Subject: RE: music for australian song
From:
Bob Bolton
Date: 12 Jan 99 - 04:40 PM
G'day Jon,
I will put this list into the thread, even though it is fairly long (and due to my notes, rambling), in case anyone else is interested in the books. This is not a comprehensive stocktake of the publications cupboard - just a rework of a specific list I sent to Liam's Brother with a few additions.
It might be simpler to print out - if you want to read the full list!
Bush Music Club Publications
The Bush Music Club publishes a series of books dealing with “Bush Dancing” - a modern revival of the sort of couple, circle, line and quadrille dances that survived longer in the bush than in the commercialised world of the capital cities.
Bush Dance (tunes), David Johnson, 3rd ed., Bush Music Club, Sydney, 1997.
This 100 page book has 165 (mostly) traditional tunes arranged into sets for 39 popular bush dances - from barn dance to quadrilles. The new edition is printed on heavy, tough, opaque white paper and wire bound, with protective clear covers, to sit perfectly flat on music stands.. Music book: A$25.00 rrp.
Bush Dance (instructions), Lance Green (et al), Bush Music Club, Sydney, 1986.
The Instructions book covers the same thirty nine dances; giving the calls for each dance in compact blocks meant to be photocopied and pasted onto calling cards, with the key calls in bold followed by brief notes where any item bolded indicates an item in the extensive, illustrated glossary. This is supported by a Musical Guide, Teacher's Guide & Bibliography (by David Johnson) and Historical Notes (by Anne Pidcock). This book has 76 pages, soft cover and is in A4 format. Instruction book: A$9.00 rrp.
Singabout, Selected Reprints, from Singabout, Journal of Australian Folksong, 1956- 1967, ed. Bob Bolton, Bush Music Club, Sydney, 1985. RRP A$8 plus post/pack - weight approx 220 grams
This has 100 items (all but 2 are songs) from the 22 issues of Singabout. They are the original typography and illustrations - rearranged to present the material in a songbook format, with added guitar chords.
The book has 96 pages, A5 (~8” x 5 5/8”), cello-glazed soft cover, sadddle-stitched. Although the material is actually a tad larger than original octavo magazine (typically ~ 105%), I would have liked a slightly format ... say, B5 - (~10” x 7”), but small offset printers were only just getting the hang of metric, ISO paper measures in 1985, and only offering the A series of paper formats. A4 was too big and A5 slightly small for my taste..
Six Authentic Song from the Kelly Country, collected and edited by John Meredith, Bush Music Club, Sydney, 1955. 3rd printing, 12 pages, 8” x 5”, soft covers, saddle-stitched. RRP A$1 plus post/pack - weight approx 35 grams.
This was originally a stapled set of songs issued as “Bushwhacker Broadsides” in the early 1950s and bound up as a set in 1955, the 75th anniversary of Ned Kelly’s hanging. It was subsequently reissued in a ‘pocketbook’ size; octavo, or folded quarto ... about 60% of the original size. I subsequently did a reprint run of the octavo booklet (around 1971/2) and the minimum run of 1,000 left us with a persistent residual stock!
The Songs of Henry Lawson (vol. 1), Chris Kempster, Viking O’Neill, Ringwood, Victoria, 1989. 224 pages, 10 3/4” x 8 1/2”, soft covers, thermo-bound sewn signatures. RRP A$30 (plus post/pack) - weight approx 700 grams.
This has 230 settings of some 107 of Henry Lawson’s poems (including one by some bloke called Bob Bolton), copious illustrations, (including one by some bloke called Bob Bolton), poems and background notes. This is a careful selection from at least twice as many settings by many musicians and singers over the years and across a range of countries. There are only two copies left.
Frank the Poet, John Meredith and Rex Whalan, Red Rooster, Melbourne, 1979.
We have a small number of these still in stock. RRP A$12 plus post/pack - weight approx 300 grams.
This is a softcover book of 87 pages, thermo-bound sewn signatures, ~9 3/4” x 7 3/8” in which we have some 24 pages on the history and background to Frank MacNamara and an account of tracking down the real Frank the Poet.
There are some forty pages of poems and collected songs. Frank’s works are either autobiographical, drawing on his experiences as a convict variously assigned to shepherding and then coal-mining ... and progressively into heavier punishments for his intransigence ... or else they are imaginative works on historical events where the convicts stood up to the system - or musings on the eternal fate of his captors.
The poems/songs include ‘The Wild Colonial Boy’, ‘Moreton Bay’ and ‘The Seizure of the Cyprus Brig’. (11 copies left on stocktake.)
The Wild Colonial Boy, Bushranger Jack Donahoe, 1806 - 1830, John Meredith, Red Rooster, Melbourne, 1982. RRP A$12 plus post/pack - weight approx 300 grams.
This is a distillation of John Meredith’s various short works on Donahoe and has a lot of history and contemporary references (as well as a play about Donahoe published in 1835 ... only 5 years after his death). The format is similar to the previous book but there are 102 pages. (9 copies on stocktake.)
