Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition

Subject: Loomis House Press - Child Volume 2
From: DMcG
Date: 22 Jan 03 - 04:06 PM

Just to alert everyone: Loomis House Press have a notice on their website that they are waiting for Volume 2 to come back from the printers. It can't be much longer to wait now.

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Volume 2
From: Abby Sale
Date: 22 Jan 03 - 09:07 PM

Wait, wait! I haven't quite finished memorizing vol 1.

Well, they send it out automatically.

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Volume 2
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 22 Jan 03 - 09:12 PM

Or you can buy it from CAMSCO. $32 per copy (including shipping)

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Volume 2
From: Charcloth
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 07:46 PM

refresh

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Volume 2
From: masato sakurai
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 07:58 AM

Review of Volume 1 at Musical Traditions. I ordered a hardcover.

~Masato

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Volume 2
From: Joe Offer
Date: 12 Mar 03 - 01:15 AM

I got notice this evening that Volume 2 is out. Send me a copy, Dick!
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Volume 2
From: Abby Sale
Date: 12 Mar 03 - 11:08 AM

Me too, Dick.
Hurry!

(Well it appears I have to wait a month but that's ok)

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Volume 2
From: MMario
Date: 12 Mar 03 - 11:59 AM

Dick - do you carry the paperback, the clothbound, or both?

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Volume 2
From: Joe Offer
Date: 12 Mar 03 - 08:15 PM

Dick has been selling both paperbound and hardback of volume 1. I've seen both, and I'd highly recommend the hardcover. For ten bucks extra, it's worth it. The paperback is nice, but the hardcover edition is a treasure.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Volume 2
From: Abby Sale
Date: 13 Mar 03 - 11:30 AM

I agree on the hardcover. Much as you use the stuff MMario, and remembering that it's been nearly 40 years since the last edition, and that it seems unlikely that the digital edition will be quite what we want AND that you'll have this forever...Yeah, it's worth $10 times five books.

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Volume 2
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 13 Mar 03 - 12:35 PM

MMario-
I carry both hard and soft cover. $23 and $32 respectively, including shipping.

dick greenhaus
CAMSCO Music
800/548-3655

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Volume 2
From: Joe Offer
Date: 13 Mar 03 - 01:22 PM

Do you have them available already, Dick, or do we have to wait? The Loomis House Website says they are releasing the books themselves for a month or so, and then will release them to booksellers.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Volume 2
From: MMario
Date: 13 Mar 03 - 01:26 PM

I don't care! I ordered anyway.

Subject: Child Ballads Vol. 4 from Loomis House
From: NOMADMan
Date: 31 Oct 08 - 04:02 PM

Hi Folks,

We just received this message from Loomis House Press.

------

Loomis House Press is pleased to announce that Volume 4 of our corrected edition of Francis James Child's The English and Scottish Popular ballads is now available for purchase from our website at
http://www.loomishousepress.com/.

The price is $24.95 for the paperbound edition, and $34.95 for the
library-quality clothbound edition.

This title will be available online _only_ from our store for about a month before being made available through other online merchants such as Amazon, because, frankly, we don't make much money on Amazon sales, and we need to make just a little money to keep this project afloat.

If you wish to support your local independent bookstore, please do. They can order our titles if you give them the ISBN numbers found on our website.

Please feel free to forward this message to any mailing lists or newsgroups where it might be of interest.

We are actively working on Volume 5, and hope to release it more quickly than the last volume. Thank you to everyone who has provided continuing support and encouragement for this project.


Loomis House Press

-------

Although the Dover paperback volumes are back in print, I think this set is well worth having.

John

Subject: RE: Child Ballads Vol. 4 from Loomis House
From: NOMADMan
Date: 31 Oct 08 - 04:06 PM

Here is the link to Loomis House Press.

Subject: RE: Child Ballads Vol. 4 from Loomis House
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 31 Oct 08 - 06:09 PM

Something wrong at the Loomis website. Can't read the tiny print.
Order form??

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 03:55 AM

Loomis House Press says the final volume of the Child Ballads is coming out in July. July is almost done, so this is wonderful news.

The Loomis House Child Ballads is quite different from any other edition of Child I've seen. It's an absolute pleasure to just sit down and read Child in this format.

