I read on the BBC that Peter Kennedy died last saturday June 10th at the age of 83.
While it’s always sad to report any death of somebody associated with traditional music, many people on this board had serious misgivings about the way he profitted personally through his Folktax record label from the field recording work he did for the BBC back in the 50s and 60s.
There was no information on the fate of his label.
Ken
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I don’t think it’s the time to go into the wrongs of Peter Kennedy’s career. Suffice to say the scenario was in quite a few cases not quite as straight forward as Jim describes it above.
It’s appropriate now maybe to look at the achievement of Kennedy’s collecting days.
How do you feel about Nic Jones, that most wonderful of singer/guitarists, his career cruelly terminated by a car crash 25 years ago, still being unable to make any money out of most of the wonderful early LPs he made because one eejit owns the “rights” to them and won’t allow their release? As Nic is not Irish please regard this as a rhetorical question, but it is a reaction to the above, which reads, well, a little less than humanitarian to me. We are not talking about rock superstars here to whom a million or two either way is neither here nor there.
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That is awfully cold, Jim. He has been unable to make new recordings since his terrible accident, and the live stuff you refer to, whilst a great testament to the man’s peerless skills, do not really do him justice in terms of sound quality (and I have them all). Mr Boulmer, who “owns” his earlier studio recordings (which are absolute classics by any standard), has steadfastly refused to allow the release on CD of Nic’s work, not only depriving Nic of royalties that would considerably ease his predicament but also stopping thousands of aficionados of the very best in English folk from hearing Nic in the best available sound quality (even the old vinyl LPs are like hens’ teeth these days). If you’re going to be all cold and technical about that then I honestly begin to wonder where your soul’s gone.
On topic, never heard of the guy, but it’s horrible that he died whoever he is. May his soul find God.
I have no idea about the specifics of all this, but if I understand you all correctly, well, then this Mr. Boulmer fellow isn’t acting in his best character; but all the same, if Mr. Jones had agreed before to sell the rights to the music, can very much really be done about it?
Nic didn’t die in the accident and he’s still alive some 25 years later but his terrible injuries, received as a result of a car-crash on his way home from a gig, prevented him permanently from pursuing his career. If you buy the CD “Penguin Eggs” (the only one of his studio recordings ever made available on CD) you’ll see the true worth of the man - it’s an absolute gem. What can be done about it, to answer your question, is that his wonderful work could be put into the public domain where it belongs. Shrugging and hand-wringing are simply disingenuous. I will never understand the motives of Mr Boulmer but will forgive him if he takes the simple and not difficult step of releasing Nic’s music for the world to enjoy and to give Nic some much-needed and much-deserved income. This has to be my last word on this as Nic is not Irish and I don’t wish to hijack the thread.
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Jim, please check Dale’s thread, in the pub, on long URLs here…well, at least his initial post. 
Thanks,
Denny
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I said I wouldn’t post again on Nic Jones but I realise that I misspelled Dave Bulmer’s surname, which is important if you want to search Google - there’s tons of stuff relating to this saga up there going back many years and I guarantee that if you look you’ll come away with a somewhat less sympathetic view of Mr Bulmer’s business practices than you’ll pick up from Jim and the Spoon Man.
Picked up on this a bit late whilst browsing. Just to say I completely agree with Steve on this. Nic Jones is a great bloke, and made some of the most interesting folk recordings of the time, I still have his LP’s and treasure them, a great singer and guitarist. Shame on Bulmer 
Enough time has passed to consider the contribution or otherwise of Mr Kennedy - or at least the MusTrad site thinks so See this…
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/enthuse.htm
Ken
So. A bit of a scumbag who tried to make a lot of money out of incredibly talented people who in most cases had difficulty scratching any sort of living out of what they were good at.
27. Like a black-marketeer in wartime, Kennedy has been tolerated because “Where else can you get a pair of nylons?”
Pretty nasty stuff.
Collectors have evolved over time - progressed. In Irish music you start with scattered medieval accounts, Neales, Bunting, Petrie, Joyce, Howe/Ryan, O’Neill, Breathnach. Things improve, including a developing sense of tact. Peter perhaps belonged to an earlier time - you could liken his imposing accompaniment on people to Petrie/Bunting using it in their scores, or modifying tunes.
He never used the track info I sent him for FTX-173, either, so your felt-tip scribed CD still has “SLIP JIG” for a little tune (from Petrie) that goes |:"D"FGA {d}AFA c2A|BAG (4FGAF GED|FGA {d}AFA d2 A|d(3.g.f.e d^cA GED::
I wonder if anyone has anything unreservedly good to say about the man?
I was talking to another collector (of song mostly) just after Kennedy died when the silence was deafening. He expressed the hope the collection would not be sold (to the US as Kennedy had tried in the past) but kept intact and in the UK. He also said there were large parts of the collection that were not released and that there was beautiful material there that deserved to be accessible.
This was a man who can get livid when asked about some of Kennedy’s ethics. He was unreserved about the value of the work.
http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=94776&messages=171
is a discussion of Kennedy, still active, at Mudcat.com.