Folk Songs of Australia and the men and women who sang them (vol. 1), John Meredith and Hugh Anderson, NSW University Press, Kensington, 1985 (originally published Ure Smith, Sydney, 1967). 300 pages, 8 3/8” x 5 1/4”, soft covers. RRP A$12 plus post/pack - weight approx 400 grams.
This is one of the most important books of Australian folklore, because of the background detail, interviews with informants and specific, collected versions. The NSWUP reprinted this when they published volume two. For anyone wishing to have an Australian repertoire that goes beyond the standard set of pot-boilers, this book is required reading.
Folk Songs of Australia (vol. 1), John Meredith, Roger Covell and Patricia Brown, NSW University Press, Kensington, 1987. 328 pages, 8 3/8” x 5 1/4”, soft covers. RRP A$12 plus post/pack - weight approx 400 grams
This is John’s second collection of Australian folklore, done during the early 1980s. The balance of material has shifted towards more dance tunes and less songs - possibly because of different collecting approaches or, perhaps dance musicians live longer (better?) than singers!.
My Shout Again, Songs & Poems by John Dengate, (Maleny National Folk Festival Committee?), Maleny, Queensland, 1989. RRP A$10 plus post/pack - weight approx 110 grams.
A great collection of topical songs from the period. Politicians come and go but John Dengate’s song remind us forever of what crooks they were! This book, is an updated (at least to 1989!) version of John’s “My Shout”, published by the Bush Music Club in 1982. 52 pages, B5 (~9 3/4” x 6 3/4”), soft covers, saddle-stitched; 31 songs and 6 poems with sundry drawings and photographs (several of them mine ... not reproduced as well as they would have been if those Queenslanders had asked me for prints, instead of reprinting ‘dot-for-dot’ from “My Shout”!).
I am surprised to find that we have 5 copies left in our stock cupboard ... probably the only unsold copies in existence.
A Collector’s Songbook, Alan Scott, Carrawobity Press - Pioneer Performers Series, Albion Pk, NSW, 1995. 44 pages, A4 (~11 5/8” x 8 1/4”), soft covers, saddle-stitched. RRP A$10 plus post/pack - weight approx 200 grams.
This is a selection of 31 songs collected by Alan Scott, one of our revival’s early collectors. The original booklet was published by the Bush Music Club in 1970 - in the usual diminutive octavo format. (I could suspect that the attentions of ASIO ... the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation ... to any suspicious types involved in such subversive activities as folk singing may have prompted the Club to publish such small books.)
books.)
Hugh Anderson / Red Rooster Press
We have a number of books written by Hugh Anderson, Meredith’s co-author for the first volume of Folk Songs of Australia. These were acquired by us at the time that Anderson retired and sold his home in suburban Melbourne. Some have been quietly selling out of his garage for years and the prices are as insanely low as the Bush Music Club’s own stocks!
Time Out of Mind, The story of Simon McDonald, Hugh Anderson, The National Press, Melbourne, Victoria, 1974. 154 pages, 8 3/4” x 5 1/2”, hard covers, sewn signatures. RRP A$9 plus post/pack - weight approx 340 grams.
This is about Simon McDonald, who was an important source of many folksongs collected in Victoria. Anderson has taped, transcribed and edited Simon McDonald’s autobiography and presents essentially his own words.
McDonald was a rural worker, born in 1907 and worked a wide range of rural jobs, as well as gold-fossicking. Within the text, (and a small appendix) Anderson presents 30 songs and 5 poems of both traditional and self-composed origins... as well as a chapter devoted to a strangely Australianised witch story!
Charles Thatcher’s Gold-diggers’ Songbook, Vol. 1 - When First I Landed Here, edited by Hugh Anderson, Red Rooster Press, Ascot Vale, Victoria, 1980. 80 pages, 9 3/4” x 7 3/8”, soft covers, thermo-bound sewn signatures. RRP A$12 plus post/pack - weight approx 280 grams.
This has words and music of 40 of Thatcher’s songs about the Victorian goldfields and 46 contemporary drawings.
George Loyau The man who wrote bush ballads, by Hugh Anderson, Red Rooster Press, Ascot Vale, Victoria, 1991. 58 pages, 8 3/4” x 5 1/2”, hard covers, sewn signatures. RRP A$12 plus post/pack - weight approx 280 grams.
This is the story of “... songster and itinerant journalist George Loyau”, many of whose song of the latter part of the 19th century have passed into the Australian tradition. This includes a 47 page facsimile of his 1865 book “The Queenslanders’ New Colonial Camp Fire Song Book” and music for most of these, located in old music collections by Anderson. Some of these songs are older than Loyau’s work, being merely gathered in by him over the years.
I hope this doesn't fall apart in transmission. I tried a new technique of preparing the file in a basic word-processor (MS Write) to avoid complex and disastrous codes ... then it all fell over just copying it to Mudcat!
Regards,
Bob Bolton
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sj
