can look forward to a substantial number of MT Records' releases of North American traditional music and song in the near future - releases which will equal or better the high standards MT Records has set over the past 12 years.

21.9.10

MT Records' first NAT Series re-release now available

The first of these new releases features Art Galbraith, a fine Missouri fiddler, accompanied by Gordon McCann on guitar, with Dixie Blossoms (MTCD509).  Renowned collector, Vance Randolph, said: "Art Galbraith is the best Ozarks fiddler I have ever heard."  Full Details, including track list and booklet notes, can be found on the MT Records' website  The price is £12.00.

Since this will be the first of a substantial number of ex-NAT releases, it seemed a good idea to create a new 'series' for them - the '500 Series' - and an equally good idea to include the Mike Yates' Appalachian 4-CD set, Far in the Mountains, and Mark Wilson's Kentucky 4-CD set Meeting's a Pleasure, within it.  Accordingly, Far in the Mountains is now renumbered MTCD501-4, and Meeting's a Pleasure is renumbered MTCD505-8, and so Dixie Blossoms is number MTCD509.

Another slight change on the MT Records website is that, since these new NAT records already have their booklet notes available as PDF files, I have decided to use these rather than have to construct new HTML versions.  So, when you click on the Booklet Notes link you will get the PDF version.  I don't imagine that this will cause a problem for anyone - and it's only on the website; the 500 series CDs will still have the usual printed booklet inside the DVD case, just like the 300 series CDs.

25.10.10

Season's Greetings and Review of 2010

There's also a very significant release of an Irish singer, which I hope should be available some time in 2011 - watch this space!

However, with regard to British performers, it would seem that we've got to the point where pretty-well all the recordings of traditional ones which are available to publish have now been done, and I don't know of any others to try ... if you do, please let me know about them.  So maybe I shall start looking at people who I've been calling 'successors' - revivalists who perform traditional material in a traditional way - for future MT Records releases.

On the magazine front, things have been very different.  2010 has seen the publication of an astonishing 40 new Articles - more than in any previous year, I think!  There also have been some substantial additions to the Enthusiasms, Letters and News pages, and 37 new Reviews.  Congratulations to all those hard working writers.

Musical Traditions has now been in existence (in paper and virtual forms) for 28 years, and it's pleasing to note that our efforts are still reaching quite a number of people - the website again had almost 1.1 million visitors in 2010.  Onwards!

Once again, I'll remind you that Musical Traditions Internet Magazine exists to share our love of traditional music and musicians; if you have something to say about any traditional activity with a musical content, from anywhere in the world, please send it to me - the contact information is at the foot of the page.

So - in hopes of an even more active 2011, and in spite of all the cuts - may I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year.

23.12.10

New Volume 12 Magazine CD-ROM now available

And as you will see from the accompanying cover shot, this is Volume 12 ... and things have grown a little in those 12 years: MT now contains 260 Articles; 920 Reviews; 65 Enthusiasms; 26 pages of Letters; 43 pages of News; 3,200 graphics images; 1,593 sound files; plus loads of other things like Links; Obituaries; Mondegreens; Sessions; Picture pages, Discographies ... the list goes on and on.

This year I've included a copy of the Real Alternative media player, since a number of readers have had problems with the 'proper' RealPlayer no longer working with the Version 3 RealAudio sound files we use.  It works very well - but you need to uninstall the RealPlayer plug-in first.  I've also included a compendium of all the Editorial pieces from 2000 to the present - since they give a good idea of the sorts of things which have concerned us over the years.

For anyone who's not tried it before, the CD-ROM is a really good way of having all the half a Gigabyte of the magazine instantly to hand, with no ISP charges and no waiting for downloads - a very pleasant user experience.  Everything is presented as Web pages, exactly the same as on the Net - so you already have all the software required, and you know how to navigate to what you want.

Just pop a tenner in the post to me, or go to the MT Records website if you want to use a Credit/Debit Card, and yours will be on its way to you the same day.  You know it makes sense!

3.1.11

The more-or-less complete Editorial compilation

But I recently noticed - when setting up a new computer - that these archives only extend back to the year 2000.  Whatever happened to the others?  You may recall that MT actually started it's virtual life on Christmas Eve 1996 - so there's three years worth of information missing.  No hope of finding stuff from the old AOL, UK Online or U-Net sites.  I also discovered that I don't have copies of the first three CD-ROM versions of the magazine, where, it's possible, some of the information may reside.  What to do?

I tried emailing everyone who'd ever bought a copy of the CD-ROM, but found that most people - unsurprisingly - junk the old one when they buy a new one; although one reader told me that he has them all and will put them in the post - thanks Steve Harrison!  However, that only takes me back to 1999.  Prior to the CD-ROM, I had been making floppy disks of the magazine using the old InfoCourier system, for people without Net access.  Did anyone still have copies of these?  It didn't seen very likely.

But today I had an email from Jeroen Nijhof, who told me that much of the early MT stuff can be found on The Wayback Machine, at: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.mustrad.org.uk   What a fantastic resource!  Not everything is there, but it does take us back to July 1998 - and I don't think we're going to get those first 18 months back, unless someone does stll have those early InfoCourier floppies!

Putting together the 'more-or-less complete Editorial compilation' has reminded me what a lot of interesting stuff happened over the years and, in the hope that some of you might find it interesting too, I've decided to put it online, with a link on the Home Page - down at the bottom, so you don't confuse it with the current Editorial!  Or you can look at it from here.

5.1.11

Fred Jordan - 1967

However, this re-publication involved getting permission from the Angela Carter estate, which was readily granted - but not on a permanent basis, only for 6 months.  Accordingly, it will be removed in July 2011.

26.1.11

MT Records' third NAT Series re-release now available

The third of these new releases features Morgan MacQuarrie, the fine Cape Breton fiddler, accompanied by Gordon MacLean on piano, with Over the Cabot Trail (MTCD511).

Mark Wilson has written: The music on this remarkable CD represents that increasingly singular anomaly: the artistry of a performer whose musical aesthetic has been almost entirely shaped by an immersion within a localized traditional culture.  Morgan himself never made any attempt to modify his playing to [the modern styles] - only the old Scottish sound of back country Inverness County appealed to him.  He continuously polished his skills over a lifetime of very active playing.  As such, he represents as sterling an exponent of Cape Breton’s unique 'old style' Scottish music as can be found anywhere.

Full Details, including track list and booklet notes, can be found on the MT Records' website   The price is £12.00.

30.1.11

Norma Waterson benefit events

She has at last been moved to an ordinary ward, but the journey back to normality will be a long climb; of course if she could climb there'd be no problem, but after 12 weeks in bed there's not much of her body that has any muscle power at all.  And having had a tracheostomy in her throat for most of that time, she's not even talking or eating normally yet.

As well as an appalling physical and emotional situation for the family, there is the little matter of finance when the breadwinners are unable to work (Martin has only been able to do 3 or 4 gigs in all that time!).  Some of their friends in music - being able now to think about the future rather than just the present - have realised what an awful extra burden this has/will consitute, and are organising benefit events.  Keep your eyes and your purses open, and please consider the possiblities for your club or organisation.  We will try to liaise with all such organisers, and with Alan Bearman, their Agent, to see that things go smoothly, and don't clash with each other.  If you do consider organising some kind of benefit event, please let us know.

Rod and Danny Stradling - 3.2.11
rod@mustrad.org.uk  or  danny@mustrad.org.uk

Norma Waterson benefit events Page

In addition, there is now a PayPal 'Donate' button on the page - for people who'd like to contribute, but aren't in a position to organise anything.  It will also be useful for anyone living outside the UK to make a donation, or who are organising events abroad, and need to send the proceeds in their own currency - it will be converted to GBP Sterling via PayPal.

Go to the Norma Waterson benefit events Page

MT Records' fourth NAT Series re-release now available

The fourth of these new releases features Nimrod Workman, the extraordinary West Virginia singer, with Mother Jones' Will (MTCD512).  The Journal of American Folklore described him thus: One of Appalachia's most celebrated traditional singers and symbolically linked the region's idealized past with the reality of its ongoing political struggles.

Tracks 1 - 18 originally appeared on Rounder LP 0076 in 1976, a further 8 have been added to this 2011 production.  Full Details, including track list, booklet notes and reviews, can be found on the MT Records' website   The price is £12.00.

9.5.11

MT Records' first new release of 2011 now available

This CD may be seen as a companion-piece to our 2005 release, Stephen Baldwin: "Here's one you'll like, I think" - traditional fiddle tunes from the Forest of Dean (MTCD334) - although Fred Whiting was a fiddler from Suffolk, rather than Gloucestershire - and it has been compiled and edited by the same Philip Heath-Coleman.

Although some of Fred's music is available on CD elsewhere, and on the British Library website, we have tried to make up this CD of as many recordings as possible that have never before been published.  The record contains 42 tracks, with a 69 minute duration, and comes with a 20 page integral booklet in a DVD case.

MT's founder, Keith Summers wrote: Fred Whiting's exploitation of his exposure to traditional musicians and music outside his immediate milieu made him that rare thing, a modern traditional musician, of the kind which was common in Ireland and Irish communities elsewhere, but almost completely unheard of in England outside the northeast. His neglect is also in part due to that uniqueness: in England traditional music is regarded very much as their own common property by its modern enthusiasts, who don't know what to do with exceptionally musical traditional players like Fred Whiting.

Full Details, including track list, booklet notes and reviews, can be found on the MT Records' website   The price is £12.00.

14.6.11

MP3 player in MT

He ended his message with the question: 'What's the objection to making sound clips available in a widely supported format such as MP3?'

I explained that when I started MT, back in 1996, my readers had nothing but a slow dial-up connection, so I looked for the best possible sound playing system which was acceptable in these circumstances - and RealAudio was it.  By the time that broadband became widely available there were already some 900 RealAudio soundclips on the site, and in most cases I had no way of re-doing them as MP3s.  Also, another of my objections was that using MP3 soundclips pops up Windows Media Player, obscuring what you're trying to read!

However, since the announcement of the provision of high-speed broadband throughout the country (and the discovery that Bampton has it already!) I think that a reconsideration of MP3 is probably in order.  This has also been prompted by a contributor telling me about the Google inline MP3 player - which gives the reader a very complete control over the playing of the soundclip, and doesn't obscure the text.  A slight problem is that a recent version of Adobe's Flash Player needs to be installed - but I guess that most readers will already be so equipped.

Here's an example    using Fred Whiting playing his Old Time Polka, from his new CD on MT Records (see below).  Please let me know if there are any problems with using this player, as I've already used it in a couple of reviews, and am intending to do so for all new soundclips in the magazine.

21.6.11

Norma Waterson Page

Norma and Martin would like to thank everybody for their wonderful good wishes, cards and flowers; these certainly lit up Norma's continued stay in hospital, especially when she regained consciousness, and reminded Martin of how the folk community loves and values her.

Also thanks for the substantial financial contributions which you all made, making it possible for Martin to stay by Norma's bedside for almost the entire time she was there.  This lengthy stay was, by the way, a stark reminder of the selfless dedication of ALL those nurses in all the hospitals, and especially those in the ICU in Warrington.

We would both like also to thank Rod and Danny who - entirely unbidden - took on the task of co-ordinating the fund raising for our benefit - No, don't delete this bit Rod (or Danny).  You are true friends.

We also would like to express our thanks for the letters of condolence which were sent on the death of Michael.  He was full of life almost up to the end.  We shall miss him, as I am sure will all the folk community.

Thank you.  All of you.

Now we know what we had always supposed: that Norma is not just the best female singer on the English scene, but also the most loved; and just how lucky we all are to be a part of such a community of kind, generous and loving people.

18.7.11

I wonder what else they sang?

But by the time that most of the sound recordings of traditional performers were made, collectors had realised their predecessors' mistakes - and the recordings made it possible to hear exactly what was sung or played.  Or did they?

Because almost everyone, amateur or professional, made their own decisions about what to actually record, and what to ignore, of their informants' repertoires.  Moreover, a number of collectors can be quoted as saying, approximately: "S/he soon realised what sort of songs I was interested in, and thereafter only offered them for recording."

Then, when record companies began issuing these recordings, they also made decisions about which items of those that the collectors offered them would make a suitable, and saleable, LP or CD ... products which rarely exceeded 45 minutes duration!  Thus, the question at the head of this piece ... how much did we know of what else the traditional singers actually sang, when there had been so much selection and mediation along the way?

When I published the first MT CD of Bob Hart, back in 1998, I had access to about 60 recordings of him, and it seemed a shame to omit any of them, so I made it a double CD - mainly because I was fond of Bob and liked his singing!  Only later did I realise that it was really rather important to include as much as possible of a performer's recorded work - and avoid the mediation which had been the usual practice of record producers up to that point.  All further MT releases continued this practice - to include all (or as much as was reasonably practicable) of a performer's recorded repertoire.  I believe that only this approach affords the performers the proper respect they are rightfully due.

The reason behind this little outburst is that MT Records have just released a CD of a Shropshire singer named Bill Smith.  Bill was a farm worker (and briefly a farmer in his own right), and a contemporary of Fred Jordan.  Bill's son, Andrew, decided to record him in the late-1970s.  Andrew wasn't a song collector, and didn't choose what to record and what to omit - he just recorded what Bill remembered: songs, recitations, stories, jokes ...  The mediation of past collectors and record producers is clearly demonstrated by the fact that Steve Roud had to allocate no fewer than 21 new Roud numbers for items you'll find on this CD.

This makes this CD perhaps the only available example of the completely unmediated repertoire of an ordinary countryman, from the centre of England, in the middle of the 20th century.  I think that this fact makes Bill Smith: a country life (MTCD351) one of the most important CDs we have ever produced!  I hope you will agree.

To give you a taste of what's in store, here's the tracklist:

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22 - 23 - 24 - 25 - 26 - 27 - 28 - 29 - 30 - 31 - 32 - 33 -

Over the Garden Wall Tommy Suet's Ball The Cat's Got the Weasel - Jew's Harp The Outlandish Knight Henry My Son Creeping Jane AII of a Sudden He Stopped l Reckon I Missed My Chancel - Story       l'm Billy Muggins The Cuckoo Ram She Ad-a-dee Ram She Ad-a-dee 1958 The Children's Home Seventeen Come Sunday Seventeen Come Sunday 1958 AII Been Havin' a Go Young Sailor Cut Down Banks of Sweet Dundee The Camera Boy An Old German Clockmaker The Bramble Briar PC49 The Cinderella A Group of Young Soldiers The Willow Tree Jack Bostock's Whisky - Story The Irish Girl A Drunken Family lt's A Pretty Melody Coming from a Music Hall Barbara Ellen Christmas Day in the Workhouse Come Lasses and Lads

34 - 35 - 36 - 37 - 38 - 39 - 40 - 41 - 42 - 43 - 44 - 45 - 46 - 47 - 48 - 49 - 50 - 51 - 52 - 53 - 54 - 55 - 56 - 57 - 58 - 59 - 60 - 61 - 62 - 63 - 64 - 65 -

Don't Send My Boy to Prison Down the Road Flanagan lf There Wasn't Any Women in theWorld       lt's a Lie My Name is John Giles AII Jolly Good Fellows Little Fish McCaffery Prisoners in the War - Story Old Mrs Biggar Ours Is A Nice House Pistol - a dreadful old joke Ring Ting-a-ling l'm Sixty Three Some Folks Sing Like a Lark Ten Little Fingers The Little Shirt My Mother Made for Me The Agricultural Show The Circus Tent The Cobbler The Mountain and the Squirrel - Fable The Nightingale ln These Hard Times Three Men Went a-Hunting The Village Pump The Two Magicians Wheel the P'rambulator, John Your Sweetheart Grace Will the Angels Play their Harps for Me? Khaki Trousers Wheezy Anna Duration: 79:23

22.8.11

New MT CD now available

This CD is, I must freely admit, a bit of a surprise to find on the Musical Traditions Records label.  A set of texts, few older than the 20th century, all with known authors, set to tunes composed during the last couple of decades by a known composer, who also sings them!  But I promise you - if you like traditional English songs - you will absolutely love everything you hear on this CD.  Wonderful, colourful, often passionate lyrics, coupled with some of the most glorious tunes you'll have heard for years.  Added to that the fact that Harry Langston is a terrific singer who has fully overcome the 'curse' of a beautiful voice.

The Booklet Notes to the CD appear as an Article in these pages, so you can check out the sound clips there, if you don't believe me!

Harry wrote all the tunes to these songs himself, and also wrote the words to the song Accrington Pals.  We have been fortunate to have had Harry as a regular at the Stroud singing sessions for many years, and I'm delighted to be able to share our good fortune wilth you.

Track List:

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 -

Recall to Weavers The Blackburn Poachers Tackler Joe Proposes It’s Nobbut Me What Could Aw Say Friends are Few when Fooak are Poor A Lift Upon the Way Coal Pit Lane Accrington Pals Pendle Sally My Garden (Posey Joe) Shuttle-Kissin’ Manchester Song (Rich Man - Poor Man) A Song of Windmill Land Scatter Your Crumbs Love The Coaler My Piece is o’ bu’ Woven Eawt (A Weaver’s Prayer)     Duration:

1:25 5:30 3:08 2:44 6:55 3:59 3:46 2:21 6:41 5:47 4:05 2:36 2:24 4:47 1:44 6:03 4:37 4:16 73:56

Buy this splendid CD from the MT Records website, only £12.00.

27.9.11

Revised MT 3-CD Sets packaging

But my regular blank disc supplier, River Pro Audio, have now come up with a good alternative at a more affordable price - picture on right.

The only 'problem' is that this case requires that the booklet has to be taken out of the case before the first of the CDs can be removed.  Given that I hope that most purchasers would wish to actually read the booklet in the first instance, I don't really consider this to be too much of a problem.  It will certaily be a nice change from having to send replacement cases to customers with broken ones.

If any reader knows of a better quality 3-CD case of the same design that I used before, and at a reasonable price (less than 40p.), I'd be pleased to hear about them.

3.11.11

Season's Greetings and Review of 2011

I say 'finally' because it's actually been ready for some time - but (as with the Walter Pardon double CD back in 2000), it was agreed to be released concurrently with the Topic Records CD of Sarah (also an MT production).  This was delayed so that the first tranche of Topic's new Voice of the People series could all be released at the same time (early 2012, I'm told).  In the end, I was asked to launch the MT 3-CD Set at the Tommy Makem Singing Weekend in Armagh in October - and Topic agreed to this if I kept the release 'a bit quite'.  That's why there hasn't been a big fuss about it in MT yet.

I'm also in the process of preparing another CD-ROM release: a study of the old 'octave style' anglo-concertina playing and the 'house dance' music it supported, up to around 1920.  This project is written by Dan Worrall, and contains 132 photos and graphics, and 180 MP3 sound files from England, Ireland, Australia and South Africa.  It should be ready in early 2012.  So that makes a total of 9 CDs and two CD-ROMs this year!

On the magazine front, things have been somewhat quieter compared with 2010, which saw the publication of an astonishing 40 new Articles.  This year it's been just 8 new Articles - but there is another big one about Alfred Williams almost ready.  There also have been some substantial additions to the Enthusiasms, Letters and News pages, and 40 new Reviews.  Congratulations to all those hard working writers.

Musical Traditions has now been in existence (in paper and virtual forms) for 29 years, and it's pleasing to note that our efforts are still reaching quite a number of people - the website had over 1.7 million visitors in 2011.  Onwards!

Once again, I'll remind you that Musical Traditions Internet Magazine exists to share our love of traditional music and musicians; if you have something to say about any traditional activity with a musical content, from anywhere in the world, please send it to me - the contact information is at the foot of the page.

So - in hopes of an even more active 2012, and in spite of all the cuts - may I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.

24.12.11

New Volume 13 Magazine CD-ROM now available

Happy New Year!

