Peter Kennedy's Folktrax label

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

This is a quote from another discussion, "most out of tune regulators." If interested, you should peruse the remarks contained there as well. I figured I would start a new topic based on it; and I will also put it on the Irish music forum. This quote refers to Folktrax, an English record label run by Peter Kennedy, who has been collecting folk music since the 40s; their catalogue has Seamus Ennis, Willy Clancy, Felix Doran, and the McPeake family for pipers, and fiddlers John and Mickey Doherty, the Cork singer Bess Cronin, and so on, among plenty of other British Isles folk music.

Quite right Peter. They are basically the BBC field recording made in the 50s, recorded by a number of collectors including Seamus Ennis. Some of them appear on the Topic Folksongs of Great Britain series (Ennis himself, Paddy Taylor, the Dohertys etc from Ireland). Just because Kennedy sometimes wielded the microphone doesn't mean he owns the copyright to the whole archive.
The dilemma is if you want to hear the music, how do you circumvent somebody regarded in some circles as nothing more than a bootlegger.

I just spent $100 on 4 CDs from Peter; what's the story here, anyway? Who considers him a shady character, etc.? One of these CD's, Seamus Ennis's the Fairy Piper, #302, does appears to be mostly a reissue of a Leader LP from the 60s, Masters of Irish Music, with 3 items Peter recorded in the 50s. The Folktrax label also has a website, folktrax.org.

[djm]

Kevin, are these CDs on order, or have you received them? If you have them, what is the quality like? I hate to spend this kind of money just to get one or two tracks per CD. If the quality is crap, I feel even more disinclined.

Thx,

djm

[kenr]

djm,

the CDs are not crap - just ripped off and sold without the agreement of the musicians (my definition of bootleg) - see comments on this thread under trad music.

Ken

[Patrick D'Arcy]

All the musicians are dead though... so!!??!?!

PD.

[brianc]

I don't think that death automatically relieves a user of the copyright laws.

BrianC

[kenr]

Patrick,

Yes they are dead but Peter Laban told me about the reaction of Paddy Breen's family to Kennedy's methods with regard to the tape of Paddy he is selling.

Ken

[Patrick D'Arcy]

Yeah I can beleive that alright. If he was signed to a record company it's that company that would have collected the money not the family, depending of course on the contract negotiated by the artist, which in those days was usually a 5 pound note, period. This happened to Tommy Reck. What's stopping these families from producing CD's themselves? Peter Kennedy isn't doing anything they couldn't themselves I am guessing, other than the claims that he recorded a lot of this material himself.

Anyway, I think it's great this material is available, it's no use to anyone locked up in a vault somewhere.

Patrick.

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

As regards piping, this issue of bootlegging has come up in the US a couple of times already-Pat Sky's tape of Patsy Touhey records, the material of which he obtained from Breandan Breathnach, Tom Busby, and the like, and the Pipers' Club's tapes of Johnny and Felix Doran, which NPU sh*t a toaster about in the late 80s.
I spoke with Pat Sky once about all the virulent criticism he got from NPU over his tape-which over the years he figured he'd sold about 100 copies of, and which is composed of 78 RPM and cylinder recordings, some of these latter utterly unlistenable due to surface noise. NPU came down on him for using these without permission from Busby (the source of most of the cylinders) or NPU and the University of Cork, who are the rightful owners of some of the other cylinders. The 78s I guess he'd have to consult the Touhey family about; probably no room in the budget for a Ouija board...
You might ask yourself why the interested parties would care-when I say these are unlistenable, I'm saying that I have trouble listening to them myself, and I'm a big fan of Touhey. Pat thought the whole thing was pretty ridiculous, all this fuss over the most marginal market imaginable; he spoke of maybe posing in front of a pool, sipping a margarita, with "The Mansion the Touhey Tape Bought" in the back. The NPU tape of Touhey was good but frustrating in a sense, too; some of its offerings are a bit nasty sounding as well; why just go whole hog and put the lot on one big tape? Pat Sky's certainly not interested in the rights and wrongs here; they're kind of arbitrary after a point, too: should he have to contact the O'Farrell family about reprinting their ancestor's 1804 piping tutor?
The Dorans tape was offered purely at cost-advertising a private collector's tape, in essence. It took NPU years to notice it was available, too. Off the market with it, and Comhairle Bhealoideas Eireann stepped in with their official release of this stuff. It was a far worse dub-sounded like about 16th generation, a couple of them done with microphones, which occasionally shorted out, too-but they went through official channels, etc. etc.
NPU's new Doran CD certainly makes up for that windfall-a really great job, and I hope this "Master Pipers" line of CDs will cover your household names at some point - Ennis, Clancy, Reck, of whom there are some really great, good sounding tapes floating around out there. If you're really gung ho on hearing them you'll just have to know where the stream is, so to speak...Myself, I think this stuff should be in every home, but I certainly don't share many people's sentiments. The flute forum here has a post that begins with one player's account of her telling an interested party not to bother with any recordings made before the 90s, and definitely not the 70s. You know, unimpressive junk like Josie McDermott, Micho Russell.
Music in its recorded form can be like musical instruments in museums; good that they stay in their pristine untouched form, but they're never going to have any music played on them again, in all likelihood. Whatever the case, I certainly treasure all these tapes I've been fortunate enough to receive over the years; and am putting them on CD now, too. Now, who is going to put together a CD of noisy wax cylinder recordings in this day and age?

[Paul]

Now, who is going to put together a CD of noisy wax cylinder recordings in this day and age?

