What is extremely thin on the ground on this thread is discussion on the effect organisations like PRS would have/are having on the clubs; apart from Jon's orginal posting, Stallion's pretty accurate summary, and a few others, it has largely been the bemoanings of 'pity the downtrodden folkie'. Sorry Tom, I become more and more convinced that there are a substantial number of people who would happily throw many the clubs to the wolves in order to protect their own interests.
No self-respecting landlord is going to invite a group of people onto the premises who incur for him/her a regular PR debt. Having tramped the streets of London , Manchester and Liverpool on different occasions looking for a venue, I know the difficulties without adding a long list of 'dependents' to the job. It really has become a 'business' to some people, hasn't it? Folk music should not be about securing the incomes of a few performers, it should be about making the music available to as many as possible.
Dave,
Sorry, you are quite right, I did badly phrase my point. Kennedy didn't rip off John Reilly - he illegally used recordings belonging to Tom Munnelly (now the property of The Irish Folklore Department), thereby helping to deprive a group of impoverished Traveller children of an education. Sorry if you feel I've been deliberately and unduly harsh on him.
I know Topic is to handle his collection; I trust that they, should they make use of the recordings, will see that the Traveller school is suitably awarded - oh, I forgot, they can't - it collapsed through lack of funding!
Thanks to all of you who have attempted to steer me through the vagueries and idiocies of the copyright laws. My point regarding 'Maid and the Palmer' was to underline the irony of the source dying from malnutrition, while a well-heeled, fairly successful, middle-of-the-road, musician is able to claim it as his own (albeit an 'arrangement').
Richard; I wonder why you come to the conclusion that you did on the significance of John Reilly adapting the ballad. There were three recordings made of him singing it, each one substantially different. In many ways John Reilly was living proof of David Buchan's theory that a traditional singer re-created a song at the point of performance.
Many of the singers we recorded adapted the songs in their repertoire to suit themselves. Around a quarter of Walter Pardon's repertoire was re-built by him using incomplete songs from different members of the family to make them whole ones; failing that, from printed texts. Two magnificent examples were 'The Parson and The Clerk' and 'Dark Arches', both of which he brought back to life from a couple of half-remembered verses, via printed texts.
I don't think we ever met a source singer who didn't consciously adapt a song to suit him or herself.
I believe that most versions of folk songs as performed by traditional singers can be claimed to be 'arrangements', just as validly as any adapted and 'arranged' by folkies.
Jim Carroll