While poking around on the net looking for info on the late Peter Bellamy, I stumbled on a blog to which various have posted links to ripped (theoretically) out of print LPs, mainly of folk and trad recordings from the UK.
I said “theoretically” above, because I noticed while scrolling through their list that not every poster was respecting the OP rule. However, there really ARE some hard to find records, like early McPeake Family 7" and 10" eps and singles, a 10" lp of Michael Gorman, Willie Clancy and Margaret Barry, or old Five Hand Reel albums which aren’t available anywhere, and which I wouldn’t feel especially guilty about downloading.
The files are hosted on a dubious russian server, & I make no guarrantees regarding sterility or fitness to purpose, so caveat emptor.
Finally, I believe Dale prefers to keep this kind of link off his site, so anyone who wants to check it out should PM for the link.
If the site you found is the same as the one I found, there seem to be files hosted on a few different servers, depending on who uploaded them originally, presumably.
Could you please clarify for me (since I don’t know what you’re referring to) if these are Peter Kennedy’s Folktrax recordings, or the old Folkways albums or something else? Since Kennedy died in 2006, Folktrax is now owned by Topic, who will start to re-issue choice tracks from this collection in 2009. Folkways albums are still owned and sold by the Smithsonian. There were some selections from the Lomax library put on line, but none of the ones I tried were more than a few seconds long.
This is just too strange…
I just got back from my brother’s house. He’d gone to a charity sale and plunked down $40 for a turntable, gigantic speakers, etc. and…a fantastic collection of LPs.
From Folkways recordings of Woody Guthrie, two from Alabama prison gangs, to Joan Baez to "the Bob’s Blonde on Blonde, the Byrds, Sweet Baby James, etc.
I haven’t seen any Folkways or folktrax recordings there so far, but there’s a lot I haven’t looked at, either. There definitely are some old Topic 10 or 12 inch LPs. I gather that if an artist notifies the board that X or Y is still available, the link to a file on a fileserver will be switched to wherever those recordings can be obtained legally.
One such was Cyril Tawney’s widow; he had been a pioneer in self-enterprise and self-publication as he was in so much else (first full-time pro ‘folk musician’ in the UK, for instance), and although his stuff is hard to find in the shops, it’s not out of print, and everything can be obtained through the website now run by his widow. That’s where all the links have been redirected.
On the other hand, there are some recent and probably still commercially available CDs that people have been ripping and posting. I dunno if anyone at this blog will take them down without a complaint. I don’t actually know much about who’s running what here.
It turns out there’s actually quite a few Folways on there. Some pretty rare and/or home-made recordings from radio/tv, as well. The one album I wanted to get, the links are not working. Typical.