Volume 1 was published in 2001, so this has been a long process. I imagine Dick Greenhaus will soon give us details on how to order this long-awaited last volume.

Right, Dick?

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: Joe_F
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 08:22 PM

Hoo bloody ray!

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: Ref
Date: 25 Jul 11 - 09:09 PM

I hate listening to children sing ballads. Those interminable songs don't get better in those reedy little voices.

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: DMcG
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 04:21 AM

I wished I lived somewhere where I suspect you are mixing up Professor FJ Child ballads - the subject of this thread _ with ballads for children, which isn't

Or maybe its a joke

But that does lead onto which Child ballads suit children. I've certainly herad Barbara Allen, the golden vanity and lord randal but not many more ...

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: DMcG
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 04:24 AM

Whoops - message scrambled above. It makes a little sense if you ignore the first six words...

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: Snuffy
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 09:23 AM

Dave

What about Weile Weile Waile - a Dubliner's hit version of The Cruel Mother, with the chorus sung by a children's choir.

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: EBarnacle
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 10:14 AM

Children are much more bloody minded than we admit.

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 26 Jul 11 - 01:05 PM

THe printer now says 2 more weeks. CAMSCO Will be carrying both hard ($32.50) and soft(23.50) including postage. (The extra half buck is due to a rise in postal rates)

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: Reinhard
Date: 18 Aug 11 - 02:43 PM

I just got an e-mail from Loomis House that Volume 5 is available now.

Subject: RE: Child Ballad Books
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 17 Aug 11 - 05:40 PM

The Loomis House edition of Child v. 5 is now being shipped. You can order it from Loomis House, or CAMSCO.

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: Joe_F
Date: 17 Aug 11 - 08:15 PM

Yeah! And what's more, the Mudcat is back. I wish I had somebody to celebrate with.

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: GUEST,Ewan McVicar
Date: 18 Aug 11 - 12:01 PM

Some years ago, in the catalogue for the archives of East Tennessee State University I was seeking children's songs, but their system delivered to me child ballads instead. In the same place I found Leadbelly singing Queen Mary and other scratchy tracks recorded by Mary Barnicle, and African storytelling recorded when she went to the Caribbean with teenaged Alan Lomax. I tried the latter material on a West African storyteller, but he said he only spoke nine WA languages and it was none of them.
Ewan

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: Joe Offer
Date: 24 Aug 11 - 10:32 PM

Robert Rodrigues called today and boasted that he received his copy of Volume 5, but he hasn't read it yet. Can somebody tell us what's in Volume 5 instead of the appendix that was incorporated into the other volume, or is is it a very skinny book?

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 24 Aug 11 - 10:52 PM

Robert got a review copy. Loomis House is up to their ears packing orders.
Ballads 266-305. 572 pages. Hardly skinny.
This volume includes Lady Diamond, Get Up and Bar the Door, The Farmer's Curst Wife, The Golden Vanity, John of Hazelgreen, and more, plus 17 ballad tunes drawn from Child's original sources. In addition, this final volume contains 325 pages of supplementary materials prepared by Child and his assistants, with cross-references to the text fully reindexed for this new edition:

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: Joe Offer
Date: 24 Aug 11 - 11:04 PM

Ah, that's the answer I've been waiting for - 325 pages of supplementary materials.
Thanks, Dick.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 25 Aug 11 - 10:22 AM

Haven't received the copies I ordered ye, so it's not listed on my website yet.I have faith

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Aug 11 - 10:53 AM

At the risk of drawing scorn upon my head for being so uninformed, but am I right in thinking that these volumes do not include the music notation for the tunes, and that I need to purchase the Bronson collection of tunes for Child ballads if that is what I am in search of?

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 25 Aug 11 - 11:32 AM

Guest. Child included a section which he called few "Ballad Airs From Manuscript". Otherwise, the texts are printed entirely without music, or any indication as to what tunes they should be sung to. This may seem odd today, but it was standard practice in Child's time to regard ballads purely as oral poems.

To complicate matters, Child includes 305 seperate ballads, plus variants. Tunes have only been collected for about a third of these. It is this third which Bronson assembled into The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, in as many variants as he could muster. In other words both publications are invaluable and neither renders the other redundant.

