The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #68933   Message #1164671
Posted By: s&r
18-Apr-04 - 06:45 PM
Thread Name: Sharp and tunes
Subject: RE: Sharp and tunes
found this bit via google "Extractions: Stephen Baldwin, from Upton Bishop near Ross on Wye in Herefordshire, was born in the early 1870s, and, although he was around 80 years old when he was recorded in 1954, was still a fine, vigorous player. Stephen Baldwin was the youngest son of Charles Baldwin of Newent in Gloucestershire, a fiddler from whom Cecil Sharp collected several tunes in 1910, including the Clifford's Mesne Morris Call. Russell Wortley, who recorded him, described Stephen as 'a first-rate fiddler' and recalled:'He played solely by ear, and had learnt many tunes from his father. It was one Christmas, about 1897, that he stood in for the regular musician of the Bromsberrow Heath Morris Dancers, who was ill. Evidently, he took a liking to their dance, and, for two or three seasons at the turn of the century, he had a team of his own performing it at Mitcheldean where he then lived. He told me that very few places had Morris dancers at that time, but that probably many more had them ten years earlier'. A long-deleted LP. "