Prior to a major declutter of my life's accumulated detritus I was going through my tape collection wandering which to save and which to ditch and came across a couple of fragments of the late Pat Nealy.
Pat was a wonderful gentleman and a geat fiddle player who, when I knew him, lived near Cleethorpes (he was a mainstay of the sessions on the Pier in the early days of the Folk Festival). I was lucky enough to have a couple of lessons with him and what he taught me has remained with me ever since, namely that music is for dancing and so there is a speed at which it can be danced and that is the speed you should play it. One of my abiding memories of Pat is him playing the same 6 tunes for 7 hours at a Feis near Lincoln and his timing being as good at the end as at the start.
The other major influence was Peter Arrowsmith who was the musician with Lincoln Morris Men back in the seventies who sold me my first concertina and encouraged me to play.
So, we all have well known people who have influenced us along the way (in my case Kirkpatrick, Carthy, Bob Pegg amongst others) but this is a call to celebrate the others, the unsung heroes who influenced us, inspired and encouraged us and kept the tradition alive for another generation.