Wasn't there just a release of old Jazz glommed from Vinyl records and put to CD where they had used modern technology to clean the old records of static etcetra and the end result was supposed to be amazing. I wonder if something could be done with wax cylinder recordings.

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

Wasn't there just a release of old Jazz glommed from Vinyl records and put to CD where they had used modern technology to clean the old records of static etcetra and the end result was supposed to be amazing. I wonder if something could be done with wax cylinder recordings.

I hadn't heard, do you know what the record's name is? Cylinders, and acoustic process recorded 78 RPM records, can sound quite pleasant; it's just that they have a rather narrow frequency range. Patsy Touhey's 78s are fine sounding, you can hear all the grace notes from his chanter, and the balance is quite good, although his bass reg does blast you out of the chair in "Miss McLeod's." That was the idea, though...he obviously knew how to set himself up in a studio to sound the best.
There are plenty of cylinders that Breandan Breathnach never got to play at all, including most of what was done of Barney Delaney, Chief O'Neill's brother in law and a fantastic piper. Now, does anyone know if there is an Archeophone or similar modern, hi-tech cylinder player in Ireland, that these records could be played on?

[jqpublick]

Hi all:

First, I think that the only real music is live music, and recordings are simply snapshots of that moment, not 'the right way' to play something. There are as many interpretations of a tune as there are musicians who play it; each of us hears a tune in a different way, and to me that's more than half the beauty of music, particularly Traditional Music. As soon as Tradition becomes rigorously codified it dies, I think.

It's taken me a long time to realize that slavish imitation of a musical performance will never impress the musician you're copying, or other musicians. I imagine them standing and listening, knowing that what you're doing is missing the point, which is essentially that music is an act of creation. Not re-creation (you can never step into the same river twice, after all) but creation, the urge to make something unique, timeless, and purely of the moment.

So recording a live performance in my opinion misleads us into believeing that that musician only ever plays that tune that one way, 'the right way' and if they release a different version later leaves us feeling vaguely cheated somehow.

Then the attitude appears that it's possible to own the music because you're the one who recorded it (when in fact what you own is the peice of tape, CD or what have you) and not the music, which is essentially something that existed in the past, at the moment of the recording. I guess what I'm trying to say is that (contrary to Intellectual Property laws) you can't own music, you can only create it, let it go into the world and hope that people liked it enough to give you money for that moment, and hence you have enough money for food, etc.

So when I read about people getting all up in arms about music recorded a hundred years ago played by someone long dead, all I hear is the voice of greed, not music. Supporting either a musician (or the musician's family) by buying their recordings (or better yet, going to see their show)
is one thing, but claiming that 'I am the sole dispenser of this and any attempt to do otherwise will get you sued' is, in my opinion, just plain daft.

How long do you own music for? Ten years, a hundred, a thousand? How about only for the moment I'm playing it?

'K. I've babbled enough. Hope noone wants to hit me with anything made out of delrin, or lead.

Mark

edited for stupidity

[Cayden]

Peter Kennedy isn't doing anything they couldn't themselves I am guessing, other than the claims that he recorded a lot of this material himself.


Patrick.

In fact a while ago PJ Crotty was researching the music of Paddy Breen [whom he knew well] and discovered Kennedy had Breen sign over the copyright of all material to him [Kennedy] and that included material not only collected by Kennedy but any earlier material and all future material.

I have been told about several cases in which he acted the same. Ofcourse from where we are sitting it's easy to say that's not legal and he had no right and all that but bear in mind he was dealing with uneducated country people in a lot of cases and he was the authority fro mthe BBC who came to record and fro mthat position had them sign away any earnigns they may have had from what they initially gave freely.

Yes, it's great some of the material is there for us to listen. But..

[Cayden]

[Cylinders, and acoustic process recorded 78 RPM records, can sound quite pleasant; it's just that they have a rather narrow frequency range. Patsy Touhey's 78s are fine sounding, you can hear all the grace notes from his chanter, and the balance is quite good, although his bass reg does blast you out of the chair in "Miss McLeod's." That was the idea, though...he obviously knew how to set himself up in a studio to sound the best.
There are plenty of cylinders that Breandan Breathnach never got to play at all, including most of what was done of Barney Delaney, Chief O'Neill's brother in law and a fantastic piper. Now, does anyone know if there is an Archeophone or similar modern, hi-tech cylinder player in Ireland, that these records could be played on?

Breandan B had all Delaney cylinders at least I got taped copies of them off him. Only tonight I received a tape from Pat Mitchell that has Touhey cylinders, including a load of newly discovered ones, some of which have been cleaned up. I am just home and it's 2.30 in the morning so I don't think I'll be listening to them tonight, the yare suppsoed to be very nice though.

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

One thing I did recently with Touhey's recordings was to set his pipes to tune to his drones on the 78 recordings on NPU's tape, which sound about right for pitch and speed. If you set something to what you know is the correct pitch, you will have the correct tempo, too. The extant recordings of Touhey are all over the map for pitch and speed; many were too slow, on the tapes that came my way.
Does this tape have tunes not in the Piping of Patsy Touhey, then? What a great find. That guy was definitely a "Master Piper," Seamus Ennis said in an interview "You could not fault Patsy Touhey, he was definitely the greatest of the men I've heard before my father's time."

[Pipey]

Green Linnet is running a few days only sale on all CDs. Jut picked up two Seamus Ennis and two Bothy Band CDs for $7.00 (US) each, plus nominal shipping. All the Paddy Keenan CDs appear to be on backorder. Site is www.greenlinnet.com