Editorial July 2008

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

Rod Stradling - 18.7.08

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

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

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

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

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.

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