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Album Savings: £16.54 compared to buying all songs
- Original Release Date: 27 Feb 2001
- Format - Music: MP3
- Compatible with MP3 Players (including with iPod®), iTunes, Windows Media Player
- Also available in CD Format
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| Song Title | Time | Price | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Play | 1. Jenny Lind - The Girl I Left Behind Me (Aug '62) | 3:35 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 2. The Waltz Vienna (Aug '62) | 2:59 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 3. Off She Goes (Aug '59) | 1:15 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 4. Off She Goes (Aug '62) | 1:45 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 5. Red Wing (Aug '62) | 2:17 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 6. Untitled Polka (July '59) | 2:24 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 7. Dulcie Bell (Aug '62) | 3:25 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 8. The Heel And Toe Polka (July '66) | 2:47 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 9. The Sailor's Hornpipe / The Shipdham Hornpipe / Untitled Polka / TheWhite Cockade / Untitled Polka (Aug '62) | 4:26 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 10. Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms / Johnny's So Long at the Fair / The Wild Colonial Boy (Aug '62) | 3:31 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 11. The Cliff Hornpipe (Apr '60) | 1:50 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 12. The Bluebell Polka (Aug '62) | 3:08 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 13. Shave The Donkey (Mar '59) | 0:54 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 14. Shave The Donkey (Aug '62) | 1:44 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 15. Waltz Selection introducing The Sailor Cut Down in His Prime (Aug '59) | 3:11 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 16. The Yarmouth Hornpipe introducting The Four-Hand Reel & The Sailor's Hornpipe (Aug '62) | 2:07 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 17. The Helston Furry Dance (Aug '62) | 2:06 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 18. The Irish Washerwoman / The Sprig of Shillelagh (Mar '59) | 1:42 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 19. The Foggy Dew / The Sailor Cut Down in His Prime (Aug '62) | 3:11 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 20. Peggy Wood / When There isn't a Girl About (Aug '62) | 2:29 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 21. Untitled Polka (Mar '59) | 1:13 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 22. Wheels (Aug '62) | 1:43 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 23. In and Out the Windows (July '66) | 1:41 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 24. Washing Day / Old Mrs Huddledee / The Keel Row (Aug '62) | 3:54 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 25. Untitled Polka (Aug '62) | 1:34 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 26. The Irish Washerwoman / Garryowen / Rory O'More / St. Patrick's Day (Aug '62) | 2:32 | £0.89 | ||
| Play | 27. The Four-Hand Reel / Soldier's Joy (Aug '62) | 3:52 | £0.89 |
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
This is one of the most unusual of Topic’s expanded CD re-releases. First thing to clarify is that ‘English Country’ is here one adjective, not two: this is not, thank God, some tweedy imitation of the Appalachian sound. Instead it is a unique snapshot of some of England’s last traditional dance musicians playing together in the early 60s. The main participants were born before 1890, so this really is a record of an ancient, exotic and long-vanished musical world.
All but the longest-bearded folk music veteran will need to be prepared for a very novel experience. The selection of instruments speaks for itself: dulcimer, pipe-and-tabor, guitar-cello, mandolin banjo as well as the more usual fiddle and melodeon. The overall band sound is like a rickety, clanking, thumping, jangling fairground organ being pulled down a cobbled street on a haycart. The musicians, their styles formed long before the mass-media era, have an eccentric and refreshing disregard for musical norms; perhaps their advanced age also makes them a little wayward.
The surprising thing for many people may be to discover how many of the tunes they already know – being from different areas, the players obviously concentrated on well-known common repertoire. Despite the early atrophy of English traditional music, a number of their choices were still to be heard orally or in the media until fairly recently.
There is little virtuosity on display, but the music doesn’t need it. They’re all simple, foot-tapping melodies and, once you get used to the band sound, very enjoyable to hear. It’s also probably the easiest and most fun folk album to play along with, that there’s ever been.
This release is almost double the length of the old LP, mainly through the inclusion of solos by the various contributors. Few of these are anything spectacular, but they’re worth having; the best are Billy Cooper’s dreamy dulcimer tapestries, straddling the divide between traditional music and Edwardian pop. However, they do entail a degree of repetition (with repeat tracks often running consecutively), and the net result is to dissipate the energy of the band pieces. Another thing that detracts from the re-release for me is the realisation that Reg Hall, whose melodeon has a central role in many performances, is not a genuine traditional musician. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with his playing but, as no doubt he would acknowledge, it undermines the ethos of this particular record.
Hall’s booklet, describing the performers’ lives and how the recordings were made, is comically littered with remarks like ‘but unfortunately this performance was taped over before being stolen and finally destroyed in a warehouse fire’. Priceless tapes led a precarious existence in those days! The story is an interesting one but makes it clear that he and fellow ‘folkie’ Mervyn Plunkett were the prime movers; Hall is even honest enough to admit that they may have directed the sessions towards what they then conceived of as ‘authentic’ folk music.
In the end though, whatever spin they introduced we have to be grateful to Hall and Plunkett for their efforts. Without them this record wouldn’t exist, and there is nothing else like it; it captures a heritage most of us never knew we had. For anyone who feels affection for the old, smocks-and-whiskers English countryside, it demands to be heard (…but if you already have the LP, and something to play it on, you don’t really need this as well).
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