Various Artists
Album: The Barley Mow
Label: Topic
Tracks: 18 (+5 on DVD)
Website: http://www.topicrecords.co.uk

Priceless. This integral DVD-plus-CD package is an essential acquisition for anyone interested in the traditional pub/tavern singing scene that has provided so much of the source material for both the 50s/60s folk revival and for subsequent waves of revival right up to today's singers of traditional songs. It will also be a mandatory purchase for those avidly collecting Topic's Voice Of The People series (this being Volume 26). Two east-Suffolk hostelries in particular have been famed for their hosting of regular singing (and music) sessions: The Eel's Foot, Eastbridge and The Ship, Blaxhall - where around two-thirds of the recordings on The Barley Mow were made, by Peter Kennedy, in 1953 and 1955. Although Peter had by the latter year already been recording traditional music in that part of Suffolk for two years, this (November 1955) was the first time he'd had a film crew in tow, and the 17-minute DVD appended to this CD release can be considered crucial viewing, for it forms both an ideal introduction and a must-keep for the library shelf, a snapshot in time depicting the important role of the music session in the rural community, one that stands many, many repeated viewings. Although it's appeared before, within a fairly recent BFI DVD-set, it's only proper that it should be reissued here. It contains a small amount of duplication in footage common to the accompanying CD (two of its songs being given in an edited form on the film), but it's the insights it presents into the whole social scenario, the behaviour, the culture, that prove especially illuminating.

The hour-long CD, however, presents an altogether fuller picture, with six roughly contemporary home recordings and one from the Eel's Foot supplementing the eleven songs recorded at The Ship. Around half-a-dozen of the actual songs (including one performance from the same singer, Jumbo Brightwell, albeit from 20 years later!) also crop up during the course of the initial 20-volume tranche of Voice Of The People series, but comparisons will always be readily invited and welcome in this repertoire (no doubt someone somewhere will be writing a PhD comparing "accumulator-song"-cum-party-piece The Barley Mow as sung by Jack French, Arthur Smith and George Spicer!). The CD kicks off with Cyril Poacher's celebrated rendition of The Nutting Girl, and the energy of this performance, complete with the no-holds-barred chorus singing from the assembled drinkers and "Chairman" Wickets Richardson's periodic entreaties for "order!", is a memorable and revelatory experience, not least for the first-timer new to this kind of singing. All of the Ship recordings, indeed, possess a comparable direct, no-nonsense immediacy and above all a sense of fun and thoroughly convivial occasion, while observing the "house rules" and a certain almost unwritten pecking-order - and, importantly, a mutual respect for fellow-singers. Singers of great longevity, here including such notables as Bob Scarce, Fred Ling, Geoff Ling, Harry List, Edgar Button and Eli Durrant. Finally, words of praise are due for the fine set of booklet essays, which include one by John Howson.

David Kidman