And as you will see from the accompanying cover shot, this is Volume 13 ... and things have grown a little in those 13 years: MT now contains 268 main Articles, 68 shorter Enthusiasms articles, around 950 Reviews, 43 pages of News & Comment, 28 Letters pages, a huge Links directory, 3,350 photos and over 1,630 sound clips; plus loads of other things like Obituaries; Mondegreens; Sessions; Picture pages, Discographies ... the list goes on and on.

Again, I've included a copy of the Real Alternative media player, since a number of readers have had problems with the 'proper' RealPlayer no longer working with the Version 3 RealAudio sound files we use.  It works very well - but you need to uninstall the RealPlayer plug-in first.  Be aware, though, that all new sound clips in the magazine will be in the MP3 file format.  I've also included a compendium of all the Editorial pieces from 2000 to the present - since they give a good idea of the sorts of things which have concerned us over the years.

For anyone who's not tried it before, the CD-ROM is a really good way of having all the half a Gigabyte of the magazine instantly to hand, with no ISP charges and no waiting for downloads - a very pleasant user experience.  Everything is presented as Web pages, exactly the same as on the Net - so you already have all the software required, and you know how to navigate to what you want.

Just pop a tenner in the post to me, or go to the MT Records website if you want to use a Credit/Debit Card, and yours will be on its way to you the same day.  You know it makes sense!

1.1.12

New MP3 sound clip set-up in MT

Having recently published the annual CD-ROM version of the magazine, I have realised that these new sound clips will not play in that medium, since the Google Player needs to be called online in order to function - and a CD-ROM is, obviously, not online!  This realisation came during the preparation of the new House Dance / Anglo concertina CD-ROM, and a solution needed to be found for that.

In the end, a ludicrously simple answer occurred to me - use links!  HTML allows a word in the text to induce a 'jump' to somewhere else, usually to another piece of text, but it can also jump to a sound file - which is then played by your currently installed Media Player.  The beauty of this method means that the name of the tune in the text of the article (or whatever you're reading at the time) can be shown in a certain way - I've chosen bold italic red underscored - and you just click it to play the sound clip.  There's no need for an icon at the side, or a big Google Player graphic in the text.  Here's an example: of Dooley Chapman playing an Untitled Polka, accompanied by his daughter on piano, from the new House Dance CD-ROM.  A problem with this is that your currently installed Media Player may obscure much of the page you were reading at the time!

If you use the Windows Media Player, you can set it to run in 'Skin Mode' (View menu, select Skin Mode) - or 'Compact Mode', either of which overcome this problem.  In 'Skin Mode', drag the bottom margin up until the Video pane almost disappears.  I think this is the better of the two methods.  But to use 'Compact Mode' temporarily, click the button in the bottom/right corner of the Player (the text 'Switch to compact mode' will pop-up).  To do it a little more permanently, click on the Windows Media Player's 'Tools' menu and select 'Options'.  In the 'Player settings' section, select the 'Start the mini Player for file names that contain this text' option, and type .mp3 in the box below it, and click OK.  If you use a different Media Player, you may be able to set it to run in a similar compact mode.

Please check this out and see if it works for you.  I'm intending to use it in a big new Article, to be online shortly, and I will replace the Google Player implementations elsewhere in MT if there are no objections.  Please let me know.

26.1.12

What a good idea!

Please note that anyone under 30 as at 1.1.12 can attend the BTMW free of charge.  Just complete the booking form and write your date of birth on the top of the form and state you would like a free ticket.  Please pass this information on to anyone you may think would be interested.

I was prompted to send this message by an entry in my diary reminding me to apply for a Senior Rail Card!

Maybe I should mention that the Bradfield Traditional Music Weekend is on 19th to 22nd July 2012, at Edgemount Farm, Lumb Lane, High Bradfield, Sheffield S6 6LJ.  Contact Mark at: edeophone@aol.com

28.1.12

Another MT CD-ROM now available

House Dance (MTCD251) is a Digital Book with embedded audio files, by Dan Worrall - a well-respected authority on the Anglo concertina.

The heyday of the Anglo-German concertina (1860s to World War I) coincided with a time when social dances in houses, barns, woolsheds and community halls were all the rage in working class urban and rural areas.  Here are 172 archival recordings of 36 early concertina players performing schottisches, polkas, quadrilles, waltzes, barn dances, mazurkas, and varsovianas from Ireland, England, Australia and South Africa - plus more from modern players in the old octave style.  The digital book explores such topics as:

• Nineteenth century social dances
• Global sources of the house dance repertoire
• Old-style octave playing on the concertina
• The banning of house dances in early twentieth century Ireland
• Biographies and playing styles of early concertina players (with archival recordings)
• Modern players in the old octave style (with recordings)

• A tutorial on octave playing (with recordings, walking you through playing in octaves and across the rows)
• A 'resources' page, giving details of the real and virtual information available on the subject.
• A discograpy of all the recordings used.

The players are:
Australia: Dooley Chapman, George Bennett, Con Klippel, Jim Harrison, Charlie Ordish, Fred Holland, Clem O'Neal, Susan Colley, Ernie James, Percy Yarnold.
Ireland: Musicians of the house dance repertoire: Mary Ann Carolan, Ella Mae O'Dwyer, Katey Hourican, Terry Teahan, Stack Ryan, Jim Droney, Martin Howley.  Musicians of the céilí dance era: Elizabeth Crotty, William Mullaly, Michael Doyle, Patrick Flanagan, Tom Barry.
England: William Kimber, Scan Tester, Ellis Marshall, Fred Kilroy, Eric Holland, Bill Link.
South Africa: Faan Harris, Chris Chomse, Kerrie Bornman, Hans Bodenstein, Willie Palm, Pietie Prinsloo, Silver de Lange.
Modern players in the old style: Australia: Ian Simpson, Ray Simpson, Keith Klippel, Peter Ellis, Dave de Hugard.  England: Will Duke, Dave Prebble, Harry Scurfield.  Ireland: Sean O'Dwyer.  South Africa: Stephaan van Zyl.

The fine looking feller on the cover is Albert George ‘Dooley’ Chapman (1892-1982), of Dunedoo, New South Wales, Australia, and his playing makes him fit to stand beside Scan Tester any day, in my judgement.  Here he is, playing an Untitled Polka, with a piano accompaniment provided by his daughter - just as Scan did!

This fine CD-ROM is available now from the MT Records wesite: www.mtrecords.co.uk   Price £12.00.

30.1.12

New article: Tom Brown, Caister singer, in his own words

Tom Brown was one of those singers who, like Walter Pardon, was a generation younger than most of the old traditional singers we've heard on record - and, like Walter, came to the notice of the revival and began to sing in folk clubs at the end of his life.  Two important things result from this: he was recorded whilst young enough to still have a good voice; and was able to give a good first-hand account of his life of work and song ... from which most of this article is drawn.  It's a fascinating read, and the songs are a delight.

* I thought I'd never heard of him, let alone heard him sing, but I was wrong.  He sang Widdlecombe Fair on the Voice of the People No.7, First I'm Going to Sing You a Ditty, Topic TSCD657.

Do check out the article - you won't be disappointed!

4.3.12

Revised George Townshend double CD released

Having just finished two very large projects, and with a bit of time on my hands, I've just revisited those old Brian Matthews tapes, and found that, with more modern de-noising programs, and help with this from Jim Ward of Country Branch Records, we've been able to resurrect those 5 songs songs - and another 5 more - by George ... far more than will fit onto a single CD.  The ten 'new' songs are:

The Brickmaker's Dream (Roud 971)
The Burial of Sir John Moore (Roud 1979)
General Munro (Roud 1166)
The Gypsy's Warning (Roud 2141)
I Wish I was Single Again (Roud 437)
John Barleycorn (Roud 3792)
The Merry Mountain Band/Horn (Roud 23596)
The Old Rustic Bridge (Roud 1764)
Pleasant & Delightful (Roud 660)
The Anchor's Weighed (Roud 23595)

So the new version of the George Townshend set will have CD One as it was, but with the final 5-song compilation being replaced by full versions of four of them.  CD Two will start with the remaining six 'extra' songs, followed by all the Ken Stubbs recordings.

I will let anyone with the original CD have a special second one, containing all the new Brian Matthews recordings plus all but two of the Ken Stubbs duplicates for £5, inc P&P ... which is about what it costs me to make and post it to you.  This will be a 'cheque or cash by post' option only, as I don't want to confuse the MT Records website with separate Townshend purchases, or to have PayPal adding P&P charges to it.

The new George Townshend double CD has an updated text and tracklists, plus the words of the 10 extra songs.  It will be renumbered from MTCD304 to MTCD304-5.  It is now available on the MT Records website, priced £16.00.

17.4.12

Postal rates increase

Since most of my MT Records postage consists of UK Packets/Large Letters, or Airmail Small Packets, it appears that my postal costs are likely to be approaching twice what they were last year - and that was almost £1,000!

So I have had to increase the cost of the CDs shown on the printable Order Form by £0.50 for single CDs, £1.00 for doubles, £1.50 for triples, and £2 for 4-CD sets.  But bear in mind that these still have free delivery in the UK - and that this is the first price increase for 12 years!

For credit/debit card payments via the MT Records website, I have had to increase the p&p charges by 5% - thus Single CDs below £10.00 in value: 25%.  Complete orders above £10.00 in value: 20%.  Therefore UK customers should be aware that it will be quite a lot cheaper for you to buy with a cheque or cash - although it will involve a wait of a day or two for me to recieve your payment by post.  As usual, I will endeavour to post your CDs to you the moment I receive your payment - by whichever method.

1.5.12

New double CD of traditional performers

Moreover, there are several performers here whose songs have never before been heard on a CD recording.

The complete list of performers in alphabetical order, together with their songs and tunes, is:

• Meg Aitken - Danny Boy, The Mountains of Mourne
• Margaret Barry and Michael Gorman - Londonderry on the Banks of the Foyle, The Rose of Mooncoin, Three Reels
• George Belton - Has Anybody Seen My Tiddler?
• Bob Cann - Nobody Noticed Me
• Daisy Chapman - Bonny Udny, The Bunch of Violets, The Nobleman's Wedding, Kissin in the Dark
• Seamus Ennis - Kitty from Ballinamore, The Fairies’ Hornpipe, The Pinch of Snuff, The False Bride
• Lizzie Higgins - London Lights, My Old Shoes, Betsy Bell
• Tim Lyons - Skibbereen
• Freddie McKay - Three Flowers, Christmas Day in the Cookhouse
• Oliver Mulligan - You Rambling Boys of Pleasure
• Albert Shaw - The Banks of Claudy, The Benefit Concert, Lay Him Away on the Hillside, The Horn of the Hunter, The Wild Rapperee
• Jack Smith - Young Taylor, Granny’s Old Armchair, Shooting Goshens Cockups, Jealousy, How Could I Marry Such a Girl as You?, There was a Rich Farmer from Chester , A Toast
• Phoebe Smith - Flash Company, The Game of All Fours
• Scan Tester - Stepdance and Medley
• Terry Vosper - ‘Arry, ‘Arry, ‘Arry, ‘Arry
• Percy Webb - The Dark Eyed Sailor, The Country Carrier, Your Faithful Sailor Boy, Go and Leave Me, Rap a Tap Tap, Wheel Your P’rambulator
• Alf Wildman - The Banks of the Clyde, Died for Love, The Ramsey Ram, The Bailiff’s Daughter of Islington

28.6.12

MT Records' Second Catalogue Sampler

'Full of great examples of the strength of traditional singing styles and the repertoire ... The real pleasure is in the flow, in soaking up the lesser knowns, the relaxed deliveries, the ambience of recordings made in the singers' natural surroundings ... And then reading the notes opens up more windows on it all. Highly recommended.'

And now, 2012 finds us with another 20 CD cover pictures to go on the front of A Second Catalogue Sampler, as you can see on the right.  If they're a bit small to make out, the 20 new publications are:

MTCD334 - Stephen Baldwin - "Here’s one you’ll like I think"
MTCD335-6 - Songs from the Golden Fleece
MTCD337-8 - Lizzie Higgins - In Memory of ...
MTCD339-0 Keith Summers - A Story to Tell
MTCD505-6 - Meeting’s a Pleasure, Vols 1&2
MTCD507-8 - Meeting’s a Pleasure, Vols 3&4
MTCD345-7 - The Brazil Family - Down by the Old Riverside
MTCD348 - Ken Langsbury - And Then it Happened!
MTCD349 - May Bradley - Sweet Swansea
MTCD509 - Art Galbraith - Dixie Blossoms
MTCD510 - Roger Cooper - Essence of Old Kentucky
MTCD511 - Morgan MacQuarrie - Over the Cabot Trail
MTCD512 - Nimrod Workman - Mother Jones’ Will
MTCD350 - Fred ‘Pip’ Whiting - “Old-time hornpipes, polkas and jigs”
MTCD351 - Bill Smith - A country life
MTCD352 - Harry Langston - Dear Gladys, Dear Gertie …
MTCD353-5 - Sarah Makem - As I Roved Out
MTCD251 - House Dance - Anglo Concertina Music CD-ROM
MTCD304-5 - George Townshend - Come Hand to Me the Glass
MTCD356-7 - King’s Head Folk Club - Traditional Performers

1.8.12

Future Cheque and Postal Order payments to MT

Since you'll know that MT CDs are 'productions conceived with the intention of bringing music which might never achieve commercial publication to the small audience which values it', it probably won't surprise you to learn that this 'small audience' really is small.  My 'best sellers' achieve sales of around 300 copies (in total) and less popular items rarely exceed 100 sales.  So you'll be able to see that making and selling these CDs is really only a hobby that pays for itself - just - and never makes a substantial profit.  Accordingly, losing £250 of that tiny profit - to no advantage - is to be avoided if at all possible.

It seems to me that the only way to permanently avoid it is to revert to using a normal current account with my usual bank, Halifax Plc.  Which means that cheque and Postal Order payments made out to 'Musical Traditions' will no longer be acceptable, and that all such payments in the future will have to be made payable to 'R Stradling'.  In case you're wondering - this is not a tax dodge - MT Records' accounts are submitted to HM Customs & Revenue every year, and the tax paid.

So, if you buy Musical Traditions CDs by cheque or Postal Order (the cheapest way if you live in the UK), would you please always make them payable to R Stradling.  Otherwise, I'll have to return them to you to be amended ... costing us both unnecessary additional postage, and meaning you'll have to wait several days longer to get your records.

Rod Stradling - 3.8.12

E-Book implementation of MT CD Booklets?

There's no way I can sell CDs and avoid using some plastic, but much of the weight of an MTCD package lies in the paper used in the accompanying booklet.  So I'm looking at ways to minimise this ... which would also lessen the postage costs.  It appears that there are several approaches to this problem:

1. Make the CDs mixed-media, to include a PDF or HTML file of the booklet - as Rounder used to do.
2. Offer an E-Book format download of the booklet, and thus a cheaper CD.
3. Offer an E-Book format download of the booklet, containing internal links to all the songs/tunes as MP3 files.  Cheaper still.

These and many other questions arise out of this proposition, and I'm not currently in a position to answer them - so I'm hoping that some readers may have a little knowledge of the subject, and will be able to advise me.

I'm waiting, hopefully ......... Email to: rod@mustrad.org.uk

25.8.12

MT CD E-Booklets

• Very few E-Book readers have facilities for sound - so the possibility of having both the booklet and the sound files on one device is extremely limited, at least for the present.
• The huge variety of E-Book readers on the market means that the only file format which is more-or-less universally readable is PDF.

Please have a look at these and let me know if you're happy with them.  If nobody objects to them I shall make all future virtual versions of the CD booklets in this PDF format, as they are much easier to create than writing a separate HTML version, as I've been doing in the past.

To complete the experiment, I'm making this PDF file available as a download here - so those of you with E-Book readers can try it out on the hardware of your choice - if it will read PDF files.  The Booklet will open in your web browser, so you'll need to do a 'File/Save As' to save it to your hard drive, and then port it to your E-Book reader.

Please let me know the result.

31.8.12

MT gets another award

Popular Website Awards is a widely recognised internet award program and inspirational portal, that identifies the pioneers on the internet.  We recognize websites that combine beautiful interactive design with intelligent technology, along with an unmatched dedication to the quality of their service.

We have reviewed your website, mustrad.org.uk, and are happy to inform you that your company has been found to pass our quality criteria and we have selected you for receiving the award.

11.12.12

The missing Radio Ballads and MacColl & Lloyd radio programmes

These recordings, in 192kbps MP3 format, have now been uploaded to the Net at Mediafire, for free download at: www.mediafire.com/?8yi2pivbm13n1.  Radio Ballads enthusiasts should find them extremely interesting.

Probably of even more interest to MT readers will be the complete Bert Lloyd Songs of the People series of broadcasts (13 episodes), and the complete Ewan MacColl The Songs Carriers series of broadcasts (10 episodes), both of which come from the same source and are online at Mediafire.  Songs of the People is at: www.mediafire.com/?gz5hw80fo5oer, and The Songs Carriers is at: www.mediafire.com/?7lc29ei70wbyf

Our thanks to the anonymous contributors of these important radio programmes.

4.12.12

Alternative Web Browsers

Another implication might be that manufacturers of modern browsers aren't bothered about the requirements of blind or partially sighted Web users - or that modern Braille and speech synthesis programs have developed a way of getting over the problem.

Whatever - the upshot of all this is that I shall be using the TITLE attribute rather than ALT in all future MT pieces ... in hopes that readers will bother to read the footnotes, etc, that I take such care to encode into our authors' best efforts.

18.12.12

Season's Greetings and Review of 2012

The other 2012 release was the House Dance CD-ROM : a study of the old 'octave style' anglo-concertina playing and the 'house dance' music it supported, up to around 1920.  And it seems that the first release of 2013 will be another 'digital book with embedded sound files' - Bob and Jaquline Patten's Somerset Scrapbook, originally a book and cassette release from back in 1987, though fundamentally updated and re-formatted for release in this new format.

On the magazine front, things have also been fairly quiet, just 7 new Articles and the usual additions to the Enthusiasms, Letters and News pages, plus around 40 new Reviews.  My thanks to all those hard working writers.

It's easy to blame the recession for this general slow-down in things - certainly our CD sales are only about half of what they were last year - but I have a feeling that it's more to do with people's enthusiasm for real traditional music.  As was the case back in the '60s and '70s, when revivalist LPs were being released every week, singers and players found it so much easier to listen to, and copy, the 'big names' of the period than it was to take the trouble to come to grips with the far less approachable traditional performers.  Ironically, it was in the 'lean times' of the last 25 or so years that interest in real traditional music began to flourish.

Sadly, it is now the case that pretty-well all the CDs of traditional singers and players possible have actually been made - I'm aware of very few sets of recordings available to me that could result in new CDs.  Actually, there are three or four more such CDs to come from MT, but the difficulties in producing an acceptable accompanying booklet are presently proving insurmountable.

Today, with Sam Lee, Faye Hield et al at the top of the fROOTS Critics Poll, it's a bit dis-spiriting to find that CDs of previously unheard traditional material attract so little interest.  As a friend of mine once said, "The survival of our music would only be guaranteed by it being made illegal!"

This trend is reflected in our website statistics - Musical Traditions Magazine (in paper and virtual forms) starts its 30th year of existence in six days' time and, while it's pleasing to note that our efforts are still reaching quite a number of people - the website had around 900,000 visitors in 2011 - this is around half of last year's number.

Once again, I'll remind you that Musical Traditions Internet Magazine exists to share our love of traditional music and musicians; if you have something to say about any traditional activity with a musical content, from anywhere in the world, please send it to me - the contact information is at the foot of the page.

So - in hopes of a much more active 2013, and in spite of all the cuts - may I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.

25.12.12

Musical Traditions Magazine CD-ROM

Happy New Year!

