Cock Robin Music has just released a remastered version of Harry Boardman's final recording. Originally called "Personal Selection" in 1985, the new recording is called "Personal Choice" as Lesley Boardman told me that that was Harry's preferred title.

The original recording was made privately by Harry as he had no LPs left to sell at gigs. Alistair Miller who was a student of Bill Leader's at Salford University engineered the recording and the final product was a cassette. Presumably this was not widely distributed and I presume not many were sold.

20 years after Harry's death, Chris Harvey of Cock Robin Music thought it would be a good idea to remaster the recording and with Lesley's permission, release it for the first time on CD to a wider audience. Considering he only had the cassette version to work with, the modern wizardry of the recording studio with various computer enhancement programmes and a sprinkling of oofle dust has put brightness back into the tracks.

The tracks include a number of Harry's Lancashire songs that he never recorded previously including "The Girls of Lancashire", "Plodder Seam", and "Owdham White Hare"; a number of songs not normally associated with Harry such as "The Flying Cloud" and "Grand Conversation on Napoleon"; and a number of contemporary songs such as "Ninian South" by the late Tony Hill and "Streets of London (Jack of all Trades)" by John Hasted.

The last track on the CD is taken from a gig that Harry did in Stockport in 1981 and is the story of how his dad went down to the local one night and took Harry's mum with him. This was sent to me by Mike Kiernan and we decided to include it as an example of what a good storyteller Harry was.

The CD is available from me for £8 inclusive of p+p and more details will be available on my website www.markdowding.co.uk in the next couple of days.
PM or email me mark@markdowding.co.uk for more details.

This is likely to be the last project about Harry that Chris and I will be involved with but we hope that over the past few years we've revived interest in Harry's involvement in folk music over the years.

Cheers
Mark