f84 Fuzz To Folk


Ian Green Luath Press (ISBN 978-1-906817- 69-5) UK£14.99


The Emigrant And The Exile


John Munro Rosedog Books (ISBN 978-1- 4349-8346-6) US $20


Singing And Dancing Wherever She Goes – A Life Of Maud Karpeles


Simona Pakenham EFDSS (ISBN 978-0- 85418-216-9) Paperback £10.00


Maud is generally associated with a selfless dedication to the collecting work of Cecil Sharp and deification of the man himself. Here, her old friend, the recently departed Simona Pakenham, attempts to flesh out the bones of her story, largely based on Maud’s own unpublished autobiography, which whilst “good at making propaganda for folk music” managed to avoid any significant self-disclosure.


This is far from an objective biography (EFDSS Library Director Malcolm Taylor points us to Georgina Boyes’ less ‘rose-tinted’ analy- sis for this) but it is nevertheless a fascinating insight into the woman – self-effacing, tena- cious, tireless and twinkle-toed. The “Singing And Dancing Wherever She Goes” epithet came from one of the source singers from whom she collected in Newfoundland.


Maud was one of the last of a genera- tion of upper middle-class women who had the financial backing to fund a life dedicated to perceived worthy causes. Her love and pas- sion for folk dance in particular is a given, but her outlook seems naïve and class-based to a modern reader, eg “…in the finest folk song… the traditional singer entered a world of romance which had little to do with any political system or social condition and which would outlive these temporal phenomena.”


Her own life is inextricably linked with


Sharp’s but Maud’s own immense contribu- tion to folk song and dance collection in the field (for the majority of her life collecting independently of Sharp in the UK, New- foundland, the Appalachian Mountains and beyond) as well as her galvanising presence in the development of both the EFDS and IFMC (International Folk Music Council) are also well-documented here. Packed with fascinat- ing anecdotes about field-trips, lecture tours, dance festivals and social events internation- ally, and major movers and shakers (William Kimber, the Kennedy clan, Ralph and Ursula Vaughan Williams, Zoltan Kodaly…), Maud certainly lived life to the full.


As well as her professional life (which was all-consuming until her death in 1976) there are the occasional windows into her soul – her unrequited passions, her flirtations and her sense of humour. Talking of double meanings in folk song, Sir Steuart Wilson once said of her: “There are seven different kinds of indecency and Dr Karpeles knows them all.” And, of course, the spectre of the ‘did they/didn’t they?’ debate raises its head, but remains unresolved. A mysterious two year’s worth of Karpeles’ notebooks are miss- ing, which seems very out of character for the notoriously meticulous Maud; particularly as they recount the most formative period of her life during the Appalachian field-collec- tion years during WWI with Sharp.


www.efdss.org Sarah Coxson


When he retired from the Edinburgh police force, Ian Green was already active in the folk scene, involved with running folk clubs, gigs and Edinburgh Folk Festival. Shortly there- after he set up a discount folk record mail- order company, then Greentrax Records, which has come to play a major role in Scot- tish folk music. Now in his late 70s, and still actively involved with Greentrax as it cele- brates its 25th anniversary, Ian has marked the event with his autobiography.


It has to be said that the title is slightly misleading (the subtitle “Trax Of My Life” is more accurate) as it covers his entire life from schoolboy son of a gardener at a rural Morayshire estate through to his recent award of an honorary Doctor of Music, and covers it in considerable detail (some 330 pages). While the last third of the book is probably of most interest to fRoots readers with its fascinating facts and anecdotes about the folk scene and its artists, movers and shakers over the last 30-40 years, the rest of the book is equally worth reading.


From his WW2 schooldays, via speedway- racing escapades, National Service in Korea during the Korean War period, through to a successful police career ending as an Inspec- tor, Ian paints not only a very detailed picture of his own remarkable past, but indirectly provides an intriguing social history that shows just how different things were even just 40 or 50 years ago. Not one to let life pass him by, Ian seems to have packed more into his life than most people would manager in a dozen lifetimes, and his autobiography is well worth seeking out.


One of the major artists on the Green- trax roster is Eric Bogle, and John Munro is singer-songwriter and guitarist who has been closely associated with Bogle for more than 30 years. The Emigrant And The Exile is partly autobiography, partly a biography of Bogle, and also contains lyrics from a number of their songs (mainly Bogle’s).


Maud Karpeles


Through a number of vignettes rather than a fully detailed (auto)-biographical treatment, Munro highlights their common but separate starts in life, being brought up in Scotland and moving to Australia as £10 Pommies, before their lives eventually came together. The book highlights their differ- ences too: Bogle (the emigrant) and Munro (the exile who still considers Scotland to be ‘home’), and provides quite an insight into Bogle as a notable songwriter. A very differ- ent kind of book to Ian Green’s, but in many ways just as interesting.


www.luath.co.uk www.rosedogbookstore.com


Bob Walton Crowe On The Banjo


Marty Godbey University of Illinois Press (ISBN 978-0-252-07825-5) £13.99


Bean Blossom


Thomas Adler University of Illinois Press (ISBN 978-0-252-07810-1) £16.99


Two more volumes in the superlative Music In American Life series, both exploring the inner workings of bluegrass music and musi- cians. Banjo player J D Crowe is the subject of a well-researched biography by the late Marty Godbey who leaves no stone unturned as she traces Crowe’s career and seems to get right inside every musician he has played with. Over 40 years Crowe has been involved in many major moments in bluegrass history, playing and recording with Jimmy Martin, Red Allen, forming the New South who, in 1973 cut one of the genre’s most influential records. Ricky Skag- gs and Tony Rice were with Crowe at this time, as was later Keith Whitley, subse- quently to find fame and tragic death in Nashville. All pay tribute to Crowe’s disci- pline as a band leader and musical tutor, and whilst, like Monroe, Crowe was keen to use and further the talents of others, he seemed to have a single-minded discipline that kept the framework within his own musical rules. Everyone interviewed mentions Crowe’s unique sense of timing, and that was what had to be right, and it may have been passed on from Crowe’s first major employer, the enigmatic Jimmy Martin.


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