In truth, the CD-ROM never sold many copies (around half a dozen per year), and this last year has seen only three purchases.  Accordingly, the task is no longer worth the time and trouble involved, and I have decided not to publish any further volumes.  I will continue to supply the VWML and ITMA with simple copies, as they like to have them for reference purposes.

1.1.13

Two reviews

It was unusual in that the producer suggested that I should ask Ray Templeton to review it, as he'd expressed interest in the CD - and I was happy to oblige.  Ray thought the record was wonderful!  So did Ken Ricketts and Marya Parker, also regular reviewers of Irish music CDs in these pages.  In fact, they liked it so much that they sent their review unsolicited ... and I can scarcely remember the last time that happened!

So, my doom-laden comments notwithstanding, it's very good to find some real enthusiasm for wonderful music out there.  If only there were more such CDs ... and more such enthusiasts!

13.1.13

School of Scottish Studies in danger

The School was founded in 1951 with two great folklorists: Hamish Henderson and Calum Maclean.  Among the first tapes to be deposited were Alan Lomax fieldwork recordings and for over six decades there have been strong links to many Folklore Departments from all over the world.  Its Archive contains thousands of unique and irreplaceable recordings, a small number of which have appeared in public for the first time on several Musical Traditions CDs.

It seems only a short while ago that concerns regarding the fate of the Peter Kennedy Archive were uppermost in our minds.  In my opinion, the School of Scottish Studies Archive is equally important - and equally endangered.  And I don't imagine that there will be another Topic Records to ride to the rescue this time.

A student campaign is under way to persuade the University that the School of Scottish Studies and its resources must remain intact and accessible to researchers and the wider public.  You can add your name to the campaign by following this link and signing the Change.org petition.

6.2.13

New MT CD-ROM Released

A Somerset Scrapbook (MTCD252) is now available from our MT Records website, and while it follows the same format as our House Dance CD-ROM of 2012, it was a rather simpler project to complete, although it should perhaps be of greater interest to most MT readers.  It contains: mini-biographies of nine singers and the texts of 22 of their songs, all also available as MP3 sound files; mini-biographies of nine musicians with 12 of their tunes as MP3 sound files; mini-biographies of five story tellers with 10 of their stories as both text and MP3 files.  There are also eight accounts of various Somerset traditions.  All of the above are well illustrated by some excellent photographs.

5.3.13

Far in the Mountains

Since their publication, back in 2002, the 4-CD set Far in the Mountains have been MT's best-selling production and - thanks to Mike Yates' generous decision to waive his rights to the 10% sales royalty - have done more than twice as much as any other MT publication to keep something in our piggy bank.  In all seriousnes, we might not have survived these 17 years without this source of income.

And beyond this hugely beneficial effect, they are a wonderful source of splendid songs, tunes and stories.  So it is with great pleasure that I announce the publication of Far in the Mountains, volume 5.  Mike Yates writes:

Once these [four CDs] were issued, I set the original recordings aside and got on with a number of other projects.  Over the years my interests began to change and I found myself devoting more time to art ...  But the Appalachians were still there, in the back of my mind.  Recently I found time to re-listen to some of the recordings that had not made their way onto the four CDs, and I was rather surprised to discover just how much good material had been left off the albums, and so I set about putting together Far in the Mountains - Volume 5.

Tracklist
William Marshall & Howard Hall: 1. Train on the Island 2. Polly Put the Kettle On 3. Fortune Dan Tate: 4. Groundhog 5. Poor Ellen Smith Ted Boyd: 6. Pig in the Pen Pug Allen: 7. Soldier’s Joy Sam Connor: 8. Ten Little Indians 9. Granny Will Your Dog Bite? Stella & Taylor Kimble: 10. Troubles Dan Tate: 11. Waggoner’s Boy 12. Sally Ann Robert L Tate: 13. SallyAnn / Old Molly Hare / Baby-O       14. Down by the Stillhouse Pug Allen: 15. Turkey in the Straw 16. Sally Gooden Morris Norton: 17. Dicky Said to Johnny / Mirandy Tommy Jarrell: 18. Sail Away Ladies 19. Say Darling Say Doug Wallin: 20. The Little Mohee 21. Pretty Fair Miss All in Her Garden	1:15 1:11 1:13 1:06 1:33 1:50 1:24 1:28 1:33 1:17 1:03 0:29 2:37 1:00 1:53 1:25 3:24 1:15 2:16 2:24 2:33		Charlie Woods: 22. Cindy 23. Eighth of January / Green Mountain Polka     24. Walking in the Parlour Eunice Yeatts MacAlexander: 25. The Preacher and the Bear Pug Allen: 26. Old Joe Clark 27. Bull Durham 28. Fisher’s Hornpipe Inez Chandler: 29. The Leaves are Green 30. Daddy Had a Billy Goat Benton Flippen:> 31. Cripple Creek 32. Lonesome Road Blues Robert L Tate: 33. The Lawson Family Murder Mitchel Hopson: 34. Shout Little Lula Doug Wallin: 35. Let her Go, Let her Go 36. Darling Cora Walt Davis & J C McCool: 37. Under the Double Eagle 38. Whistling Rufus 39. Wildwood Flower 40. Silver Bells 41. Bully of the Town Evelyn & Douston Ramsey: 42. Beautiful Star of Bethlehem Benton Flippen & Friends: 43. Breaking up Christmas	1:29 2:14 1:29 2:07 2:43 2:13 2:21 1:29 1:12 1:43 1:37 2:07 0:47 1:32 1:47 1:22 1:15 1:04 1:10 1:43 3:09 3:37
Total: 76:59

Far in the Mountains Volume 5 - Echoes from the Mountains is vailable now from the MT Records website.  Price just £12.00.

23.4.13

Bernie Cherry: with powder, shot & gun (MTCD359) now available

The CD runs for 76 minutes and contains 21 newly recorded 2013 performances, with occasional melodeon accompaniments by Roger Grimes or your Editor.

Tracklist: Cupid's Garden, The Bitter Withy, Henry My Son, The Drowned Lover, The Gown of Green, Death and the Lady, The Poor Old Couple, The Seeds of Love, Searching for Young Lambs, The Poachers' Fate, Peggy Benn, Green Upon the Green, Six Dukes Went a-Fishing, The Storms are on the Ocean, Henry the Poacher, No Sir No, Sweet Belinda, Up in the North, The Royal George, John Barleycorn, The Wild Rover

21.5.13

Dave Bulmer and the fate of the Leader recordings

It does, of course, bring to mind similar concerns discussed when Peter Kennedy died - but I wonder if the two situations are actually all that similar.

The most obvious difference is that today we are deep in an economic crisis, and one which seems to be affecting 'unnecessary' purchases like CDs particularly hard.  Certainly, MT Records would be quite unable to attempt to buy the rights to any of the recordings Mike was thinking about - and I would guess that Veteran are in much the same position.  Whether Topic could 'ride to the rescue' again I do not know - but I rather doubt it.

Then there's the nature of the recordings concerned here - I've just checked through what I believe to be a fairly accurate discography of the Leader traditional recordings, and have come up with the following list:

LEA 4001 Jack Elliott of Birtley
LEA 2003 Seamus Ennis
LEA 2004 Martin Byrnes
LEA 2005 Seamus Tansey
LEA 4006 Billy Pigg Border Minstrel
LEA 4012 Blue Ridge Mountain Field Trip
LEA 4040 Craig Grey : New North Carolina Ramblers: Tex Islay : North Carolina Boys
LEA 4041 Charlie Wills
LEA 2043 John Doonan Flute for the Feis
LEA 2044 Music from the Coleman Country
LEAB 404 Copper Family Song for Every Season
LEA 4050 Various artists Unto Brigg Fair
LEA 4055 Old British ballads of Donegal and Derry
LEA 2069 Beresford Band Yorkshire Dales Dance Night
LEE 4042 George Dunn
LEE 4045 Lonnie Austin: Norman Woodlieff
LED 2051 Irish Music from The Favourite
LED 2052 Shetland Fiddlers
LEE 4054 Cecilia Costello
LEE 4056 Holme Valley Beagles
LEE 4057 Far Canadian Fields
LED 2060 John J Kimmel
LEE 4062 John Maguire
LED 2063 Walter Pardon: Proper Sort
LEE 4065 People's Carol : a Christmas singing tradition
LED 2067 Copper Family Song For Every Season
LED 2068 Stephen Baldwin
LED 2070 Eddie Butcher
LED 2111 Walter Pardon: Our Side of the Baulk

The real problem lies with the very important records by performers which I guess would have little or no commercial value today - Celilia Costello, Billy Pigg, Charlie Wills, not forgetting Unto Brigg Fair, the LP of ballads recorded in Ireland by Hugh Shields and the American albums recorded by Janet Kerr.

Mike Yates concluded his message with: The way that I see it is that these albums are of the greatest national interest.  They preserve something that has all but vanished and, as such, they deserve to be freely available to all.  If, at the end of the day, it all comes down to money - then that says something about our society that I find simply unacceptable.

I'm not sure I can go that far - Celtic music paid for the Leader records and so would expect to be paid back if another company were to wish to release them in the 21st century.  But the value of what one bought as an investment can both rise and fall - and I suspect that the value of the Leader (as opposed to the Trailer) catalogue has fallen dramatically ... probably to zero.

Maybe some of our readers will have comments on the above, or further ideas on the subject?  If so, why not send me a Letter for Publication - address at the foot of this page.

14.8.13

Double CD of The Willett Family from MT Records

Well, the first of these is now available!  When, in 1963, Topic Records released their first ever LP of English traditional singers, it was The Willett Family whose songs were presented.  On the front page of the inserted booklet, it stated: Topic Records Ltd acknowledges the help of Ken Stubbs, of Lingfield, Surrey, who first located and recorded the Willetts.  Musical Traditions Records is now - 50 years later - very pleased to be able to present those first Ken Stubbs recordings of Tom, Chris and Ben Willett, with thanks to Reg Hall for making them available, and to Jim Ward for noise reduction on the old tapes.

In addition, for the sake of presenting the Willett Family's complete recorded repertoire, we have added four songs not found amongst these 31 recordings.  With thanks to Topic Records we're pleased to be able to add recordings of Tom Willett singing Died for Love, made by Paul Carter in 1962; and Chris Willett singing Once I Was A Servant and The American Stranger, made by Mike Yates in 1978.  And we have also added Mike's recording of Chris singing A-Swinging Down the Lane from MT320.

Track Lists:

So that's 35 tracks, 101 minutes, making this the complete recorded repertoire of the Willett Family ... generally accepted as amongst the finest English Gypsy singers ever recorded.  As usual, "Adieu to Old England" has a 28 page integral booklet, and costs £16 + p&p from the MT Records website, or £17 inc p&p by cheque.

22.10.13

Re: The Willett Family CDs - an apology

Because we have both released essentially the same double CD in the past month - without either of us being aware of it!  Yes, both Forest Tracks and MT Records have just released double CDs of The Willett Family, from the recordings made by Ken Stubbs in the 1950s.  Both are presented in DVD cases together with substantial booklets.

This is not the place to go into the details of how this happened - a lack of communication, stretching right back to the '70s and '80s, and running seamlessly right on to 20013.  Suffice it to say that both of us were horrified to discover, just this week, that this had happened, and that we were, individually, completely unaware of the other's work on these releases.  Nor were we capable of understanding how it had happened until we were able to compare notes on the processes that led up to our publications.

You may be able to imagine how we felt - and how we do feel about the possibility of both sets of CDs being reviewed in the same publications!  Paul Marsh joins me in apologising to our respective customers, and to everybody else who'll be having a great laugh about this ... we suppose we deserve it!

However, what doesn't deserve it are the two splendid double CDs of some of the greatest English Gypsy singing ever recorded.  We hope that you will buy a copy of one or the other of them.

Rod Stradling and Paul Marsh - 27.10.13

MT Records Samplers

The present ones don't sell many copies - around 70 of the first one and about 15 of the second, so far.  These numbers make them almost not worth the trouble of compiling the booklets, designing all the paperwork and so on.  Furthermore, once made and published, no tracks from our newer releases get added - until we've published around 30 more to put on a new Sampler!  This is clearly a rather silly situation.

Some record companies make samples of tracks available for sale as MP3s on their websites, but I've always refused to do this because:

• Such a form of publication would only serve to reduce the music to the status of a commodity.
• The costs in both time and/or money of setting up the necessary on-site software would be prohibitive.
• I believe that the present MT policy of producing CD publications with extensive booklets provides a far better service to the potential customer, and fulfils an important educative role as well - which would not be the case with single MP3 files.
• A realistic charge for single MP3 files would make the music outrageously expensive in comparison with our CD publications

I've thought of several ways of doing this, though I think all of them have disadvantages of one sort or another:

1. Make the two present Samplers available as a pair of CDs in a double jewel case, without notes, like our 400 Series.  They could just about sell for £5.00, but would soon lose me money if many Americans bought them - it now costs £4.50 to post a single CD to the US!  And I wouldn't be able to add any new items to them as they are both of 80 minutes duration already.
2. Put all the existing '300 Series' Sampler tracks, plus the 5 new ones from our 2013 publications, plus the score or so peripheral releases onto a playable MP3 CD, in a simple slip-case, for a fiver.  The problem is the fact that by no means everyone has a player capable of playing MP3 discs.
3. Do the same as the above, but make it a data disc.  Users would then put the disc into their computers and play the MP3 files.  This looks good, but you can't play them in the car, or away from your computer.
4. Create a special Page in the Magazine or on the MT Records website, with all the tracks available as playable MP3 files.  Users could play them there and then, and/or save them to their own media if they wished to, but it would take a lot of time and fiddling about.
5. Put all 80 tracks onto a CD.  Since this would have a file size of around 3GB, they wouldn't fit onto a standard CD ... and, as far as I can tell, it seems that it's not possible to burn a playable 3GB CD onto a DVD disc.
6. However, I have found a program called Music DVD Creator, which purports to do exactly that.  This will produce a DVD which will play music, and I guess most users will have either a DVD enabled optical drive on their computers these days, or access to a DVD player ... though possibly not all of them.  This would create a single disc which could easily be sold for £5.00, including p&p.

As you can see, none of these ideas are without drawbacks.  Does anyone have any better ideas?  Please let me know by email (rod@mustrad.org.uk) - either as a Letter for Publication, or simply as a message to me for information.

1.11.13

Re: MT Records Samplers

My feeling is that none of the ideas I outlined provide a particularly good solution to the problem - so I've decided, for the moment, to go with the simplest solution, and one which doesn't involve any additional costs.  That is to create a special Page in the Magazine and on the MT Records website, with all the tracks available as playable MP3 files.  Users can play them there and then, and/or save them to their own media of choice, if they wish to.  Take a look here.

There are a total of 82 complete tracks (no 30 second snips here!) - that's one from almost every CD we've produced.  Five have been omitted: I've only included one from the Pop Maynard double (MTCD401-2) because it was only just a double anyway, and contains a number of alternative recordings of the same songs; and none from the Martin Carthy double (MTCD403-4) because it was a special charity project and is no longer available for contractual reasons.  And, obviously, the two published Samplers don't count.

As and when new releases appear, sample tracks can easily be added to the top of the list.  This should actually happen before too long, as our next project, another double CD set, The Complete Recorded Repertoire of Cecilia Costello, should make its appearance in the next month or two.

Not being the sort of person who keeps a strict record of his achievements, I hadn't realised that the publication of The Willett Family: Adieu to Old England (MTCD361-2) last week, marked a rather significant milestone for MT Records.  Because the 82 on the Sampler Page, plus the 5 omissions, plus the 13 Magazine CD-ROMs, make a total of 100 CDs in the MT Records catalogue!  Not something I could have possibly imagined when I published the Bob Hart CDs back in 1998.  The fact that this has happened in 2013 - the 30th anniversary of the original publication of Musical Traditions Magazine, and Danny's and my 70th birthdays - makes everything very neat and tidy.  Serendipity!

So, to pay me back for all that hard work, maybe you'd like to go to the MT Records website and buy a few!  Thanks.

3.11.13

The Hardy Sons of Dan, Volumes 3 & 4

We are now hoping to publish a further pair of CDs from the same source next March, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Keith's death.  Unfortunately, most of the original participants are now dead, so it will be just Paul Marsh and me, attempting to fill in some of the details regarding the singers and their songs.

Equally unfortunately, I'm extremely busy for the next couple of weeks, so Paul has taken on the responsibility of liaising with people in the hope of filling in some of the gaps.  We're looking for information on the singers - Packie Cunningham, Francie Little, Peggy MacDonagh, Tommy Connolly, and Eugene Ward - and there are several others that are unidentified!  We also need further background information on the singing tradition(s) in the area.

In the first instance, if you do have any information, please contact Paul Marsh at: amarsh@ndirect.co.uk   I will be back in circulation again after Christmas.  We truly hope that someone out there will be able to help.

6.12.13

Phyllis Marshall article

It's not quite the longest article we've ever published, though most of the longer ones have been the texts of CD publications' booklets, and few have included 46 photos and graphics, including 29 pieces of staff notation, all of which have playable MIDI files attached to them!

I'm pleased to say that Geoff's article also includes pretty-well all that is known of the singers Ms Marshall collected from, together with the texts of their songs and playable staff notation of their tunes.  This is a formidable piece of research work, and I'm very grateful to Geoff for letting us have it to publish.  You can get to it directly from here.

16.11.13

Season's Greetings and Review of 2013

Not only that but, since starting CD production in 1998, our most recent release, The Willett Family - Adieu to Old England (MTCD361-2) is actually our 100th CD publication!  2013 has been quite a good year for MT Records' CD releases: A Somerset Scrapbook (MTCD252) a CD-ROM book; Far in the Mountains, volume 5 (MTCD513); Bernie Cherry: with powder, shot & gun (MTCD359); and the above mentioned double CD of The Willett Family.

And I'm pleased to say that Cecilia Costello: "Old Fashioned Songs" (MTCD363-4), another of our 'complete recorded repertoire' releases, will be available quite soon.  Also planned for 2014 are another double CD of Keith Summers' Fermanagh recordings, and the Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger recordings of Caroline Hughes.

Since I'm now officially 'Old', I don't like to plan too far ahead, but it is just possible that we may be able to match 2013's four publications by the end of the year ...  Who knows?

So - in hopes of an equally active 2014, and of a financial recovery - may I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.

26.12.13

Cecilia Costello - back again, and then some!

A bit of history, for those readers unfamiliar with the situation.  Shortly after the publication of the 1975 Leader Records' LP Cecilia Costello, the company ceased trading, and was subsequently bought by Dave Bulmer of Celtic Music - though few of the records were ever re-released.  Following Bulmer's death this summer, questions were raised regarding the fate of the Leader catalogue.  I was interested in some of the traditional records, and realised that the 13 BBC recordings of Cecilia Costello were now out of copyright, so I began looking for further material to complete a full CD (80 minutes) of her singing.  I was surprised to find that so much existed; mainly because Cecilia Costello was recorded by no fewer than five collectors that I have become aware of:

• Peter Kennedy on 11th August 1951
• Marie Slocombe and Pat Shuldham-Shaw on 30th November 1951
• Charles Parker and Pamela Bishop in June and August 1967
• Jon Raven in July 1967
• Roy Palmer early in 1971

As well as that, only the Roy Palmer recordings were directly available - all the others resided in the archives of various public institutions.  While this was in no way problematic, it did take a considerable amount of time and patience in the liaison work involved.  The 'ready by Christmas' deadline I'd been working towards clearly became impossible to meet.  In truth, I wonder if the project would have been finished at all, were it not for the sterling work by Patrick Costello (Cecilia's grandson) in listening to each of the 27 CDs in the Library of Birmingham archive containing the Charles Parker material, to locate all the viable song recordings.  It took him almost a month!