BTW. I would guess from what you say that you are fairly new to balladry. If so I would strongly recommend that you listen to as many recordings of traditional singers singing ballads as you can lay your hands on.

For starters, I couldn't recommend anything better than the wonderful Scottish Tradition; The Muckle Sangs: Classic Scottish Ballads CD on Greentrax'. Cost about £11-00, but there are 2nd hand copies on Amazon UK for about half that.

Then again, Topic's Voice of the People series has two CDs devoted to balladry.

Also, if they're still available, there are two discs of ballads in the Caedmon/Rounder series, The Folksongs of Britain.

For revival approaches to balladry, Topic and Fellside have both recently reissued archive material of Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd.

For MacColl see Ballads-Murder-Intrigue-Love-Discord on Topic. For Lloyd, see Bramble Briars & Beams of the Sun-Traditional English Ballads on Fellside.

Also, Fellside have also reissued a 3 LP set of the North Georgia, USA singer, Hedy West under the title Ballads and Songs from the Appalachians. This is not entirely made up of ballads, although there's a lot in there, but for sheer heart stopping singing, I don't believe there's anything to touch them.

On a similar note, there's a lot of records of traditional singers which aren't restricted to balladry. EG., Sheila Stewart, From the Heart of the Tradition (Topic), or The Stewarts of Blair; Alex, Belle, Cathie and Sheila (still available on Ossian, I think). These are very well worth investigating, and not just for the ballads.

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 25 Aug 11 - 11:46 AM

And be sure to check out the Child Ballad variants on the Max Hunter Collection which you can listen to gratis:

Child Ballads in the Hunter Collection

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 25 Aug 11 - 12:14 PM

Another invaluable on-line resource. Kist of Riches from the holdings of the School of Scottish Studies, Edinburgh University.

That site covers the full range of folklore recordings which SOSS has collected over the years, so it's not exclusively balladry by any means. But there's some fabulous material in there.

Also check out Smithsonian Folkways . Smithsonian is in effect a world ethnic music label, very highly respected, and it has some very important ballad recordings in its catalogue. The best bit is that virtually everything in its catalogue can be downloaded for just 99 cents a track.

In particular, look out for Frank Proffitt (North Carolina/Tennessee), Lucy Stewart (Aberdeenshire), and Dilard Chandler (North Carolina).

Also, the Smithsonian catalogue has three LPs of Ewan MacColl singing Child ballads, and I would number some of these as being among his finest recordings anywhere.

Mention of Lucy Stewart reminds me of the time when I found a copy of her LP of Child ballads in a record sale. The surprise caused me to say "Jesus Christ" so loud that they startled the woman who was rooting in the next bin along. I apologised, explained who Lucy Stewart was, what a great singer she was, what a stunning repertoire she had, and how I'd been trying to track this LP down for donkey's years. (This was long before the Internet made finding gems like that one such a doddle.)

She just said "oh", and carried on rooting among the Steeleye Span records.

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 25 Aug 11 - 03:52 PM

Inasmuch as the Child Series, unlike CAMSCO's other book offerings, is not print-on-demand, I'll be bringing some copies to the Getaway. If you are interested, please let me know what you want (which volumes? complete set? Hard or softcover?
We're limited in how much our Subaru can carry, so it helps to know in advance.

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: Joe Offer
Date: 09 Sep 11 - 08:50 PM

Robert Rodriquez told me he was writing a review of the Loomis House Child Ballads for something - maybe if was the folknik newsletter of the San Francisco Folk Music Club. I asked him to send me a copy for posting here, and here it is. He called in a number of additions and corrections that I'll add to this text later, but I thought you might want to see his review as soon as I finished typing the first draft. Thanks, Robert.
-Joe-

---

The Music of Story, the Magic of Music

The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, by Francis James Child
A review of the Loomis House edition by Robert Rodriquez

The only thing better than finding a treasure is to share it with others.
-Traditional Turkish Proverb-

Someone once said that wanting something is more pleasing than having it; or, to put it another way, wishing for something is more enjoyable than its actual attainment. Perhaps that may be true in a universe where emotional mortals live side by side with Klingons, logical or otherwise; but in a realm where the reverse or opposite is the case, when one waits long enough for something worth waiting for and when it finally comes to fruition; well, then its final attainment is more than well worth the wait, especially if that wait has been a decade in the making.

