Adventures In The Tradition

We wandered down this lane, and took a left turn somewhere, and ended up here. There are a few familiar names here, but for the most part, the singers featured are unknown, or to be more correct, known only to those who have, to quote a page title from another of our websites,

An Open Ear On The Past.

These are voices that would be silent forever, if it were not for the diligence and love that some have, to go out into the field and record these people on their own turf. Actually this practice of "field recording" is not a new one, for instance, Cecil Sharp did it, not in his early excursions, but some of the later ones. One draw back to doing field recordings at that time, was, of course, the weight of the necessary recording equipment, but thank goodness for patience and diligence. We now have these records to listen to, to marvel over, and their transference to cd makes them even more accessible, though the vinyl versions are still much sort after, and they are out there, but, again, diligence and dedication is needed to find them.

Harry Cox, Cyril Poacher, Bob Hart(that's him in the picture at the top of this text), voices out of the past and, to our minds, sign posts to the future. Raw, most often unaccompanied, emotional, from the very depths of Albion's heart, came these songs. We'll find out as much as we can about these three, and others, as we can, and present them here, for you to take a look at, and hopefully encourage you to go and look for the recordings, or if you're so inclined, to order them through Musical Traditions Records. Speaking of which, Rod Stradling and company have done a, what we can only describe as masterful, job of creating data base of everything (it seems like it anyway) that is folk music, visit them here. We've visited the site often, the articles alone are worth reading, never mind the reviews, the enthusiasms, and....some really incredible images of the past. One of the corner stones of all of this is the, now complete, Topic Records discography, everything right from day one is there. It was and is a massive undertaking by anyones standards, but the result is, a data base within the main data base, with which record entusiasts can utilise for themselves. Once again, thanks seems too smaller word, but Rod, and the group, Thank You!

By the way, through the Another Bob Hart Broadside II link, you can hear how Bob sounded, with sound bytes for a number of recordings

Well, we'll leave you here to explore, while we explore for ourselves......

Enjoy!