As will be seen, the recordings date from three distinct periods: the early Fifties, when she was 67; the late Sixties, when she was 83; and the early Seventies, when she was 87.  Mrs Costello's voice and memory were in quite different condition on each of these three occasions.  Also, it would seem that the 'mediation' so often encountered in the earlier years of the Folk Revival, ensured that it was the 'folk songs' in her repertoire which were recorded by Kennedy and Slocombe, while the later collectors encountered few of these, but lots of music hall and 'pop' songs from her youth.

Accordingly, I decided to make CD1 contain only the 1951 recordings, and CD2 the later material.  The reason for this was that I felt that an interesting recording of an old pop song, more recited than sung in 1971, might sit rather uncomfortably next to a brilliant performance of a classic ballad, recorded twenty years earlier, when Mrs Costello was in her prime.

In the end, we are able to publish two CDs, each running to almost 80 minutes duration.  The first contains 26 Kennedy and Slocombe recordings, presented in the order they appeared on the Leader and Folktrax releases - the 24 songs plus two pieces of speech.  The second contains 63 songs and fragments, a few of which have pieces of speech associated with them, and none of which have been previously released.

Anyway - after all that - I'm very pleased to announce that Cecilia Costello: "Old Fashioned Songs" (MTCD363-4) is now available from the MT Records website for just £16.00.

22.1.14

Cecilia Costello - on video

Film of traditional performers is extremely rare, so I'm very grateful indeed for this opportunity of sharing it with you.

It's available as a '.wmv' file, and so should play on most installed Media Players, and is 171MB in size - but it seems to stream (at least in Windows 7) so there's no long wait while it's downloading.  Click here to watch it.

13.2.14

Keith Summers remembered

Whilst there is much I could say about this outstanding man, many others have done so far more eloquently that I could possibly manage, and so I gladly take this opportunity of pointing you to Paul Marsh's superb obituary, and to the memorial page of responses to Keith's death that flooded in to MT from his many friends and from people who knew him.

Furthermore, it's a great pleasure to be able to direct you to Keith's masterwork on traditional music and song in East Suffolk, Sing, Say or Pay! which is hosted amongst these pages.  And for a couple more examples of Keith's excellent journalism, I can direct you to the booklets which accompanied the two double CD sets of Keith's recordings that we were able to issue on the MT Records label: A Story to Tell (MTCD339-0), Keith's Suffolk recordings; and The Hardy Sons of Dan (MTCD329-0), his Co Fermanagh recordings.

Not only that but, to mark this 10th anniversary of Keith's death, Paul Marsh and I have worked together on a new double CD set of more of his recordings from around Lough Erne's shores, to be published by MT Records in the very near future - I Pray You Pay Attention (MTCD367-8) - which may be seen as The Hardy Sons of Dan, Volumes 3&4.  As we have publicly been shown to have been unaware of what each other was doing with The Willett Family CDs, I think it a good opportunity to state that we have worked together on this forthcoming release!  It will be 'officially' launched at the final Keith Summers Gathering, at The King & Queen, Foley Street, London W1 6DL, on Saturday the 31st of May, 2014.

Keith Summers ... good old boy!

And we should not let this day pass without remembering another good old boy, Bob Copper, who also died ten years ago, on the day before Keith.  I was hugely impressed that, in the very midst of their own loss, the Copper Family found the time to write to us expressing their sorrow at Keith's death.  Things like that should make us all proud to be a part of this little subculture of ours; so full of decent, caring people.

30.3.14

Caroline Hughes: Sheep-Crook and Black Dog (MTCD365-6)

This is the third CD for which Peggy Seeger has allowed MT Records to use recordings from the MacColl/Seeger Archive and, in this instance, also to quote at length from the splendid book Travellers' Songs from England and Scotland.  I must here express my (our!) gratitude towards her generosity in this respect.

Caroline Hughes was a legendary Gypsy singer, thought by many to be the finest exponent of the art.  All her best-known songs are here - a total of 90 songs and fragments - 60 of which don't appear on the recent Topic CD, including eight never before heard, which have been allocated new Roud Numbers.  If the fragmentary nature of some of her songs should displease you, just enjoy the wonderful tunes, the variable verse lengths, long and short lines, and her brilliant musicianship.

Track lists

CD One:				CD Two:
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22 - 23 - 24 - 25 - 26 - 27 - 28 - 29 - 30 - 31 - 32 - 33 - 34 - 35 - 36 - 37 - 38 - 39 - 40 - 41 - 42 -	If I Only Had the One I Love Sheep-Crook and Black Dog The Game of All Fours I Don't Want A Girl All Over Those Hills The Atching Tan Song The Banks of Sweet Dundee Barbry Ellen The Bird in the Lily Bush Betsy the Milkmaid If I Were a Blackbird A Blacksmith Courted Me The Blue Eyed Lover The Bridgwater Farmer I Am a Brisk Young Lad Buttercup Joe The Butcher Boy Catch Me If You Can Clementine On a Cold and Winter’s Night The Cows is in the Clover The Cuckoo Diddling Song Fair Wackford Street Erin Go Bragh Erin Go Bragh Fair Ellen The False-Hearted Lover The Folkestone Murder We Dear Labouring Men Irish Molly-O Georgie The Girl I Left Behind Still I Love Him Flash Gals and Airy Too Go and Leave Me All You Paddies Lay Down The Pretty Ploughing Boy Once I Had a Good Little Boy The Running, Running Rue The Jealous Lover The Famous Flower of Serving Men Total:	1:43 1:39 2:49 0:56 1:46 0:47 1:04 3:02 1:43 1:38 2:53 2:41 2:19 4:35 0:30 1:23 2:36 0:45 0:48 1:59 1:08 2:33 0:58 1:17 0:55 1:35 2:01 1:40 0:57 1:04 1:10 2:37 1:16 0:47 1:12 0:28 0:46 1:04 3:22 2:50 1:19 4:43 79:39		1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22 - 23 - 24 - 25 - 26 - 27 - 28 - 29 - 30 - 31 - 32 - 33 - 34 - 35 - 36 - 37 - 38 - 39 - 40 - 41 - 42 - 43 - 44 - 45 - 46 - 47 - 48 - 49 -	Green Grows the Laurel Henry My Son Billy Boy The Rich Farmer From Chesfield I Was A Reckless Young Fellow The Irish Girl Betsy In My Father's Garden The Prentice Boy Jel Along The Jew's Garden The Jolly Herring The Blue Jacket The Little Ball of Twine The Little Chimney Sweep Little Poppa Rich Bold Dollery Young But Growing Bold Robert Emmet Mandi Went to Poov the Grais McCaffery My Boy Willy My Love Cold Beneath My Feet The Broomfield Hill The Broomfield Hill The Lady and the Soldier Two Pretty Gypsy Girls The First day in October The Old Riverside Old Tom Cat - Rackymandoo Once I Had A Colour Johnny Doyle / The Green Bed Child's Rhyme The Oyster Girl The Green Bushes Riddle Three Long Steps The Little Beggar Boy Sweet William Twenty-One Years The Three Butchers Bell Bottom Trousers Died For Love Final Speech Space: before fragments: Lord Bateman The Dark Eyed Sailor Brennan on the Moor The Black Velvet Band Total:	1:27 2:02 0:56 2:21 0:27 0:38 1:05 1:22 3:51 2:05 1:34 2:36 0:31 1:10 1:49 0:31 0:25 1:00 0:55 0:30 1:38 0:31 1:18 1:41 1:30 3:51 0:46 1:29 3:14 2:47 1:40 1:23 0:18 0:57 1:36 0:44 2:10 2:25 0:44 2:14 1:33 1:53 2:04 1:34 0:10 0:18 0:11 0:14 0:28 69:00

MTCD365-6 : Two CDs + 48 page integral booklet in DVD case.  90 tracks, 148 minutes.  Buy it from the MT Records' website, price just £16.00

6.4.14

I Pray You Pay Attention

As is so often the case, this has taken rather longer than was originally hoped, so we missed a 30th March (the 10th anniversary of Keith's death) launch date - but have been able to get everything together for an 'official' launch at the final Keith Summers Gathering at the King & Queen in London, on 31st May.

I Pray You Pay Attention and listen to my song (MTCD367-8) is now available on the MT Records website, for card purchases, or from me at the usual address for cheque purchases.  The CDs comprise 50 tracks, 156 minutes duration, and include a 48 page integral booklet in DVD case.  Price just £16.00

Many of the singers from The Hardy Sons of Dan are here, plus a good number of others, giving a great selection of traditional songs, ditties, and hunting songs from around Lough Erne's shore - but no more football songs.  One track from each CD has been added to our Sampler page.

The track lists are as follows:

CD One:					CD Two:
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22 - 23 - 24 - 25 - 26 - 27 -	I Pray You Pay Attention The Bright Silvery Light of the Moon The Crockery Ware Bundoran From Sweet Tralee Everyone's Done It But You My Love, he is a Miner Paddy and the Donkey Gentle Mother The Sprig of Irish Heather Caroline and Her Sailor Bold McCafferty The Heather where the Moorcock Crows The Irish Soldier The Hills above Drumquin My Tackle A Honie The White Hare of Golan Erin's Lovely Home The Bonny Labouring Boy The Tyrone Tailor The Moon behind the Hill The Galway Shawl My Mother's Last Goodbye The Little Old Mud Cabin The Factory Girl The Lovely River Finn That Little Thatched Cottage	Packie Cunningham Unidentified singer Maggie Murphy Packie Cunningham Francie Little Packie Cunningham Paddy & Jimmy Halpin Unidentified singer Eugene Ward McElroy Packie Cunningham Maggie Murphy Tommy Connelly Packie Cunningham Patsy Flynn Packie Cunningham Eddie Coyle Maggie Murphy Packie Cunningham Tommy Connelly Francie Little James McDermott Eugene Ward McElroy James McDermott James McDermott Packie Cunningham Jimmy Halpin John Maguire Total:	2:30 2:08 2:14 2:01 3:31 3:17 2:47 2:11 3:11 3:20 3:16 3:18 2:35 2:38 2:35 1:59 2:03 3:13 3:40 3:50 2:03 2:59 2:59 3:12 2:20 2:41 2:10 77:47		1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22 - 23 -	Mr Bradley's Ball A Bonny Leitrim Boy The Granemore Hare The Banks of the Silvery Tide The Piley Cock The Killyfole Boasters Harper the Pride of Tyrone Matt Hyland My Charming Edward Boyle Mr Macadam & Co Boys and Girls Courting The Kilmuckridge Hunt The Mourne Still Clinkin' o'er the lea Keady Town The Banks of the Lee The Titanic The Roslea Hunt Stock or Wall The Nobleman's Wedding Spancil Hill Blow The Candle Out Here's A Health to the Company	Maggie Murphy Jimmy Halpin Francie Scott Maggie Murphy Jimmy Halpin Red Mick McDermott Jack Hobson Peggy MacDonagh Francie Little Brian Tumilty Maggie Murphy Brian Tumilty Brian Tumilty Maggie Murphy Francie Scott Francie Scott Tommy Tinneny Jimmy Halpin Maggie Murphy James McDermott Patsy Flynn James McDermott James McDermott Total:	3:45 3:16 3:24 5:35 3:09 3:29 4:03 4:13 3:17 2:26 2:05 1:42 2:37 3:01 3:07 2:40 5:59 2:52 3:03 2:31 3:22 2:22 4:03 78:27

22.5.14

Postage charges - again!

For me to sell a £12 CD to a UK customer costs £1.24 + a 25p padded bag ... £1.50 is not too bad, you might think.  But to send it to Europe now costs me £4, and to the States costs me £5.  That doesn't leave a lot of profit on a £12 CD, particularly when the PayPal charges are taken off as well.

PayPal UK doesn't help either; despite repeated requests from users over a 10 year period, they still don't provide alternative P&P rates for different areas, as they have done with PayPal US for ages.  Accordingly I've had to charge an 'average' rate (20%) for all purchases.  This has meant the UK customers have had to pay twice as much postage as they needed to, while US customers cost me about £2 for every sale.  It's time for a different approach.

Although it will involve a huge amount of work creating new files, I'm considering altering the way the MT Records website works.  When the 'ADD' button next to a CD is clicked, it would take the purchaser to a new page offering three 'ADD' buttons - one for the UK, one for Europe and one for Rest of World.  Using our new I Pray You Pay Attention double CD at £16 as an example, the UK button will add £1.50 P&P to the cost of the CDs, the Europe button will add £4.00 P&P, and the Rest of World button will add £5.00 P&P, whilst over-riding the normal 20% charge.  Here's a non-working example of what this new page may look like.

These added P&P charges are only what the CDs cost me to post ... and will make MT CDs considerably cheaper for UK purchasers at the MT Records' website than they are from other sources.  However, please note the Warning on the new page ... this will only work if purchasers are honest about where their CDs are to be posted.

The only problem I can foresee is when a customer wants to purchase a signinicant number of CDs at the same time - actual postal costs could be exceeded.  In this case, I suggest customers email me their order and I'll let them know the actual postal costs and full order price, which they can pay me via PayPal.  this would take a little longer, but could save them money.

Please let me know what you think of this proposal - particularly of any flaws in the procedure that I haven't thought of.

6.6.14

New MT Records' Postage charges

This will make these CDs cost £17.50 rather than £19.20 for UK customers!

Please let me know if you experience any problems with this new procedure.

14.7.14

MT's Cecilia Costello CDs win The Folklore Society Non-Print Media Award

The Folklore Society Non-Print Media Award is a biennial prize established by the Folklore Society to encourage the study of folklore, to help improve the standard of folklore publications in media other than print in Britain and Ireland, and to establish the Folklore Society as an arbiter of excellence.

For the purposes of the award, 'folklore studies' are interpreted broadly, to include all aspects of traditional and popular culture, narrative, beliefs, customs and folk arts, including studies with a literary, anthropological, linguistic, sociological or geographical bias.

The award is open to all non-print media English-language publications on folklore in a permanent and durable form (CD, DVD etc), having their first, original and initial publication in the United Kingdom or Republic of Ireland in the two-year period from 1 June 2012 to 31 May 2014, for award in November 2014, and for subsequent two-year periods, beginning 1 June 2014.

Each year there are three judges appointed by the Society's Committee. The winning publication will be that which, in the opinion of the judges, has made the most distinguished contribution to folklore studies in the year in question.

I would like to publicly thank Patrick Costello and other members of the Costello family (Candice Bingham and Margaret Grant), Roy Palmer, Pam Bishop, Reg Hall, Fred McCormick, Bill Leader, the BBC Archives, the Charles Parker Archive Trust, the Library of Birmingham, Leeds University Vernacular Archive, Topic Records, Jon Raven, Brian Dakin - for assistance and information.  Without them, these CDs would never have existed ... and it goes without saying that without the assistance of countless other collaborators over the years, none of our 106 CD publications would have ever been possible.

19.11.14

Folklore Society Non-Print Media Award
Judges' Comments on the Entries

So to the winner … the fact that the TOPIC film The Barley Mow was also issued as part of a BFI DVD compilation in 2011 and the audio recordings were also already available [albeit inferior quality] ultimately made our final decision less difficult.

Not only did the panel feel that Rod Stradling truly deserves an accolade for his continued outstanding effort in discovering, organising and making available recordings that might ordinarily not be available, they unanimously felt that "Old Fashioned Songs": Cecilia Costello is the outright winner.

27.11.14

New MT double CD: Sam Larner: Cruising Round Yarmouth

And - just in time for that Christmas present - I'm very pleased to announce the publication of Sam Larner: Cruising Round Yarmouth (MTCD369-0) - a double CD of all the recordings Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger and Charles Parker made of Sam Larner in 1958-60.

The more-or-less complete recorded repertoire of this wonderful Norfolk singer is here - 65 songs and fragments, plus four spoken passages, give a great impression of Sam's life and times.

But, most of all, it's the startling quality of his singing which is so impressive.  The full details, track lists, etc can be found on the Latest News page.

Rod Stradling - 3.12.14

7.1.15

Season's Greetings and Review of 2014

Not only that, but I also have another CD-ROM ready to go - a 'digital book with embedded midi files' dealing with Ralph Vaughan Williams' 1905-06 collecting trips to King's Lynn and environs, by Alan Helsdon - Vaughan Williams in Norfolk (MTCD253).  We're holding this back to be published on January 7th, 2015, to mark the 110th Anniversary of Vaughan Williams' first arrival in Norfolk to collect folk songs.

It's also good to know that the new Postal Rates arrangements are working well - UK purchasers now pay about half the P&P they did before, whilst European and 'Rest of Word' buyers no longer cost me money for each CD I send them ... well worth all the research and effort to set it up!  Now all I need is lots more people to buy the bloody things!

Thankfully, the Magazine has been fairly busy in 2014 as well: 7 new Articles; 3 new Enthusiasm pieces; 40 new Reviews; the extensive new Sampler page; and lots of Letters and News items.

As I wrote last year - since I'm now officially 'Old', I don't like to plan too far ahead - but it would have been nice to tell you of other CDs I have in the pipeline for 2015.  Unfortunately, apart from the above-mentioned CD-ROM, and one other possible CD publication, I don't know of anything else lurking in the shadows for the future.  If any of you have ideas, please get in contact!

So - in hopes of a reasonably active 2015, a real (rather than notional) financial recovery, continued EU membership, and a change of Government - may I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.

Rod Stradling - 22.12.14

Vaughan Williams in Norfolk

This excellent piece of work, by Alan Helsdon, contains staff notations, texts and playable MIDI files of the 90 items RVW collected - 73 songs in 86 versions, plus 4 dance tunes.  As well as an Itinerary and Narrative of his trip, it has remarkable mini-biographies of the 20 singers he collected from.  Further, due to RVW being far more interested in the tunes than the words of the songs, he seldom noted these - so the author has hunted through available sources to provide the most likely versions of the texts concerned, and furnished a hugely detailed Sources page.

This CD-ROM is now available from the MT Records website, price £12.00.

Few of these song tunes will have been encountered by today's singers - and there are some real crackers there.  Accordingly, I've broken with tradition and, since the single disc contains 90 tunes, I've just added two of the most unusual ones to our MT Records Sampler page.

7.1.15

MT Records & Magazine - the future

This is not any sort of emergency - but I'd like to get the future sorted out (and do the necessary work involved) well in advance.  So your comments and ideas would be extremely welcome.

Rather obviously, passing the whole thing on to someone else to run is the most obvious solution.  But this might be something of a poisoned chalice, in that there's really quite a lot of work involved - for very little return.  And that's just for making and selling the existing CDs, let alone producing any new ones.

Of course, setting up a system to enable online sales of the individual tracks as downloadable MP3 files is a possibility.  I'm very much against this idea, as has been outlined in the 'About' page in MT Magazine for a number of years.  It turns the music into a mere commodity, does not ensure that the complete repertoire of a performer is delivered, nor that the booklet would ever be read by the purchaser.  It would not afford the performers the respect I believe they richly deserve.

But I'd be very concerned about passing on all the formatting, printing, stapling, and guillotining work demanded by our 44-page booklets, to someone else.  I'm also - tangentially - concerned that the current very low sales of our CDs in the present economic climate may be being caused, in part, by the fairly hefty £16 price-tag of most of our releases.  So I'm considering other ways of presenting MT material, which could minimise the work involved, and lower the selling price.

As well as 'normal' music CDs with booklets, some of my recent releases have been CD-ROMs of 'digital books with embedded sound files'.  As you may realise, if you've encountered them, these are really just very long articles in HTML format with links to MP3 sound files.  They are really just big versions of MT Magazine articles, loaded onto a CD.

It struck me that I could very easily present the contents of a CD booklet as that 'very long article' with the links to all the CD's audio files as full-length MP3s.  Now I do know that MP3s are not as high resolution as CD audio - but since almost none of the 50-odd-year-old sound files I get to use are remotely 'HI-FI' in the first place, I don't believe that any listener would be able to tell the difference.

