London / Irish archive recordings CD sets

Trad Irish Music
1

I’ve just bought 2 amazing collections of music, released by “Topic” records of London as 2 3-CD sets, named respectively, “It Was Mighty”, and “It Was Great Altogether”. These tracks were selected by Reg Hall, and each set is accompanied by a 100+ page booklet packed with photos and very detailed information about the musicians and their involvement in the London / Irish traditional music scene. The earliest recordings are from the 1950s, and the latest from 2014, many of the names are well known in Irish music circles, many are not, but they all have something to offer.

Try this link, to find out more :

http://www.topicrecords.co.uk/tscd679t-it-was-mighty-the-early-days-of-irish-music-in-london/

Also, if you’d like to hear 5 of the tracks, I played them on our local radio programme yesterday for “St.Patrick’s Day”. You can hear Michael Daly & Liam Farrell, Eddie Corcoran & Seamus Tansey and Paddy Breen on flageolet, one after the other from about 10mins in. From about 30 mins you can hear Michael Gorman playing what must be the original version of “Cooley’s Reel”, followed by what I termed "the original “Duelling Banjos” - a bit of fun from Margaret Barry and Jimmy Cleary. The programme is available to listen to until next Thursday. Link to the web-page below, use the “Listen again” facility, and you can use the slide to go to 10 or 30 mins if you don’t want to hear the rest, which is songs apart from the opening and closing tracks :

http://www.shmu.org.uk/fm/shows/wednesday-session

Happy St.Patrick’s Day :slight_smile:

2

Amazon claims they’re being released tomorrow in the US, and each three CD sets is being priced like a single CD. I pre-ordered them both a couple of weeks ago…

3

While it has been flagged up on the session and elsewhere by now it’s worth noting here as well that Reg Hall’s massive tome on Irish music in London from the late forties to 1980 (a reworking of his doctoral thesis) is available on the topic site as a free download.

A few good tunes (leaf through the flipbook or use the download button to get the full 1016 page PDF)

4

I’ve been reading through the flipbook but I’m worried that, given the size of the publication, the web page may be gone by the time I get through all 1000 + pages. But I can’t find the “download button” on my ancient Mac using Firefox.

Is there a secret compartment that houses the download button? Can someone advise on how to download?

Thanks and best wishes.

Steve

5

On the flipbook on Mr. Gumby’s link, there is a down arrow on the menu at the bottom of the flipbook (down arrow over a ‘U’-like tray), assuming you have an Adobe Reader extension in Firefox. Adobe Reader has a download arrow on it’s menu bar, also (at least on Windows). If you can use some other type of downloader, than the direct link to a 113 MB .PDF is http://www.topicrecords.co.uk/a-few-good-tunes/files/inc/261cf51b41.pdf

http://www.topicrecords.co.uk/a-few-good-tunes/files/inc/261cf51b41.pdf

Never fear, I have a copy, although with my internet speed it would not be a fun upload to another site.

6

kkrell -

Thanks very much. The direct link got the job done. Now I can read at my leisure…

Best wishes.

Steve

7

Now I can read at my leisure…

I don’t know, on screen reading is a pain in the neck. I wish there was an old fashioned print edition, you know: a book.

8

Aphorism #1:
You can take the man out of the library, but you can’t always take the librarian out of the man… :smiley:

Aphorism #2:
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth… :wink:

Best wishes.

Steve

9

It’s a pdf, isn’t it? They print out rather nicely.

10

1950s copy??? I think its really a great one. Hope have one in my music library also as my father love to listen these old music records.