It has indeed been ten years since Mark and Laura Heiman, also known as Loomis House Publications out of Northfield Minnesota, decided on an undertaking which would take a great deal of research, effort, a vast labor of love and patience, much monetary cost out of their own pockets, and a lot more besides. But, ballad buffs everywhere, it has all been worth the wait, for the final volume of the new edition of the English and Scottish Popular Ballads is finally out, and what does yours truly say: Huzzah! Three Cheers! and a very grateful thanks for the results.

Himself a longtime singer of Child ballads since the 1970s, Heiman wanted to bring this landmark literary effort once more into print, especially as the 1960s Dover edition had been out of print since the early 1970s and it was time to bring Professor Child's musical masterpiece back into print.

This new edition, available in both hardcover and paperback, is a resounding success on several important levels. It is substantially more cohesive, relevant, and up-to-date in several major instances.

First, the Heimans have included many more tunes than in previous efforts, from the original Riverside editions to the Dover effort - in fact, somewhere around two hundred, to be exact. Also, the tunes can be easily located because they can be found with the particular ballad in question, a very nice plus for those of a singing nature, yours truly included; and there are more than just a few of us out there - no brag, just fact. So for those of us who are both ballad scholars and singers as well, and this of course is not mutually exclusive by any means, the new edition's importance is even more amplified.

Second, and just as meaningful, all the additions and corrections originally included by Child at the end of each volume in the first instance, have been carefully, assiduously, meticulously, and skillfully woven into the body of the text to make a much more enjoyable and literary whole, as it were. As I said before, even this alone had to be a grand labor of love to make this new version of the Child Ballads more meaningful and accessible to the ballad community and bring it right up to date in the early years of the twenty-first century.

And, perhaps most importantly of all, the true art of storytelling has been advanced a lot with this new edition, because, in the final analysis, good and excellent ballad singing equals good and wonderful storytelling. If you do not believe that, just listen to the likes of Dan Keding, Martin Carthy, Ian Robb, Kate Rusby, April Grant, Tim Jenkins, Sylvia Herold, Amelia Hogan, Lorne Brown, Moira Cameron*, and a host of other fine singers of story songs to find out just what the master storyteller's art is really all about.

After all this time, these timeless story songs are still relevant and more than worth the singing; for in the end, a good tale truly never dies. It gets told and retold, in one form or another, whether through spoken word or through the magical art of music. And thanks to the truly tireless efforts of Mark and Laura Heiman, the ballad and storytelling communities are more than truly well-served for this new edition of Professor Child's grand ballad compilation, now back in print, and hopefully here to stay for a very, very long time to come.

Ballad lovers of the world, unite! We now have Child back with use and happy singing times ahead for us all. To Mark and Laura Heiman, long may your musical fruit blossom and truly multiply and may the ballads continue to be sung and retold, from one end of musical creation to another. Truly, and the old Turkish saying goes, you have given us a treasure once again to be shared with others. Long may this musical treasure stay with us, today, tomorrow, and always to come.

---

*Robert called later and named a few others: Brian Peters, Frankie Armstrong, Sheila Kay Adams, Anita Best (of Newfoundland), Tony Barrand, Jerry Epstein.

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Sep 11 - 08:54 PM

Neat, attractive, cleanly printed volumes they are, too.

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 09 Sep 11 - 10:06 PM

Does the paucity of responses mean that CAMSCO doesn't have to bring more than a few copies of Child V (and Child I-IV) to the Getaway?

Subject: RE: Loomis House Press - Child Ballads New Edition
From: GUEST,Springthyme Records • Springthyme Music
Date: 10 Sep 11 - 09:46 AM

The completed set of five volumes of Child's English and Scottish Ballads (Summer 2011) from Loomis House Press are available through Springthyme:
http://www.springthyme.co.uk/ballads/child_child.html

If you have already purchased some of the earlier volumes as they were published then now's the time to complete your set - paperback or hardback.