Publishing MT CDs in this way:

1. would mean that all our releases would fit on one, rather than two or three, CDs.
2. this could be packaged in a regular 'jewel case' rather than the expensive DVD cases.
3. would require the physical printing of just two pieces of paper for the Insert and Tray, as opposed to a 44-page booklet.
4. would result in a product which could sell for less than £10.00 and still be profitable.
5. being both smaller and lighter, would cost considerably less to post to purchasers.

However:

There wouldn't be an audio CD to play in the stereo or car player.  These are rarely fitted to new cars these days, and the audio CDs could be supplied together with the CD-ROM version for £1 or so each.

Many people listen to music on iPads or tablets these days.  A digital version of the CD-ROM's contents could be made available as an online download for somewhat less than the price of the CD-ROM - though it would involve the HTML file and its associated Graphics and Sound folders all being put into the same folder on the purchaser's device.

To sum up and clarify - I'm looking for a way of minimising the work needed by whoever takes over MT Records in producing our publications.  Also, for a format that is useable in the maximum number of devices.

It seems there are several options - produce:

A CD-ROM similar to the ones I have already published:
This would require the printing of just two pieces of paper, plus cutting, packing and posting the result - not too much work for my successor.  It's not a great deal of work for me to create.  But it's only useable on a computer.
The contents of the above as a digital download:
This involves no work at all for my successor.  It's not a great deal of work for me to create.  But it's somewhat limited in terms of useable devices.
The contents of the above as a single PDF:
This involves no work at all for my successor.  But it is difficult, time-consuming and expensive for me to create in the first place.  It should work - and look exactly the same - on all devices.

The same audio CDs I have already published.  No work at all for either of us beyond actually printing the CDs.
The sound files needed in MP3 format - on a disc (very little work) or as a digital download (no work at all).

Please help by letting me know your thoughts and ideas.

13.3.15

Vaughan Williams in Norfolk - an apology

12.1.15

MT Records' downloadable MTDL600 Series

I've decided on a two-stage solution.  Stage 1 is to provide a downloadable HTML version of all the 300 Series booklets, with embedded sound files.  This format is not as universal as I would like, but it goes a fair way towards it, and is do-able now.  Then I will add downloadable versions of the 100, 200, 400 and 500 Series CDs, and the 250 Series CD-ROMs.  Stage 2 will be to convert all these into PDF downloads with embedded sound files.  That will be something for the future.

So - as well as continuing to produce the usual CDs and booklets in DVD cases, we are now also providing a new downloadable format for MT Records' releases, which contain the complete (and updated) booklet text from the original 300 Series albums, with all the songs/tunes available as links to complete MP3 recordings from within the text.  The 600 Series numbers relate to the 300 Series numbers - so, for example, MTDL605-6 is the complete updated text and photo contents of the MTCD305-6 booklet and the 49 songs from Walter Pardon.  As usual, sound links are shown by the name of the song/tune being in underlined bold italic red text.  Click the name and your installed MP3 player will start.  Place cursor on red asterisks for any footnotes.  Place cursor on graphics for citation and further information ('touch and hold' for tablets).

Since downloads require no booklet production, case covers, CDs, DVD cases or postage, they sell for a far lower price.  Compared to £12, £16 and £20 for the 300 Series publications, the downloads of single CDs are £2.00, double CDs are £4.00, and 3-CD Sets are £6.00.  The facility exists to pay more than these prices, if you'd like to!

Each Download comprises a ZIP file containing one or more HTML files, a 'sound' folder and a 'graphics' folder.  They can be un-ZIP-ed into a single destination (folder) on your device, and run from there.  Alternately (if you buy more than one download) you could create a single folder called (for example) 'MT Downloads', containing both a 'sound' folder and a 'graphics' folder, and then put all the HTML files into that, all the .mp3 files into the 'sound' folder and all the .jpg/.png/.gif files into the 'graphics' folder.  All files have individual names, so no problems should occur, no matter how many downloads you eventually buy.  Needless to say, all the MP3 sound files could also be copied to any other device you might wish to use.

The first 12 downloads - the 1998 Bob Hart (MTDL601-2) to the 2002 George Dunn (MTDL617-8) - are now available from the gumroad.com website, via links in the special 'Downloads page' on the MT Records website.  If you just want one download, that's all you need to do - pay at Gumroad and it will be downloaded to you immediately.  Some of you may be pleased to know that Gumroad does not use PayPal for financial processing.  Also, that you can 'join' Gumroad to avoid having to enter your details each time you use it.

Other downloads will follow shortly, including all the 100, 200, 400 and 500 Series CDs and the 250 Series CD-ROMs, concluding with the end of 2013 and The Willett Family (MTCD361-2) - a total of 57 albums, many of which are doubles, and two are trebles.  The four 2014 releases will be added next year.

*****

For those who prefer a physical artifact to a virtual one, all the existing 100, 200, 300, 400 and 500 Series CDs (and future publications) will continue to be available as a booklet and CD(s) in a DVD case as normal - for the present.

30.4.15

24 MT Records' downloads now online

So, to cheer myself up - and I hope, some of you - I've just put the second dozen Records' downloads online.  That takes us up to the 2009 Ken Langsbury's Stories CD - MTDL548.

More will be following shortly: the eight further 300 Series releases up to 2013's The Willett Family; all the 100, 200, 400 and 500 Series releases; and the four CD-ROMs.  The 2014 releases will follow next year.

8.5.15

Complete MT Records' downloads

With the addition of the 13 albums in the American 500 Series releases, all the current MT Records' downloads, up to the end of 2013, are now online - a total of 57 CD sets, many of which are doubles, and two are trebles, making a total of 80 actual CDs.  Be aware that Gumroad's Gallery page can be quite slow to completely load, as there are so many items to display now.

I would like to particularly draw your attention to Morgan MacQuarrie : Over the Cabot Trail (MTDL511), a wonderful collection of Cape Breton sets, played in the old style rarely heard these days.  And also to Meeting's a Pleasure Volumes 1 & 2, and Volumes 3 & 4 (MTDL505-6 and 507-8).  These Kentucky recordings are absolutely the equals of Mike Yates' Far in the Mountains sets, in my opinion.

You can find them all via the Downloads page on the MT Records website.  Have a look for more information - and maybe you'd like to buy one!

Downloads of single CDs are £1.00 or £2.00, double CDs are £4.00, and 3-CD Sets are £6.00
And there's the facility to pay more than these low prices if you should wish to!

And Gumroad (our service provider) now supports payments via PayPal as well as cards.  The four 2014 releases will be available as downloads next year.

Enjoy!

17.5.15

New MT Records' release

However, a couple of months ago another CD popped up completely unexpectedly, and is now ready for release.  David Stacey - Good Luck to the Journeyman (MTCD360) is unusual in a number of ways.  David was born and brought up in Saffron Walden, Essex, in 1943.  From his twenties he spent many years alternating between archaeology in Israel and apple and hop picking in Kent.  There he met Mary Ann Haynes' son Ted, and Nelson Ridley's nephew Henry - and through them, many other Gypsies and Travellers in the area.  He was privy to many of the sing-songs they participated in, and learned a good number of their songs.  Back home, in later life, he encountered a number of other Travellers in north Essex and Cambridgeshire, and a local traditional singer, Walter Jarvis - learning more songs on the way - in addition to the repertoire he'd acquired from books and records.  Most of the songs are in slightly unfamiliar versions (to me, at least) with some excellent variations of the tunes, and have been learned directly - face to face - from traditional singers.

As with our excellent Bernie Cherry CD of 2013, David Stacey is not a traditional singer, but might well have been considered one if he'd been born 20 years earlier.  This is a most interesting and unusual CD.  It's now available from the MT Records website, price £12.00.

31.8.15

Another new MT Records' CD-ROM release

MacColl and Seeger’s 1977 book was years ahead of its time in terms of its detailed consideration of all aspects of Gypsy and Traveller songs and culture in the UK.  The Introduction and Music Notes are hugely informative, as are the 12 pages on the 18 singers.

All the 131 songs (in 155 versions!) are here as full length MP3 recordings, as well as the original texts and staff notations. Everything is cross-referenced and linked.

The singers concerned are: Emily Baker; Willie Cameron; Charlotte Higgins; Jock Higgins; Caroline Hughes; Henry Hughes; Sheila Hughes; William Hughes; Ruby Kelby; Christina MacAllister; Wilhelmina MacAllister; John MacDonald; Maggie McPhee; Big Willie McPhee; Nelson Ridley; Maria Robertson; Levi Smith; Jeannie Thompson.

This is essential reading - and listening - for anyone with an interest in Gypsy and Traveller songs and culture in the UK.

It’s available now from the MT Records website, price £12.00 + p&p.

28.9.15

Another new MT Records' CD release

Harry Upton was born in 1900 in Hove, Sussex.  His father, Frank, from whom he learned most of his songs, was a shepherd from West Blatchington and must have been born c.1865 and, to Harry's knowledge, had been a shepherd on the South Downs all his life.  By the time he was 13, Harry had left school and was working as his father's shepherd boy.  He worked with his father for about five years and then left to become a carter, working with horses on the Dyke Hills, beyond Brighton.  Harry worked with horses until his marriage in 1927 when he moved to Balcombe to work as a tractor driver, a job that was to last for 40 years.  Although officially retired, Harry spent a further seven years rearing calves on the Balcombe Estate until he finally retired in 1975.

He was collected by Ken Stubbs, Mervyn Plunkett and Peter Kennedy, though it was only Mike Yates who he let record more than a couple of his songs.  This CD contains almost all of the songs he recorded, including all of those from the Topic anthology LPs, Sussex Harvest - A Collection of Traditional Songs from Sussex (Topic 12T258), Green Grow the Laurels – Country Singers from the South (Topic 12TS285) and the limited edition LP of Harry’s other songs, released to accompany an article Mike wrote for Traditional Music magazine.  This was Why Can’t it Always be Saturday? (Topic SP 104).  Only 250 copies were pressed, and the album soon sold out. (Imagine selling 250 copies of a traditional singer's CD today!)

This new CD contains 22 songs, runs for 78 minutes and has a 24-page integral booklet in DVD case.  It’s available now from the MT Records website, price £12.00 + p&p.

31.10.15

And yet another new MT Records' CD release

So, just in time for that Christmas present, I Wish There Was No Prisons (MTCD372) contains tracks from Harry Upton, Johnny Doughty, George Spicer, Louise Fuller, George Attrill, Fred Jordan, William Harding, Bill Whiting, Percy Bridges, The Cantwell Family, Alice Green, Cyril Nunn, Freda Palmer, Son Townsend, Fred Welfare, and Ruth and Clare Pinner.  We believe that none of these recordings are currently available on CD.

I Wish There Was No Prisons has 31 tracks, an 81 minute duration, and comes with a 28-page integral booklet.    It’s available now from the MT Records website, price £12.00 + p&p.

Rod Stradling - 5.12.15

Season's Greetings and Review of 2015

So this left me with almost an entire year without a single CD release to work on.  In a way, this was a good thing, because it led me to re-consider an idea I'd been toying with for ages ... but which would involve so much work that I'd shied away from even discussing it with its principal contributor.  So it was that, in early February, I suggested the idea of a CD-ROM of Travellers' Songs from England and Scotland to Peggy Seeger.  Her response was "Of COURSE, I would love to have the book put onto CD-ROM".  I knew it would take a while to get it all done ... but I had no idea that it would take over seven months to find all the 155 sound files needed to complete the project!  But complete it we did, and it was released at the end of October.

Meanwhile ... other things had been happening during that seven-month period.  Thinking well into the future, and after a lot of ethical and technical struggles, I decided that I would put the entire MT Records' output onto the Net as downloads.  This was a second project entailing a great deal of work, and was accomplished in several stages, but now the entire catalogue up to the end of 2013 is available as downloads - and the four 2-CD set releases of 2014 will be there in the first week of 2016.  And, on checking, I find that we've sold over 300 downloads this year!  And I'm extremely gratified to find that they all appear to work perfectly.

Then, in August, a completely unexpected CD project came along, involving very little work for me, and David Stacey: Good Luck to the Journeyman (MTCD360) was released at the end of that month.  So, by the end of October, I was feeling quite satisfied with two CD-ROMs, a single CD, and 80 downloads as a good year's work.

And then ... a reader's suggestion brought Mike Yates and me together again for what would be our 12th joint project - a CD of the complete recorded repertoire of that fine Sussex singer, Harry Upton.  But, as it happened, a single CD wasn't quite capacious enough, so Mike suggested a further CD, containing the two missing songs, plus - as Mike put it - 'other versions of songs which Harry sang, others sung by people that Harry knew, and songs that Harry would probably have recognised as being the sort of thing that he liked to sing'.  And that was I Wish There Was No Prisons (MTCD372).

Not too bad for a year's work!  It does leave me, unfortunately, with almost nothing for 2016!  Any suggestions?

The Magazine has not slumbered either.  We published our 300th Article back in August, and the total now stands at 303.  Some 30 new Reviews have been added this year, along with plenty of News items and Letters.  Sadly, the Obituaries page has increased in size, as well.  Regarding that, I do urge you to check out Fred McComick's reviews in the Magazine.  Just click on the 'Search the entire Magazine' box at the top-right of the Home Page, and enter 'mccormick' in the Reviews section search box - there are about 60 of 'em, and they're all well worth reading!

The Magazine and MT Records websites each had over one million visitors in 2015.

So, 19 years to the day since the magazine first appeared in this form, I'll end as I always do - in hopes of a reasonably active 2016, a real (rather than notional) financial recovery, continued EU membership, and Jeremy Corbyn's continued leadership of the People's Party - and may I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.

24.12.15

2014 CDs now available as downloads

It's Happy New Year time - and, as promised, the eight CDs (four double sets) we produced in 2014 are now available as downloads - they're the last four items on the page.  For those of you who may be new to this service, each Download comprises an HTML file of the complete booklet, within which are clickable links to all the songs as MP3 files.

Each Download comprises a ZIP file containing one or more HTML files, a 'sound' folder and a 'graphics' folder.  They can be un-ZIP-ed into a single destination (folder) on your device, and run from there.  Alternately (if you buy more than one download) you could create a single folder called (for example) 'MT Downloads', containing both a 'sound' folder and a 'graphics' folder, and then put all the HTML files into that, all the .mp3 files into the 'sound' folder and all the .jpg/.png/.gif files into the 'graphics' folder.  All files have individual names, so no problems should occur, no matter how many downloads you eventually buy.  Needless to say, all the MP3 sound files could also be copied to any other device you might wish to use.

Since downloads require no booklet production, case covers, CDs, DVD cases or postage, they sell for a far lower price.  Compared to £10, £12, £16 and £20 for the 'normal' publications, the downloads of single CDs are £1.00 or £2.00, double CDs are £4.00, and 3-CD Sets are £6.00.  The facility exists to pay more than these low prices, if you'd like to!

They can be found, along with ALL the previous MT Records' CD publications, on the MT Records' Download page.

1.1.16

And now for something completely different!

We subsequently recorded three cassettes.  The first, from 1985, was called Demos ... sounds rather grand, but it was really only a demo tape to try to get ourselves some gigs.  This was followed the next year by Promos, again just a 5-track promo cassette.  The band's personnel had changed a bit by then.  Dion had left, replaced by Jon Moore: lead guitar, and we'd added two rhythm guitar players, Tom Greenhalgh (from the Mekons) and our son Barnaby - though they rarely played at the same time.  At the end of 1986 we recorded a further 6 tracks which, together with the 5 Promos ones were published as Ethos.  We mused, at the time, about calling our next cassette d'Artagnan - but the Cooking Vinyl record company came along with an LP offer, so that ended the series of pretentious record titles!

Last month, Dion Cochrane asked me for a copy of the Demos cassette, as his tape had broken and, having to record it in real time, it meant that I got the chance to listen to it for the first time in 30 years.  I was gratified to hear how good the band sounded - so I then played the other two cassettes as well - and continued to be happily surprised.  Remembering how well the Oak CDs have sold (over 340 copies!), I thought that at least some MT readers might enjoy listening to these early E II recordings as well.  So here's your chance!

The CD is one of our rare 400 series, so it comes in a regular jewel case without a booklet, although there are some Notes on the inside of the folded cover.  The track list is: Another Fine Mess;  Cliffe Hornpipe;  French Schottische;  Clee Hill;  79th Highlanders' Farewell;  Boatman's Dance;  Ashling / Shantey;  Johnny Mickey Barry's / Freedom of Ireland;  Bromsberrow Heath;  Redower Polka;  Kelly's Home Schottische;  Swiss Boy;  Mr Prime's;  Art Wooton's Quadrille;  Polka Volta;  Gloucestershire Hornpipe;  Queen's Jig;  Stack of Wheat;  Sophie Bourbon's Hornpipe;  Walls of Butlin's;  Swiss Boy;  Bourée a Gaston Tommier.  The tracks are taken more-or-less alternately from Demos and Ethos - the ones with tenor banjo are from the former cassette.

Edward the Second and the Red Hot Polkas: The Early Recordings 1985-86 (MTCD405) has 22 tracks, plays for 81 minutes, and it costs just £10.00.  Not bad for "the best little English dance band on the planet" as someone called it back then.  It can be found on the MT Records' website.

11.2.16

Is the EFDSS Folk Music Journal worth £47 a year?

It is, of course, the nature of societies that they cater to the interests of their members.  In the '60s, these were aging dancers, today it's young 'folkies' ... and neither group has the faintest interest in traditional music or song or, more importantly, in their traditional performers.  Today I received the latest edition of the EDS magazine - the first since Derek Schofield relinquished his editorship.  (I should add here that my decision to re-join the EFDSS was based in no small part upon the excellent work that Derek had done and was continuing to do within the Society.)

I found almost nothing within the EDS' pages relating in any real way to the oral or vernacular traditions.  There's a photo of village fiddler Johnny Hopkins - but nothing about him in the article it is supposed to illustrate, a short article on 'fluffy' morris which tells us almost nothing about it, and none of the reviews are of traditional music CDs.  So I'm beginning to wonder if the annual copy of the Journal is worth £47 a year.

I also wondered how many traditional performers had ever been recipients of the EFDSS Gold Badge award.  Well, it's a startling seven people: Harry Cox, Bob Copper, Bob Cann, Sam Sherry, Walter Pardon, Fred Jordan, and Francis Shergold, out of a total of 165 recipients!  And the list doesn't include William Kimber, you may have noticed!

I wrote the above, in hot blood - about six weeks ago, but thought I should let it rest for a while before publishing it, in case I had second thoughts.  I have now decided that, as I have some ten more months of paid for membership left, I'll wait 'til that expires in January 2017 and make the decision then.  Maybe the Society will have done something I consider more interesting and worthwhile by then.

I must correct my comments about Gold Badge recipients - poor eyesight?  Derek Schofield wrote to say:

Your list of Gold badge recipients isn't entirely complete.  William Kimber did get a GB - in 1923, the same year as Sharp. Also:

Jinky Wells 1924
Arthur Marshall (melodeon player for traditional long sword teams in N Yorks) 1969
Johnson Ellwood (clog dancer from NE England) 1976
Stan Hugill 1977
Harry Pitts (Handsworth Sword dancers) 1995
3 other Coppers in 1998
Jackie Toaduff (N.E. clog dancer) 2011
George Peterson (Papa Stour fiddle player) 2011
Ricky Foster (High Spen Rapper) 2013

13.4.16

New CD from the Phoenix Dance Band

Ten years after their first CD - after the fire - your Editor's present band, Phoenix, return with All Fired Up, released on our sister label, Firebird Records FBR 005.  It has 15 tracks, runs for 58 minutes, and costs just £10.00.  Now available on the MT Records' website.

There are 43 more less-than-well-known tunes, forged into 15 new dance sets by several years of playing for dancing at numerous clubs and festivals.  We've found it great fun getting it all together and, with Sidmouth, Haddenham, Bath and Oxfolk Ceilidhs lined up in the diary, we're All Fired Up about the future!

