VARIOUS ARTISTS - Good Humour For The Rest Of The Night: Traditional Dance Music In Northumberland And Cumberland
Topic Records TSCD675
This single-CD addition to the Voice Of The People series is based on the recordings of the pioneering maverick collector Peter Kennedy. The recording quality is surprisingly good and the performers are, unusually for recordings of English instrumentalists, mostly at the top of their game and people who are under-represented in the current catalogue. There are no bands, but a good range of solo instruments - from the expected fiddle and mouth organ, to the unexpected harp and jews harp, via piccolo, tin whistle to the melodeon (only 4 tracks and one of those, surprisingly is by Willy Taylor) playing a real cross-section of repertoire.
This includes a complete set of tunes for the figures of The Lancers from the wonderful Billy Ballantine's highly-ornamented piccolo, to standards such as Soldier's Joy with most things in between. 60 tracks on a 64-minute CD tells that many tracks are ‘once-through’ reference recordings, so the player doesn't really have much chance to get going - even so, the performances are splendid. And of course, the issue comes with the expected excellent mini-book of information. I can do no better in describing the contents overall than to quote Reg Hall: “Great tunes, great style, subtle decoration and great rhythm - warm and entertaining - and a potential eye-opener for the newcomer and an object-lesson for some old-timers.” Hear, hear!
Paul Burgess
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this CD online from The Listening Post The Listening Post is the CD mailorder service of The Living Tradition magazine. This album was reviewed in Issue 103 of The Living Tradition magazine. |