"Unto Brigg Fair" 1908/1972
*First released 1908
All other titles first released 1972.
Sleeve notes by Bob Thomson:
In the early years of the century a few enlightened folk song collectors took the revolutionary step of recording the actual performances of country singers and musicians, thus capturing all the idiosyncrasies of style, where before the words and music had been laboriously and relatively inaccurately transcribed on paper. The cylinder phonograph had made this huge step forward possible.
Bartok's collecting in eastern Europe is well known. Less well is the pioneer work in England by the Australian composer and pianist, Percy Grainger.
Grainger started recording on location in 1906. He visited various places in England including north Lincolnshire where he recorded several outstanding singers including Joseph Taylor whose singing of Brigg Fair was the inspiration of Delius' English Rhapsody.
Grainger revisited Lincolnshire in 1908 and in the same year brought Joseph Taylor to the studios of the Gramophone Company to make commercial disc recordings of some of his songs.
It is from these two 1908 ventures that the recordings on this LP are taken. Carefully remastered to eliminate as far as possible the technical short-comings of the period, they are not just old and rare recordings of historic interest, they are amongst the very finest performances of English traditional singing ever to be permanently collected.
The Gramophone Company recordings were made in London on July 9 and 11, 1908.
The cylinders were recorded in Brigg, Lincolnshire.
Numbers 84, 95, 96, 100, 101, 102 on May 25, 1908.
Number 111 on May 27, 1908.
Numbers 130, 131 on May 27, 1908.
Produced by Bob Thomson, Bill Leader and Dave Bland.
Notes by Bob Thomson.
Disc transfers by Bill Leader and A. F. R. Lawrence.
Cylinder transfers by The Library of Congress.
Special filtering and equalisation by Nic Kinsey, Livingston Studios
and D. A. Pickett, EMI Studios.
LP master cut by John Wadley, E. M. I. Studios.
Sleeve and booklet designed by Janet Kerr.
Made and printed in England by Brier Press, High Wycombe, Bucks.
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