27.6.16

Google Search tip / Magazine Search facility

Eventually, while searching Google, I either invented or discovered that entering "www.mustrad.org.uk Proinsias" (without the quotes) got me all the Irish Franks in the magazine!  Since I'd never heard of, or seen reference to this form of Google search, I thought I'd share it with you.  It could be incredibly useful in the future for all kinds of hunts.

That problem sorted, I turned to considering of the failure of the Magazine's Search facility.  I implemented the current system some years ago, and it seemed to be working satisfactorily.  However, updating it proved to be both a time-consuming and an extremely tricky business.  So much so that I have to admit to not doing it half as often as I should, considering how frequently the Magazine is updated.  The What's New page helps a bit for regular readers - but it doesn't replace a decent search facility.

I have now replaced the previous search facility with a 'Freefind' one, as you will see top/right on our Home page.  It seems to do the job admirably.

18.7.16

Harry Lee recordings - help, please!

I wrote 'ostensibly' because several people 'in the know' believe that at least some recordings were made by Paul Carter, for Topic.  My problem is that the recordings I have are of absolutely dreadful technical quality - they sound like a 20th generation cassette copy, and sound restoration will do nothing useful to them.  We need to get to some of the near-original recordings.

Phil and I have been doing a good deal of research on this.  The result appears to be that there certainly exists a set of 15 Harry Lee recordings made by Paul Carter.  Whether a Ken Stubbs set also exists is uncertain.

So, regarding the Paul Carter set: the one thing that puzzles me is that the Boscastle Breakdown recordings are just so much better than the ones we have access to.  I know that Topic had access to far better noise-reduction equipment than I do, but I can't believe that the recordings I have could possibly have been improved to that degree.  Accordingly, they must have been taken from the Paul Carter set, in its original form, and then cleaned up for commercial release.

Bearing that in mind, someone must have the same recordings we have, but in a much earlier version (ie. before they'd been copied from cassette to cassette too many times, resulting in the dreadful sound quality we have access to).  So it's possible that someone reading this Editorial may have the same recordings we have - but on an earlier (thus technically better) cassette than we do.  If this is you - please get in touch!

9.8.16

New mobile-friendly MT Records website

Now, before you mention it, I have realised that very little of the MT Magazine would be suitable for use on a Smartphone - imagine trying to read one of our 10-page reviews or articles on a 5" screen!  However, I think it's possible to make a pared-down mobile friendly version of the MT Records website suitable for use on a phone ... and I've started working on it.

Above are a some representative screen-shots - the Home page on the left, the start of the 'Recent Releases' page in the middle, and the Shipping Calculator page on the right.  I've been using these latter pages for all the newer CD releases, but will be doing them now for everything ... it makes postage costs fair to all purchasers, wherever they live.

And I do realise that, if you're reading this, you're probably doing it on a PC/MAC or a Tablet, not a Smartphone - but I do like to keep you up to date with what's developing in MT Land.  You could even pass the info on to any interested friends who use mobiles more or less exclusively - I don't know how to contact them otherwise.

I should point out that this new mobile-friendly website is not operational yet; I'll let you know, here, when it is.  As usual, any comments - positive or negative - will be gratefully received.

2.9.16

Shipping Calculator

10.9.16

New mobile-friendly MT Records website

Please email me to say how clever I've been - as someone who's never even used Style Sheets before!

20.9.16

The new slimmed-down 'mobile-friendly' Records website (below) is now finished, and connected to the magazine and the MT Records website Home Page.  It has been designed for a small screen, and its Home Page is 'responsive', though the rest of the site isn't as it seems to display satisfactorily as it is.  If you'd like to try it out you can do so here, but drag your browser's window narrow to pretend it's a Smartphone.

And - if all this modernisation were not enough - Musical Traditions Records now has a Facebook presence!

17.9.16

A new Keith Summers article!

I can only suppose that the months of hectic work involved in getting The Hardy Sons of Dan (MTCD329-0) ready for publication before Keith died caused this article to slip through the cracks, and never to appear in the MT magazine's Articles page.  A great shame, as it's an excellent piece, showing once again Keith's incisive brain-power and breadth of knowledge.

So, better late than never, it is now published as our Article MT306.

Latest: A letter from Matt Milton (see Recent Letters) has now convinced me that Keith clearly wrote this piece much earlier; probably in the late-Seventies or early-Eighties ... but I still have no idea why it was never published in MT. - Ed.

8.11.16

EFDSS - time for decision

Having spent some time today browsing the Society's website I failed to find much (anything!) about traditional music or song.  Indeed, the only welcome news was that another new edition of Frank Purslows's fine books has been published ... this was news to me, since neither had been sent to MT for review.  I'm not sure if that was disappointing or to be expected!  Almost all the upcoming events at C# House appear to be by performers who compose some or all of their own songs and, since I don't read music, their much vaunted The Full English project isn't of a great deal of use to me.  Of the very few books and CDs they now offer, I already have all those dealing with traditional music or song.  And lastly, the VWML website links to the Folk Music Journal produce a '404 Page not found' response.  So it does look as if it's time to go ... I've now cancelled my membership of the EFDSS.

Rod Stradling - 23.11.16

MT's Sam Larner CDs win The Folklore Society Non-Print Media Award 2014 - 2016

The Folklore Society Non-Print Media Award is a biennial prize established by the Folklore Society to encourage the study of folklore, to help improve the standard of folklore publications in media other than print in Britain and Ireland, and to establish the Folklore Society as an arbiter of excellence.

For the purposes of the award, 'folklore studies' are interpreted broadly, to include all aspects of traditional and popular culture, narrative, beliefs, customs and folk arts, including studies with a literary, anthropological, linguistic, sociological or geographical bias.

The award is open to all non-print media English-language publications on folklore in a permanent and durable form (CD, DVD etc), having their first, original and initial publication in the United Kingdom or Republic of Ireland in the two-year period from 1 June 2014 to 31 May 2016, for award in November 2014, and for subsequent two-year periods, beginning 1 June 2016.

For each award there are three judges appointed by the Society's Committee.  The winning publication will be that which, in the opinion of the judges, has made the most distinguished contribution to folklore studies in the years in question.

I would like to publicly thank, first and foremost, Peggy Seeger for making available the recordings she and Ewan MacColl made of Sam Larner in the 1958 to 1960 period.  Without Peggy's willing assistance, these CDs would never have been published.  This is not the first time Peggy has been of enormous assistance to MT Records - all the recordings on the CD-ROM Travellers' Songs from England and Scotland, and all those on the CDs Caroline Hughes: Sheep-Crook and Black Dog (MTCD365-6), several of the recordings on George Dunn: Chainmaker (MTCD317-8) and all those on Joe Heaney: the road from Connemara (TSCD518D), and the whole Joe Heaney interview which made up much of the MT057 article, were also kindly made available by her.

Secondly, Chris Holderness has my heartfelt thanks for his superb account of Sam Larner's life and times, for detailed assistance with song transcriptions, for most of the photos, and lots of help and advice.  I must also thank Janet Topp Fargion and Andrea Zarza at the National Sound Archive at the British Library, who have been extremely helpful with this project.  The recordings we used were mastered from digital copies made at the British Library where the archival recordings are housed as part of the Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger Collection.

Thanks also to: Jackie Page, of the present generation of the Larner family, John Halliday - for more of the photos, Martin Carthy - for his account of his encounter with Sam Larner.  Danny Stradling and Steve Roud - for proof reading, assistance and information.  Without all of them, these CDs would never have existed ... and it goes without saying that without the assistance of countless other collaborators over the years, none of our 111 CD and CD-ROM publications would have ever been possible.

You may remember that MT's 2-CD Set, Cecilia Costello : "Old Fashioned Songs" (MTCD363-4) also won the 2012 - 2014 Folklore Society Non-Print Media Award.  I was very pleased about that, but I must admit that I'm finding it rather difficult to comprehend that we've actually done it again!

9.11.16

New mobile-friendly MT Records website

Now, before you mention it, I have realised that very little of the MT Magazine would be suitable for use on a Smartphone - imagine trying to read one of our 10-page reviews or articles on a 5" screen!  However, I think it's possible to make a pared-down mobile friendly version of the MT Records website suitable for use on a phone ... and I've started working on it.

Above are a some representative screen-shots - the Home page on the left, the start of the 'Recent Releases' page in the middle, and the Shipping Calculator page on the right.  I've been using these latter pages for all the newer CD releases, but will be doing them now for everything ... it makes postage costs fair to all purchasers, wherever they live.

And I do realise that, if you're reading this, you're probably doing it on a PC/MAC or a Tablet, not a Smartphone - but I do like to keep you up to date with what's developing in MT Land.  You could even pass the info on to any interested friends who use mobiles more or less exclusively - I don't know how to contact them otherwise.

I should point out that this new mobile-friendly website is not operational yet; I'll let you know, here, when it is.  As usual, any comments - positive or negative - will be gratefully received.

2.9.16

Shipping Calculator

New mobile-friendly MT Records website

Please email me to say how clever I've been - as someone who's never even used Style Sheets before!

20.9.16

The new slimmed-down 'mobile-friendly' Records website (below) is now finished, and connected to the magazine and the MT Records website Home Page.  It has been designed for a small screen, and its Home Page is 'responsive', though the rest of the site isn't as it seems to display satisfactorily as it is.  If you'd like to try it out you can do so here, but drag your browser's window narrow to pretend it's a Smartphone.

And - if all this modernisation were not enough - Musical Traditions Records now has a Facebook presence!

17.9.16

Season's Greetings and Review of 2016

We haven't published many CDs this year (running out of sources of unpublished recordings of traditional performers?) but we have done a couple by revivalists!  A little gem is Edward the Second and the Red Hot Polkas: The Early Recordings 1985-86 (MTCD405).  This contains all 22 tracks from 3 cassettes we recorded back in the day when EII was still a dance band.  It plays for 81 minutes, and costs just £10.00.  Not bad for "the best little English dance band on the planet" as someone called it back then.

The other release was your Editor's present dance band, Phoenix, with All Fired Up (FBR 005), published on our sister label, Firebird Records.  It has 15 tracks, runs for 58 minutes, and also costs just £10.00.  There are 43 more less-than-well-known tunes, forged into 15 new dance sets by several years of playing for dancing at numerous clubs and festivals.  So, another good dance band record.

A couple of new MT Records' CDs are currently in preparation:

• Freda Palmer - the complete recorded repertoire; tapes from Mike Yates, Steve Roud, Alison McMorland and others.
  
• Boshamengro - Gypsy musicians.  This will feature recordings from Harry Lee (fiddle), Vanslow Smith (fiddle, melodeon), Lemmie Brazil (melodeon), John Locke (fiddle), Jasper and Levi Smith (mouthorgan & tambourine), Joe Dozer Smith (diddling), Mary Biddle (diddling), and others.  As with our Stephen Baldwin and Pip Whiting CDs, this will be compiled, and the booklet written, by Phil Heath-Coleman.
• And there's another one, too - some old, American, recordings - but I can't give you any details right now.

In addition to simply publishing CDs, I have been at pains to try to make them accessible to a wider audience by making some modifications to the MT Records website to suit people who primarily use Smartphones.  I thought it would be a fairly simple job - just re-assemble the basic parts into a narrow screen format ... but things are never simple, are they?  I soon realised that, to work with Smartphones, the site needed to be 'responsive' - able to adapt automatically to the size of the particular device in use, and even to handle whether it was in portrait or landscape mode.  No one I asked had any idea how to do this!  Eventually research pointed me to the W3.CSS page, and after a great deal of experimenting with their examples, I seem to have cracked it.

Then a friend made the sensible suggestion that, since most Smartphone users will want a download rather than a 'real' CD, I should include a link to the Downloads page.  Easier said than done, because the Downloads pages were not 'responsive'.  Many more days' work ensued ... but now they are.  No more sensible suggestions for at least 6 months, please!  Actually, I'm pleased that I had to do all this stuff because the 'Shipping Calculator' pages I had to create for the new 'mobile-friendly' website have now been added to all the normal website entries, rather than just the most recent ones.  This means that every purchase of a CD will now be charged the appropriate postage cost - which will be cheaper for UK purchasers, a little more expensive for European ones, and rather more for 'Rest of World' ones.

Sadly, the Magazine has not been doing too well either.  We published our 303rd Article in October last year, but have had only 2 new ones in the 14 months ones since then.  Some 23 new Reviews have been added in 2016, along with just 2 Enthusiasms, 7 News items and 11 Letters.  By past standards, this is a very meagre set of additions.  To put it in perspective, the first year for which I can find reliable numbers, 2004, was described in my Christmas message as: 'A fairly quiet year, all told ... there have been about 70 Reviews and 16 new Articles added to the site this year - around two thirds of the normal number'.  In addition, there were also 66 News Items, 3 Enthusiasms, and 19 Letters in 2004.  See what I mean?

So, 20 years since the magazine first appeared in this form, I'd like to be able to end as I usually do - but the Brexit vote has fucked continued EU membership, so a reasonably active 2017 with a real (rather than notional) financial recovery seems increasingly unlikely, and the almost unbelievable Trump victory in the USA has made the world a far more dangerous place, if that were possible.  It will also have a profound impact in Europe, empowering and strengthening the far right and anti-immigrant politics both here and abroad.  Marine Le Pen will feel that she could win the French Presidency next May, and recent events in Holland further illustrate the situation.  Britain is experiencing a rise in racism and the far right feels confident and bullish.  These are deeply troubling times; no wonder people are drawing parallels to the 1930s - is there a corelation between 'Mexicans and Muslims' and 'Gypsies and Jews'?

At least Jeremy Corbyn continues to lead the People's Party - but for how much longer?  Sorry to be so gloomy but, in the face of all that lot, wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year seems childishly naïve.

24.12.16

2015 CDs now available as downloads

It's Happy New Year time - and, as promised, the three CDs and one CD-ROM we produced in 2015 are now available as downloads - they're the last four items on the page.  For those of you who may be new to this service, each Download comprises an HTML file of the complete booklet, within which are clickable links to all the songs as MP3 files.

Each Download comprises a ZIP file containing one or more HTML files, a 'sound' folder and a 'graphics' folder.  They can be un-ZIP-ed into a single destination (folder) on your device, and run from there.  Needless to say, all the MP3 sound files could also be copied to any other device you might wish to use.

Since downloads require no booklet production, case covers, CDs, DVD cases or postage, they sell for a far lower price.  Compared to £10, £12, £16 and £20 for the 'normal' publications, the downloads of single CDs are £1.00 or £2.00, double CDs are £4.00, and 3-CD Sets are £6.00.  The facility exists to pay more than these low prices, if you'd like to!

They can be found, along with ALL the previous MT Records' CD publications, on the MT Records' Download page.

1.1.17

Help!

So, along with the Labour Party, Jo Cox, Brexit, Trump, etc, etc, 2016 has been a pretty shity year.  Looking forward, at least I have three new CDs already in preparation for 2017 release - which is a good deal more than is usually the case in January!  Though how many copies will be bought is anybody's guess; the last two CDs we've produced have sold fewer than 30 copies each.  Even sales of Downloads, which started well when they were first made available last year, have slowly diminished in number.  Sales in the 9 months of 2015/16 were three times greater than in the 9 months of this present financial year.

I had hoped - foolishly - that having a Facebook page might enable me to spread the word about all the new things I've implimented on the Magazine and the Records websites.  The sad reality seems to be that far more people are interested in my own boring life than in anything to do with traditional music and song!

If anyone is able to offer any suggestions for improving this situation, I'd be extremely pleased to hear from you.

2.1.17

Help again, please

30.1.17

MT's two Catalogue Samplers

The selections were nothing more than my then current favourite tracks, or things that readers might never have heard before; one from each CD - and I made no attempt to be representative of any particular singer's repertoire or style.  All of the texts were drawn from the booklets accompanying the CDs, including song/tune notes suitably edited for these publications.

They both had very good reviews - Shirley Collins wrote, of the first one:

All in all, a CD of field recordings from the 1960s-80s to appreciate and enjoy.  How well all these singers understand their songs, how comfortable they are with them, and how well they inhabit them.  And the words of the songs and the story are included, and Rod Stradling has written excellent and informative notes, as you'd expect.

From unaccompanied ballad singing to spirited melodeon, fiddle and banjo tunes, pretty much every track - picked for no other good reason than that they're Rod's favourites - is a delight, and accompanied by good excerpts from the sleevenotes of the source albums.  30 tracks, 79 minutes, 24 page booklet: deal!  Actually, you can easily put this alongside those Voice of the People sets.  Full marks to the be-slippered guru, and it really makes you wonder why the EFDSS, swimming with public funding as they now seem to be, can't do this sort of thing when a little homely house up a hill in the Cotswolds can.

However, since they were no longer available, they didn't appear on the MT Downloads page, which meant that those who want downloads of them would have the unenviable task of playing, and simultaneously recording them from the Sampler page - in real time!  Not a job I would like, nor the couple of hours it would take to do it.  So I've just made Downloads of them, and expanded their content to include all the tracks that could have gone on them were it not for the 80 minute limit of a single CD.

They look like this, and can now be found as the last two items at the bottom of the Downloads page.

2.2.17

Re: The EFDSS

If the EFDSS had done one tenth of this work, or even shown one hundredth of this interest in traditional music and song, I would still be a member.

4.2.17

Re: MT reviews policy

It seems not; perhaps the senders of these CDs believe that their products being reviewed in Musical Traditions magazine will magically transform them into traditional pieces, learned orally from previous generations.  I'm sorry to have to inform them that such Alternative Facts find no home amongst these pages.  I truly lament the quantity of plastic, card and paper that end up in the bin ... to pass into the Stroud charity shops' black hole.  I know only too well how minutely small is the market for CDs these days, and I hate to think of the waste of money and scarce resources involved.

And I do try to warn record producers of the magazine's attitude to such things; the MT policy is explained quite specifically in the - you guessed it - Policy page.  And if that were not enough, a brief glance through the CDs that do get reviewed here ought to make it clear what sort of CDs we actually deal with.  Why on earth do record producers keep sending me stuff that they really ought to know will never be reviewed here?

And I am talking about 'record producers' here, not record companies.  I once had a long and complicated explanation as to how it was cheaper for record companies to send out review copies to everyone on their list of possible reviewers, than to take the trouble to select the ones that were actually likely to review the CD concerned.  But I would have thought that individual performers or groups publishing their own product would have found it worthwhile to do a little bit of sorting.  It seems not; on checking, I find that the last seven 'inappropriate for MT' CDs I've received have all been from individual performers or groups.

The last of these, which has prompted this little rant, was from an English 'celidh band' - so no excuse for not knowing what MT is about.  Now, I know what a 'celidh band' is - as opposed to a simple 'dance band', because I had a discussion about it with the Sidmouth Festival organisers a while ago, when I was trying to get a 'dance' gig for my band Phoenix which, it appears, is a 'celidh band' despite having no drum'n'bass.  But that's rather beside the point.  The 'celidh band' in discussion sent me a CD for review - I assume it was for review, although the package contained only the CD and a press release - containing 10 tracks, every one of which was self-composed by members of the band.  Not only that, but the music is not played in anything remotely like a style I can recognise as being traditional.  Indeed, there are no tunes at all - just a series of rifs based on a very simple chord sequence, which is then repeated with slight variations and underlying digital sequencing.  Personally, I found nothing to like about it at all ... but that's not the point.  The point is that it has absolutely nothing to do with traditional music - or with Musical Traditions!

10.3.17

New MT activity

Also, I flagged up three new CDs for possible release this year:

• Freda Palmer - the complete recorded repertoire; tapes from Mike Yates, Steve Roud, Alison McMorland and others.
  
• Boshamengro - Gypsy musicians.  This will feature recordings from Harry Lee (fiddle), Vanslow Smith (fiddle, melodeon), Lemmie Brazil (melodeon), John Locke (fiddle), Jasper and Levi Smith (mouthorgan & tambourine), Joe Dozer Smith (diddling), Mary Biddle (diddling), and others.  As with our Stephen Baldwin and Pip Whiting CDs, this will be compiled, and the booklet written, by Phil Heath-Coleman.
• And there's another one, too - some old, American, recordings - but I can't give you any details right now.

But the real reason for this Editorial is that another one has just popped up, entirely unexpectedly.  Last week I had a phone call from Bob Lewis (the Sussex traditional singer).  He had found a couple of CDRs in the back of a cupboard that he had completely forgotten about.  They were recorded at the Tonbridge folk club where he and Bob Copper were performing together as The Two Bobs Worth.  Would we be interested in them for a possible MT Records release?  You may imagine my reply.

It turns out that they were recorded by Andrew King, who's said "If you think the recordings of good enough quality I would be delighted and honoured if you wanted to issue them."  Well, given that they were recorded on a mini-disc machine, the recordings are excellent, and the singing is just glorious!  Bob Copper accompanies himself on concertina for most of his songs, and I have never heard Bob Lewis in better voice.  This is going to be an absolutely splendid CD.  MT Records' 10% royalties will go to support the Sussex Traditions database.

16.4.17

New MTCD373 Boshamengro - English Gypsy Musicians

It features a fiddler - Harry Lee - from whom only two tunes will have ever been heard by about 99.9% of our readers!  But I'm guessing that almost all will have heard those two tunes, which appeared on the LP Boscastle Breakdown.  It's a long story, which involves the original tape, recorded in 1962 for Topic by Paul Carter, having gone missing for some 50 years ... and Phil Heath-Coleman's and my 18 month search for it.  Eventually we succeeded in finding at least a copy of it, and are very pleased to be able to present Harry's complete recorded repertoire of 18 tunes, here for the first time.  And that's a photo of Harry and his family on the front cover.

Another musician who you are unlikely to have heard is Vanslow Smith (fiddle, melodeon), who Gwilym Davies happened to video at a small Sussex event back in 2006.  Vanslow was an amazing musician, who used ALL the available accidentals on his pokerwork melodeon, and played some very jazzy skeleton fiddle through an amplifier ... at the age of 82!  There are 10 tracks of his playing here.

We also have 9 tracks from Lemmy Brazil (melodeon), many of which did not appear on our Brazil Family 3-CD set back in 2007.  Plus one track each from: Jasper and Levi Smith (mouthorgan & tambourine); Jasper and Derby Smith (mouthorgan & guitar); Joe Dozer Smith (diddling); Mary Biddle (diddling); Walter Aldridge (mouthorgan); and John Locke (fiddle) playing his Hornpipe, from the cylinder recording!  As a bonus, we've also included Stephen Baldwin with Tite Smith's Hornpipe and Pip Whiting with Billy Harris's Hornpipe and Will the Waggoner; tunes they learnt from Gypsy musicians.  As with our Stephen Baldwin and Pip Whiting CDs, this has been compiled, and the booklet written, by Phil Heath-Coleman.

Since there's so much here that you'll never have heard before, I've decided to put two tracks - one from Harry Lee and one from Vanslow Smith - onto the MT Sampler page for this CD.

20.5.17

New MTCD514-5 When Cecil left the Mountains

When Cecil Sharp left the montains for the last time, he complained about '... the sound of Victrolas and the strumming of rag-time and the singing of sentimental songs - all of which we have suffered from incessantly during the last 12 weeks.  I am sorry to have said goodbye to the mountain people but I suspect that I might have seen the last of them.'  What he didn't realise was that within just a few years, American record companies would be sending scouts into the Appalachian Mountains looking for singers and musicians who could be recorded commercially.

This is a double CD set of performers having some sort of familial or geographical connection with the people Sharp collected in the nineteen-tens - as, indeed, was the Far in the Mountains 5-CD set.  The important difference is that those recordings were from Mike Yates' 1979-83 trips ... these are from the late-nineteen-twenties to the mid-nineteen-fifties, and are of people who were alive when Sharp visited the mountains - and a few who actually performed for him a decade or two earlier!  Lots of very interesting stuff from both commercial and private recordings.  As with Far in the Mountains, this has been compiled, and the booklet written, by Mike Yates.

It is now available from the MT Records' website, price £16.00.

2.7.17

Are Humanities Journals in Jeopardy?

One of these activities is the publishing of academic journals, including many longstanding and prestigious titles.  Because publication is - as one editor of a prominent title put it - 'currency of the realm' for scholars, the threat to the continued existence of such journals poses a steep hurdle for young academics, especially in the humanities, who must show a record of substantial publication if they are to have any hope of building a career in their chosen field.

Many journals have seen the wisdom of putting their publications out in digital format, and it is probably safe to say that most have considered doing so.  Although some academics worry about the issue of permanence when a work is made available only in digital form, the case for digital dissemination is hard to refute: scholars are able to see their work in print relatively quickly, and publishers can largely avoid the cost of typesetting, printing and distribution.

Unfortunately, even journals that have moved entirely to an online format can find themselves under financial pressure.  Even the limited cost-centres associated with an online publication can tempt administrators tasked with cost-cutting, with the result that a journal - even a digital one - may be forced to reduce the frequency of publication, or even cease publishing altogether.

We invite readers familiar with the current state of academic publishing to comment on this situation, and to consider the possibility that a consortium might be formed to support the functioning of established academic journals, and encourage the development of new ones, by providing an independent resource for the timely production and dissemination of scholarly work, and by doing so in a manner that allows journals to benefit from economies of scale.

If you would like to contribute to this discussion, please contact Rod Stradling (rod@mustrad.org.uk) or Virginia Blankenhorn (virginia.blankenhorn@ed.ac.uk).

16.8.17

The Famous Flower of Old Ireland Free

Since then, Phil Heath-Coleman has acquired recordings of another fiddler, Frank Smith, who was Harry Lee's cousin by marriage.  Exasperated that he didn't have these recordings available at the time, he's now written an Enthusiasms piece, Enth81, which serves as a postscript to the Boshamengro booklet.  Frank Smith also played You'll Have No Mother To Guide You - but that's not the point of this short piece.

***

A brief example of exactly how complicated a study of English Gypsy songs can be.

Marjorie Mack, in her book Hannaboys Farm (1942), described several encounters with Frank Smith, who played her a tune that he called The Song that was Sung ... expanding the title to The Song that was Sung was Old Ireland Free.  That phrase and the tune (which Charlie Scamp used for the song Sweet William ['Twas early, early all in the spring] when he sang it for Peter Kennedy) are commonly associated with the song The Croppy Boy.  When pressed for the words, Frank had said they were in Romany, but provided four lines, which Marjorie Mack took down as follows:

My old mammy, she owed me no grueful spite.
She sank three robbers all in one night.
She stole from the rich to give to the poor,
Now my tender old mammy she ain't seen no more.

Mike Yates heard a similar verse, or at least the first two lines, from a Kentish traveller, Jasper Smith, ending with the line 'The song that they sang was Old Ireland free':

Oh my father he did me a dreadful spite
He sent nine robbers all in one night

So, returning to Boshamengro for a moment, the booklet included a graphic from Marjorie Mack's book of a tune that Harry Lee played, which was described as The Croppy Boy.

It isn't - it's very similar to the tune Caroline Hughes uses for The Famous Flower of Serving Men, and so is the tune that Frank Smith called "An old Romany song" The Song that was Sung.  And, while I've never heard The Croppy Boy sung to this tune, the text would fit it perfectly.  (It's also very similar to the tune used for Free and Easy for to Jog Along.)

And to finish, MacColl and Seeger, in Travellers' Songs from England and Scotland, point out that Caroline Hughes' The Famous Flower of Serving Men is an excellent example of how a ballad-story can attract motifs, lines and complete stanzas from other ballads and songs without losing its continuity.  They calculate that her ballad is actually comprised of pieces of some twelve other, different songs - one of which is The Croppy Boy!

18.10.17

New MTCD374 The Two Bobs' Worth - Bob Lewis and Bob Copper

They were recorded by Andrew King, who's said "If you think the recordings of good enough quality I would be delighted and honoured if you wanted to issue them."  Well, given that they were recorded on a mini-disc machine, the recordings are excellent, and the singing is just glorious!

The track list is as follows:

A Fair Maid Walking; The Honest Labourer; Good Morrow Mistress Bright; You Seamen Bold; We Shepherds are the Bravest Boys; The Streams of Lovely Nancy; The Pretty Ploughboy; George Collins; A Sweet Country Life; The Banks of Sweet Primaroses; The Cobbler; The Bold Princess Royal; My Boy Willie; While Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping; Three Crows / Blackbirds; The Threshing Song; Spencer the Rover; Thousands or More; Oh Good Ale; John Barleycorn

1.11.17

Austerity bites - but is that all?

The one piece of data that really surprised me relates to our 2-CD set of Sam Larner, published just before Christmas, 2014.  In November 2016 I got the very welcome news that it had won The Folklore Society's Non-Print Media Award 2014 - 2016.  But upon checking, earlier today, I discovered that this superb set of CDs, containing 67 songs from one of England's finest singers, many of which have never been available before, has sold just three copies since gaining that prestigious award.  I'm sure I'm not alone in wondering "Is it really worth all the effort?"

I've had one single CD of Bob Lewis and Bob Copper, one double CD of early American music and song and, in a couple of weeks, another CD-ROM of Vaughan Williams' collecting work in Norfolk, released this year.  And I hope, a double CD of Freda Palmer for release in 2018.  Once that little lot is published, I suspect I'll need to do some hard thinking about the future.  Because I'm not at all sure that it's Austerity that's entirely to blame.

Every time I publish a new CD, I send out some 1,500 email messages to everyone who's bought an MT CD or Download in the past, announcing the new publication.  The interesting result is that almost half of the resultant sales seem to come from people who've never bought one before!  (Or, to be realistic, people who have changed their email addresses, or whose names I don't recognise).  So, maybe not half, but a significant number of new purchasers.  What does this imply?  From reviews, and from comments in various emails I've received over the years, I do know that people think that our CDs are pretty damn good.  So why aren't many former purchasers buying the new ones?  Have they all died?

It seems that we are in a new, and very different 'folk scene':

• Today's young 'folk' enthusiasts seem to be primarily interested in newly composed songs (and tunes) rather than traditional ones.  What's 'folk' about that?
• The EFDSS seems to be almost entirely interested in this new 'folk' music - EDS now contains almost nothing related to traditional music and song.
• Despite continued interest in, and playing of, traditional music - at the ECMW and several similar events and numerous sessions - there seems to be no similar enthusiasm for traditional singing.
• This is quite unlike Ireland, where every county, and many cities, have regular, well attended, 'singing circles' and song weekends - most of which are entirely devoted to traditional singing.
• Dance bands playing traditional music in a more-or-less traditional style (without bass'n'drum) are finding it harder and harder to get gigs.
• Many of the regular dance or ceilidh events have closed, or are considering it.
• Yet at festivals that still include dance events, you'll find them thronged with enthusiastic young dancers.  Where do they get to dance the rest of the year?
• Finally - we've lived here for 23 years, yet whenever we've been to gigs in the area to see people like Lynched, Chris Wood, Furrow Collective, Eliza Carthy, etc, the audience is mainly our age ... yet almost entirely unknown to us!

Folk Britannia you may recall, was aired in 2006 - 11 years ago! - and Radio 2's Bob Harris's Country covers American music.  Checking the track listing of the 2 DVDs of the three hour Folk Britannia programmes, I find just Harry Cox and John & Jill Copper among those who might be described as English traditional, plus Ewan MacColl, Bob Davenport, and Martin Carthy who might be described as English traditional style.  All the rest are 'Irish, Scots or American folk music' - the genres specifically excluded by the questioner!

This is a very strange world we now live in - and not just politically!

21.11.17

Extraordinary November!

Then suddenly, this month, we've sold 139!  And these have not all been the new Two Bobs CD.  There were 63 of them, but the other 76 were all assorted orders.  Admittedly, many of these came as additional items along with the Two Bobs CD ... but by no means all.  Can it all be to do with Christmas?  Looking back over my previous accounts, I don't see any particular 'Christmas rush' at this time of the year, but all fingers and toes crossed for it to continue!

30.11.17

Another MT CD-ROM : Vaughan Williams in Norfolk, Volume 2 (MTCD255)

• Freda Palmer - the complete recorded repertoire; tapes from Mike Yates, Steve Roud, Alison McMorland and others.
• Boshamengro - Gypsy musicians.
• And there's another one, too - some old, American, recordings - but I can't give you any details right now.

This is Volume 2 of the Vaughan Williams in Norfolk CD-ROM (MTCD253), we published in 2014.  It covers the three Norfolk collecting trips Ralph Vaughan Williams made in April 1908, October 1910 and December 1911.  He met some 22 singers and collected 93 songs from them.  As before, they are presented in staff notation, with full texts, and with link to MIDI sound files of the tunes, and there's a very substantial page of information on the singers.

Just what you were looking for as a quick Christmas present?  I hope it sells as well as Volume 1 has!  Available on the MT Records website, priced £12.00.

2.12.17

2016 CDs now available as downloads

It's almost Twelfth Night - so, as promised, the two CDs we produced in 2016 are now available as downloads; they're the last two items on the page.  For those of you who may be new to this service, each Download comprises an HTML file of the complete booklet, within which are clickable links to all the songs or tunes as MP3 files.

Each Download comprises a ZIP file containing one or more HTML files, a 'sound' folder and a 'graphics' folder.  They can be un-ZIP-ed into a single destination (folder) on your device, and run from there.  Needless to say, all the MP3 sound files could also be copied to any other device you might wish to use.

Since downloads require no booklet production, case covers, CDs, DVD cases or postage, they sell for a far lower price.  Compared to £10, £12, £16 and £20 for the 'normal' publications, the downloads of single CDs are £1.00 or £2.00, double CDs are £4.00, and 3-CD Sets are £6.00.  The facility exists to pay more than these low prices, if you'd like to!

They can be found, along with ALL the previous MT Records' CD publications, on the MT Records' Download page.

3.1.18

London Lights

Fast forward to 2010, when I was preparing MT's May Bradley CD.  May sings a song which Steve Roud had said was a version of Blue Eyed Lover (Roud 16637), presumably from its first verse.  However, the tune and the three other verses are clearly from London Lights - verse 2 is almost identical to one of Lizzie's, and the other two fit perfectly into that song.  My wife, Danny, added them to Lizzie's song, and has sung it frequently in the subsequent seven years.  Many people have said what a great song it now is, but no one has ever said that they've heard it before.

Fast forward again, to this last weekend, when we were at the splendid Wexford Traditional Singers' weekend in Rosslare (where we've been many times, and where Danny has often sung London Lights).  And, suddenly, two different people told us "My Mum used to sing that".  One was a purely Irish source, and the other told us "She may have picked it up during the 30 years she lived in London".

So, 47 years after we first heard it, we now know that it seems to have been known in Canada, Ireland, England, and from a Scottish Traveller and a Welsh/English Gypsy.  This really does prove, if proof were needed, that culture has no respect for social or political borders!

6.2.18

New MT 2-CD set: Freda Palmer : Leafield Lass (MTCD375-6)

Freda Palmer was born in, and lived most of her younger life in the village of Leafield, Oxfordshire.  Later, she moved to the nearby town of Witney, where these recordings were made.  From the age of eleven, she was employed as a glover - making gloves, together with her mother at times, but mostly with her aunt Annie, and it was from her that she learnt many of her songs, as they sat across the table together, sewing their gloves.

She had a phenomenal memory ... while raising six children she probably didn't have too much spare time for singing, and it was only in her later years that she was encouraged to visit folk clubs and festivals as a performer.  But to have a repertoire of sixty or so songs, and to sing 35 of them off the cuff in one day when Alison McMorland visited her was quite an achievement - not to mention reciting the 19 eight-line verses of Murphy's Little Girl without a stumble.

Everyone who knew her commented on her delightful, friendly personality - and the account of her life found in these pages shows that she was an almost unbelievably hard-working woman.  The don't make 'em like Freda any more!

This 2-CD set is now available on the MT Records' website, price £16.00.

I'm also pleased to tell you that, despite what I feared, this may not be the last CD of traditional singers that we're able to publish - more to follow when I know some fuller details.

13.3.18

An experiment

So I decided on an experiment.  As you will have seen, on March 13th I announced the publication of our latest 2-CD Set - Freda Palmer: Leafield Lass (MTCD375-6) here in the magazine, and made it available on the MT Records' websites ... but did not send out the announcement email.  I did that yesterday, April 6th - the start of the new 2018-19 Financial Year, and also posted an advert on Facebook.  In the three weeks between these two dates, I received just four orders for these new CDs ... which seems to indicate that seeing details in the MT Magazine does not contribute very much to sales!  So I must assume that these 'previously unknown' purchasers have been told about it by 'word of mouth' which, these days, I presume must mean social media ... and that the information has not been thought to have been 'fake news'.

7.4.18

Important!  Website security - HTTPS

As with most new things, getting an HTTPS certificate will have a cost - in the case of Musical Traditions Magazine and MT Records, the cost would be £160 in the first year, rising to £320 in the second and subsequent years.  Added to that, there would be many hours of re-writing our web pages, and problems for users if I didn't get it perfectly right the first time.

And what benefit would you, as an MT reader gain?  Absolutely nothing, because nothing in the magazine is interactive, requiring any of your personal details.  Purchasers of MT Records' CDs or Downloads also gain nothing because all the financial transactions are dealt with by PayPal - which is a secure HTTPS service.

So - I will not be converting either the Magazine or the Records website to HTTPS because there is nothing here which is insecure.  You can click the 'Not Secure' button if/when you see one, without any concerns.

17.4.18

The Maria Marten ballad

However, another song on the same subject was collected by George Gardiner from George Digweed, of Micheldever, Hampshire, in 1906.  Subsequently it was found in the repertoire of both Sally Sloane, of Lithgow, New South Wales, and the Bobbin family, also of New South Wales.  Subsequent to that, Mike Yates recorded it from Freda Palmer in 1972.  It appears that this song was titled The Suffolk Tragedy, or the Red Barn Murder in its broadside printing, with a first line: "Young lovers all I pray draw near and listen unto me".

Tom Pettitt has very kindly created a special composite document for publication as MT Article 316, of which he writes:

This document and my 'discursive' bibliographies on other murdered sweetheart ballads are available on academia.edu, but access seems increasingly complex, and the fact that there is more than one broadside ballad about Maria Marten seems not to have gained much of a foothold in discussion.  I am accordingly grateful to Musical Traditions for facilitating this supplementary mediation.  The exercise has also resulted in some updating of the material and the mending of broken links.

19.4.18

An experiment - 2

Another strange thing I've noticed is that generally, most CDs are bought within the first two or three weeks of publication, and that a good review seems to have little or no effect on subsequent sales.  Any suggestions as to why this should be?

Also that well-known names sell far better than unknown ones - which seems slightly strange to me.  I would have thought that people might already have recordings of several of the songs or tunes by a well-known performer, whilst an unknown performer would be a wholly new, and therefore interesting, experience.  However, that's not been the case here - Freda Palmer was not well-known and, despite good reviews, her CDs have not sold well.  Our last release was The Two Bob's Worth - with the well-known Bob Lewis and Bob Copper - and has sold 124 to date.  Freda Palmer has sold just 24.

1.5.18

The Murdered Sweetheart Ballad series

If Maria Marten was Murdered Sweetheart Ballad No.1, then Tom Pettit has just produced MSB No.2 The Cruel Gamekeeper, which is now available as MT Article 317

And now comes MSB No.3 The Mary Thomson cluster, with no less than four more murdered sweethearts, one of whom was actually murdered twice, by two different seducers, which makes it five Murdered Sweetheart Ballads - except that they're all the same ballad, and anyway, none of them were murdered by anyone (it's all fake ballad news).  It is now available as MT Article 319

1.6.18

New MTCD203 : Robert Leng and Jossy 'Pop' Mainprize with Jim Eldon :
Songs and Tales from Flamborough Head

In 1988, Jim Eldon was gathering material for a cassette album of East Yorkshire fireside tales, and a friend took him to Flamborough and introduced him to Robert Leng and Jossy 'Pop' Mainprize.  The few snippets of ditties that had been dotted among the stream of tales grew into a whole repertoire of songs as more were remembered.  Eventually a cassette of songs and one of tales were issued on Jim's Stick Records label.

The fishermen's tales and poaching yarns speak for themselves.  There is very little editing in the stories section of this collection - one yarn would spark another and the titles and track separations are just there to help you navigate through them if you want to revisit a particular favourite.

Real traditional singing and storytelling.  A delight!

Nor, as I had feared, will it be our last publication.  Mike Yates has just come up with a new project - British songs and tunes from America, from 78rpm recordings.  More details as soon as I have them.  Not only that, but Doc Rowe has told me that he has 'No end of stuff you might find useful'.  Thank God for that ... I was getting bored here!

Rod Stradling - 25.10.18

The Future of Optical Drives and CDs

This was one of the two main reasons that I started making the contents of our CD publications available as downloads (sound files as MP3s and booklets as HTML files) back in 2015.  The most pressing reason was to try to ensure that, if I was unable to continue with Musical Traditions work, both Magazine and Records, for any reason, someone else should be able to continue to make it all available with very little input beyond keeping up the payments to our ISP and Hosting providers. The small income provided by the downloads should be able to cover these payments.

The other reason was to do with the first paragraph above - the future demise of the optical drive and thus that of the CD.  One problem raised its head as a result: what format to use for the downloads?  This problem was discussed in various Editorials in 2015.  That discussion focussed mainly on the format of the CD Booklets ... which I consider to be almost as important as the songs and tunes.  At that time it seemed that there were so many types of E-Book, and none that were then dominant, and that the necessary creation software was pretty expensive, that the humble HTML was about the only one that was universally readable.  If that situation changes, I shall have to have a re-think.

But the choice of MP3 as the sound file format was very simple ... it was universal.  But, just three and a half years later, the demise of the MP3 is being discussed by those who discuss such things.  Flac appears to be the format of the day.  FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is a musical file format that offers bit-perfect copies of CDs but at half the size of the .wav files that produced them.  MP3s, on the other hand, are about one tenth the size of those .wav files.  One may feel that, in the age of Terabyte hard drives and Broadband Internet, such considerations are of no real consequence.  I'm not so sure - big is not always beautiful - and .wav files do take a long time to download, and are problematic to send as attachments.

MP3 is a lossy format, which means parts of the music are shaved off to reduce the file size to a more compact level.  It is supposed to use 'psychoacoustics' to delete overlapping sounds, but it isn't always successful. Typically, cymbals, reverb and guitars are the sounds most affected by MP3 compression and can sound really distorted when too much compression is applied.  As you may have noticed, MT CDs don't feature all that many cymbals, or reverb guitars, and so our use of MP3 does not cause these problems.  Rather more to the point, very few of them feature recordings made more recently than the 1970s, and so don't have a frequency range that would be better appreciated at higher fidelity.  Indeed, most feature only a solo voice or instrument - so I did a little experiment.  I ripped a solo voice track and a solo fiddle track from a 2018 commercial CD, as .wav, .flac and .mp3 and listened to them played quite loudly.  I could detect no difference in the sound.  I then did the same with MT CDs of quite old recordings ... with the same results.  As regards size, an example track produced a .wav file of 42,082Kb, a .flac file of 22,642Kb, and an .mp3 file of just 4,307Kb.  I did not find that big was beautiful, or beneficial.  Again, if this situation changes, I shall have to have a re-think.

29.10.18

A Distant Land to Roam : Anglo-American Songs and Tunes from Texas to Maine

Among these 25 songs and tunes that have gone across the seas, a distant land to roam, you will find some very recognisable versions.  Bradley Kincaid sings The Two Sisters and Fair Ellender and Lord Thomas, Bob Cranford sings Babes in the Wood, Bascom Lamar Lunsford sings The Derby Ram, and Emry Arthur sings Jack Hall.

Perhaps less easily recognisable are: The Stanley Brothers - Poison in a Glass of Wine; Frank Jenkins' Pilot Mountaineers - Go and Leave Me if You Wish It, Gid Tanner & His Skillet-Lickers - Soldier, Soldier, Will You Marry Me?; Louisiana Lou - The Oxford Girl; Hattie and Ernest Stoneman - When Shall We get Married, John?  And downright extraordinarily, you'll hear The Southern Melody Boys with their Little Ball of Yarn and Blind Boy Fuller with Our Goodman or Seven Nights Drunk.

It is now available from the MT Records' website, price £12.00.

1.12.18

Freda Palmer: Leafield Lass

Well, I've just heard:

Dear Rod

Well, I'm sorry but it wasn't three out of three ...  However, the shortlisting was felt to be highly merited, and the judges wanted particularly to thank you for your continued support of the award.

With all best wishes

Paul Cowdell
The Folklore Society
c/o The Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, London WC1H 0AB

8.11.18

Season's Greetings and Review of 2018

The Magazine has had a faily lean year, even by current standards.  We've published just 5 new Articles and some 30 new Reviews in 2018, along with 2 Enthusiasms, 4 News items and 6 Letters.  By past standards, this is very quiet.  On the other hand, I appear to have written some 12 Editorials before this one ... don't quite know why I've been so prolific.

On yet another hand, we have published two more CDs this year than I was expecting: Freda Palmer's Leafield Lass; was followed by Jim Eldon's Songs and Tales from Flamborough Head; and, just recently, Mike Yates' A Distant Land to Roam.  I have no idea if there will be any more.

No extraordinary rush of orders in November this year, but quite a few - 50 sales - nonetheless.  And December has been fairly busy, too - 37 sales - long may it continue!

It's interesting to note that, if memory serves, only two people have bought all the MT Records publications of CDs of traditional performers ... one is an Italian and the other is a German!  Don't quite know what that says about our appreciation of our own culture.

With this my 22nd Review of the Year, I'd like to be able to end on a positive note - but, amidst the Governmental chaos, these remain deeply troubling times.  At least there's the possibility of a reversal of Brexit and even a Labour government.  In hopes of that, may I wish you all a traditional toast for this time of the year.  Joy, Health, Love and Peace!

24.12.18

2017/18 CDs now available as downloads

The difference this time is that, rather than waiting almost two years for them to appear, you're now getting them all, almost immediately.  This is for two reasons: it looks increasingly likely that these will be the last that MT Records produces ... unless any more turn up out of the blue, as A Distant Land to Roam did.  The other reason is that I'm about to undergo some serious surgery, and I have no idea of if, when, or how capable I'll be of such work afterwards.

For those of you who may be new to the Download service, each comprises an HTML file of the complete booklet, within which are clickable links to all the songs or tunes as MP3 files.  Each Download comes as a ZIP file containing one or more HTML files, a 'sound' folder and a 'graphics' folder.  They can be un-ZIP-ed into a single destination (folder) on your device, and run from there.  Needless to say, all the MP3 sound files could also be copied to any other device you might wish to use.

Since downloads require no booklet printing, case covers, CDs, DVD cases or postage, they sell for a far lower price.  Compared to £10, £12, £16 and £20 for the 'normal' publications, the downloads of single CDs are £1.00 or £2.00, double CDs are £4.00, and 3-CD Sets are £6.00.  The facility exists to pay more than these low prices, if you'd like to!

They can be found, along with ALL the previous MT Records' CD publications, on the MT Records' Download page.

30.12.18

Back again!

Despite all the lies dished out by the Daily Mail and its ilk, our experience of the Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Cheltenham General Hospital, and its Vascular Surgery Department at St Lukes Wing, Guiting Ward, has been just as superb as we had expected.  Due to the high levels of mind-altering drugs washing through one's system in these circumstances, I can't pretend to remember everyone's names, but my sincere thanks go to the guys in charge, Misters Cooper and Wilson, plus a whole host of Doctors in various specialisms, plus teams of superb nurses led by Edrianne, Lisa, Em, Anna, Lucy, Hayley (and probably several others in the first couple of days when details were very unclear).  It's also very worth noting that it took just one month, to the day, between referral by the scanning team, and the actual surgery!  The National target time is eight weeks.  Also, being so local, my lovely Danny found it fairly easy to get in to see me every day ... along with various friends.  Made every new day worth waiting for!

Someone told me that Steve Harrison, in his work in the Health and Education departments at Manchester University, was one of those who were responsible for the design and implementation of the annual aneurysm scanning programme for men over 65 in the UK.  This was undertaken because an aneurysm has no obvious side-effects - so you don't know you have one, until it bursts ... after which there is only a 12% survival rate!  If it was true that Steve was involved, I'm only sorry that he didn't live long enough for me to say to him "Thanks,Mate - you saved my life."

Although I feel fine, and am not in any pain (at the moment!) I'm obviously not at the top of my game yet, everything is very tiring, and I suspect that planned outings to Music @ St Marks and the Rosslare Singing Weekend will have to be put on hold for 2019.  Sorry to miss those of you I'd hoped to see there this year ... please make my apologies to other attendees.

Now attempting to answer 167 emails ........

11.1.19

Before the Broadside

In the beginning was the word ... so we're told.  But is that true?

Victor Grauer was one of the team which worked with Alan Lomax on his Cantometrics project back in the '60s.  He wrote 'I've recently become interested in Cantometrics again thanks to certain new developments in genetic anthropology.  Many things which had puzzled Lomax and myself about the distribution of musical styles worldwide are now making sense, thanks to the ability of these researchers to reconstruct some of mankind's earliest migrations from strands of DNA'.

One of the results of this work on the 'Out of Africa' theory, currently being explored in the field of genetic anthropology, has been the suggestion that the sung music of the Amazonian Pygmies and Kalahari Bushmen may well be part of the remains of the original culture of homo sapiens and - even more interestingly - may well have developed before speech.  Groups of homo sapiens began leaving Africa almost 300,000 years ago, and would have taken their sung music with them.  And we know, from the work of the Cantometrics project, that almost every subsequent human settlement has had its own folk songs.

So I think it's fairly clear that humans have sung for their own pleasure for countless centuries.  This would be one of the reasons why printers have, since the sixteenth century, been making a living providing us with songs and ballads to sing.  Would they have done so if there had not been singers to buy them?  Would they have printed the words 'To be sung to the tune of .......' if such a song did not already exist?

Research on dance and drama have found that what went on in the Royal and Noble courts soon found its way into the countryside, albeit in simplified forms.  And the same happened to the minstrelsy of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.  Songs were sung by ordinary people for their own enjoyment - even if no written record of it exists.

It should be clear to most thinking people that an ordinary person of the lower classes, from the 1801 Census until fairly recently, had just three pieces of information about them available to historical researchers: their birth; marriage; and death.  Prior to that, virtually nothing.  Unless they fell foul of the Law, or did something quite remarkable that resulted in a written record of some kind - that was it!  It should also be clear that most of the ordinary singers of songs would not, as singers, find a place in a written record of any kind.  This, of course, is one of the problems with 'history' ... most of it relies on the written record, and such records will only describe extra-ordinary events.  And if singing for one's own pleasure and the entertainment of one's friends were as normal for most ordinary people as I firmly believe they were ... then there was nothing extra-ordinary about it, and thus little in the way of records of it.

Accordingly, I find myself a little irked by this new fashion of saying "This song dates from it's first printing by so-and-so printer in 1650."  The admirable Steve Roud was by no means the first to float this idea but, since the success of his recent book Folk Song in England and its widespread coverage in the Media, this view seems, more and more, to be taken as gospel.  To be fair, Steve never quite says this in his book, but careless reviewing (and careless listening) has resulted in this view becoming commonplace.

Clearly, an historian can only 'prove' that a song dates from the discovery of a 'first known' written record, but common sense demands that something similar must have preceded it.  Exactly what that 'something similar' may have been is open to conjecture - we just don't know.  Sadly, that is the fate of so much of the history of the ordinary people of the past (and, probably to a considerable extent, the present) - we just don't know!

11.4.19

This Editorial and comments relating to it can now be found as Enthusiasm No.84

Further thoughts on Before the Broadside

Accordingly, I did a search in the Roud Index for English songs without the word 'Printed' in the 'Format field'.  This resulted in an astonishing sum of 28047 returns which, once duplicates had been removed, gave a total of 5142 such different songs.  Clearly this doesn't mean that 5142 English 'folk songs' do not have a printed original source - simply that some of them may not.  To find out more requires a good deal extra research.

Clearly, those songs with the highest Roud numbers are those most recently added to the Index, and so should be less likely to have a Broadside provenamce.  Unsurprisingly then, the ten highest Roud numbers of my 5142 have no history of Broadside publication.  Conversely, for the ten lowest Roud numbers: The Two/Three Ravens/Crows (Roud 5); The Two Sisters (Roud 8); The Cruel Mother (Roud 9); Lord Randall (Roud 10) have no history of a Broadside publication, and False Lamkin (Roud 6) has only two such entries.  Roud's earliest entries seem to have all been old ballads and so it's not surprising that they had no history of Broadside publication.  If we try ten in the middle of the range (around Roud 12880), we find all ten do have history of Broadside publication, although one of these has only a single songster to its name.

What does this tell us?  Very little that was unexpected.

1. Most Broadside publications can be dated, at least roughly.
2. But it seems that many accounts of songs being heard in the oral tradition do not mention anything like a definite date.
3. Broadside publication offers printed verification at a time when oral collection was rarely being carried out.
4. The same applies, generally, to written Manuscript sources.
5. At the same time - do we really know how complete a picture of the situation Steve Roud's Folk Song Index paints?
6. Most of my new MT CD publications require Steve to allocate a new number to at least one song he's not encountered before.

1.6 19

New CD from MT Records: Charlie Bridger
Won't you Buy my Pretty Flowers? (MTCD377)

A year later, Andy took Mike Yates to record him 'properly', and it is these recordings which appear on several Musical Traditions and Veteran CDs.  However, Mike's recordings (using different/superior equipment) sound quite different to Andy's, and Mike has agreed that a CD where all the tracks sound similar would be better (or easier to listen to) than one where a few of them sound radically different ... even if they are superior, technically.  So we have made this CD entirely of Andy's recordings, none of which have ever been published before.

The track list is as follows:
Three Maidens a-Milking Did Go;  I'll Take you Home Again, Kathleen;  Won't you Buy my Pretty Flowers?;  Where is my Wandering Boy Tonight?;  Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue;  The Folkestone Murder;  When You and I were Young, Maggie;  The Mistletoe Bough;  The Birds Upon the Tree;  Wait 'til the Clouds Roll by, Jenny;  Playing on the Old Banjo;  O Who Will o'er the Downs so free?;  The Veteran;  In the Spring Time;  Old Farmer Giles;  A Boy's Best Friend is His Mother;  The Brave Ploughboy;  Little by Little, and Bit by Bit;  The Gypsy's Warning;  Your Own True Sailor Boy;  The Zulu War ;  That Old Fashioned Mother of Mine;  The Ship that Never Returned;  Good Old Jeff;  That's How you get Served when You're Old;  The Jolly Waggoner;  Trafalgar Bay;  Jenny Lind Polka.

MTCD377 has 28 tracks, 80 minutes duration + 28 page integral booklet in DVD case   £12.00  A direct link to it is here.

7.7 19

Huge updated intro to Bert Lloyd interview

He covers the relationship between Bert and Ewan MacColl, the clubs of the era, the Critics Group, the 'Policy' clubs, 'Folk Rock' and much else, in this fascinating new introduction.  It and the interview itself are very well worth a read by anyone with an interest in our music and song - even if you are in your seventies - and particularly if you're a bit younger.  A direct link to it is here.

13.7 19

MT Records - a Labour of Love

Interestingly, the Echoes of Erin Database includes the output of some 36 commercial record companies, active over a period of some 35 years (1899 - 1933), and lists 1,070 'sides' - meaning tunes.  MT Records is one single, non-commercial company, operating over 22 years, and has published recordings of some 2605 songs or tunes.  Admittedly, their records had only two 'sides' - my CDs can have as many as 40!

The following article on the history of MT Records is the first part of this considerable endeavour.  You can find it here as a PDF file.

13.9.19

Labour of Love Database

If you don't have any spreadsheet software installed, I can strongly recommend the free WPS Spreadsheet and Writer software - available from: https://www.wps.com/office-free

19.9.19

New MT Records '400 Series' release

In 1962 Colin S Wharton published his Leeds University degree thesis 'Folk Songs from the North Riding'.  This thesis was the culmination of his collecting in the North Riding of Yorkshire.  The finished work was 149 pages long and divided into five sections, according to subject matter: Songs of Love and Courtship, Songs from the Farm, Hunting Songs, Occasional Songs, and Songs of Sorrow.  This release contains almost all the recordings he made.

It's one of our rare '400 Series' releases (like the Pop Maynard and Martin Carthy ones - the latter being no longer available) with 2 CDs in a double jewel case, and fairly brief notes.

MTCD406-7   2 CDs, 67 tracks, 160 minutes   It's now available on the MT Records website, priced just £10.00

20.9.19

A strange idea for a new MT Records release

So - the ones I know about:

Fred Whiting:
Mike Yates has recordings of:
• Shearing Sheep and Thatching
• Enoch Brown
• Poison Beer
• A Fisher Lad for Me
• The Herring Hawker
• Fine Yarmouth
• The Blacksmith's Mantrap
• Died for Love
• The Road to Gundagai
• Who Owns the Game?
And I'm looking for recordings of any of the other 15 songs he's known to have sung

Scan Tester:
I have recordings of:
• The Lakes of Cold Flynn
• Barbara Allen
And would like to get recordings of:

• The Old Rustic Bridge
• Oxford City
• The False Bride

Bob Cann:
I have recordings of:
• Nobody Noticed Me
• Tavistock Goosey Fair
And would like to get recordings of:
• Widecombe Fair
• Johnny's Lost his Marble

Charlie Bate:
I'm looking for recordings of:
• My Little Winchy Maggie (Maggie May)
  
And any of the other 28 songs he's known to have sung

Joe Smith (Phoebe's fiddler husband):
Mike Yates has recordings of:
• Lavender
• The Squire and the Gypsy
• Oxford City
And I would like to get a recording of:
• The Riddle Song

Stephen Baldwin:
I have a recording of:
• Anywhere Does for Me

Any ideas, information, and particularly recordings, will be most welcome.

15.10.19

Re: Singing Musicians

George Privett was recorded by Gwilym Davies, singing:
• Acre of Land, An
• All Around My Hat
• Mandi Went to Puv the Grai
• Merry Ploughboy
• Sailor Boy, The
• Ship that Never Returned, The
• Song in Romany
• Three Men Went A-Hunting
• Young Sailor Cut Down in his Prime
Harkie Nesling was recorded by Keith Summers, singing:
• Come and be my Little Teddy Bear
• The Baby's Name
Fred List was recorded by Keith Summers, singing:
• Basket of Eggs
• Eggs and Bacon
• Light Dragoon, The
• Seaweed
• Somerset Fair
• Wild Colonial Boy

1.11.19

New MT Records CD - MTCD517

Thirty tracks of vintage American Old-Timey fiddle music, with tunes that are derived from Britain and Europe.  Includes such well-known names as: Ed Haley, Fiddlin' Doc Roberts, Narmour & Smith, Emmett Lundy, The Red-Headed Fiddlers, Edden Hammons, and many others.

MTCD517 + 24 page integral booklet in DVD case, 30 tracks, 78 minutes.  Now available on the MT Records wesite, price £12.00.

A direct link to it is here.

7.12.19

Correspondence: