What will historians of the future value

Subject: What will historians of the future value
From: Tony Rees
Date: 10 Dec 25 - 12:03 AM

Sometimes when I am going through old tapes and videos deciding what is worth digitising and/or conserving for "posterity", I find myself asking "what will historians of the future value?" On such tapes are musicians and performances of different degrees of accomplishment, originality, and "significance", so some triaging is needed... obviously some of the material is of no great artistic value (covers of well known songs from others, played and sang well or less well on the occasion in question), others may to my mind have more significance (original material e.g. "better" singer songwriter fare or traditional interpreters that I "rate" in my personal hierarchy of average-to-excellent), or be performed by more "noted" performers. For the latter, obviously they play or will have played numerous gigs over their careers, and some nights or days will be better than others, some material more of interest (e.g. more rarely performed) than other... so then a bit of weighting comes into play - is the performer already well represented in the avalable "canon" of material (so adding more is of minor interest), maybe a performance does not reflect their regular capabilities, or maybe the performer not the fan should be the "gatekeeper" of what gets preserved... To put it another way, how much of "folk" (and similar) performance is run-of-the-mill and of little lasting artistic value (as opposed to being perfectly suitable for enjoyment at the time) and how much represents "art", even if some of it is not yet fully formed? (To take an analogy, even Van Gogh's early sketches and juvenilia are of interest in the light of his later achievements, and no-one would serously consider putting them in the rubbish bin).

Of course these days with ubiquitous smartphones and other devices, as well as self documention via Youtube and home produced CDs, etc., modern performers are much more likely to be over rather than under represented for posterity and thus likely to persist into public consciousness for whomever so desires. However, historians of the future may be quite interested in rarer material from artists "of interest", however that might be defined. I am thinking here of the non- "official canon" of recordings / performances, such as live shows, recordings made for radio or TV, etc... to the true fan, often these are of equal if not more interest than the carefully considered studio material since they may display more spontaneity, novel performance variations, as well as interaction with audiences and therefore provide a whole new dimension to appreciation of the performer's artistry and personality. Of course there are limits - how many versions of (let us say) Fairport Convention performing "Matty Groves" at different times does posterity actually NEED - but the question is at least worth pondering, perhaps.

I do not have the answers to all this, just putting it out there to stimulate a bit of discussion (or none of course!)

Answers on a postcard... save everything, save nothing, or something in between...

Regards - Tony (performer for 50+ years, global ranking: very low!)

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Tony Rees
Date: 10 Dec 25 - 12:27 AM

Of related, but incomplete, relevance is "notability for musical artists" for Wikipedia articles, which however is more strict than I would consider "notable" for folk artists, but it does at least allow the "top tier" or artists that history might be interested in to go through... among its criteria are:
"1. Has been the subject of multiple, non-trivial, published works appearing in sources that are reliable, not self-published, and are independent of the musician or ensemble itself.
...
5. Has released two or more albums on a major record label or on one of the more important indie labels (i.e., an independent label with a history of more than a few years, and with a roster of performers, many of whom are independently notable)."

A little food for thought here at least - meaning that performers who have spoken/written about themselves in the main, rather than in independent sources, generally would not qualify, the same for "one hit wonders" in commercial space, and mainly home-produced releases (CD or other). However that bar is still set a little high, I would say (in other words, we should ideally be preserving work by artists that might still fail the Wikipedia notability test - partly because we are dealing with folk not pop, which has a smaller and much different audience, and partly because not all worthy work actually gets commercially released...

- Tony

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Tony Rees
Date: 10 Dec 25 - 01:22 AM

If I may try your patience further, I will finish this little trio of posts with a response I got from someone out in Youtube land when I posted a 1995 performance that I had recorded of the Australian (Tasmanian? not sure) vocal group Arramaieda online, with their permission, in 2021... the correspondent wrote:

"A lovely capture of this great group in full flight, Tony! SO GOOD!!
Australia in the 80s and 90s had an abundance of excellent, small “a cappella harmony” combos (not ‘choirs’ per se) and many were all-female, and they were in every capital city and many other towns as well.   A wonderful time for making vocal music with heart, in harmony with one’s friends – both old and new. Unforgettable times. The Folk Scene of course (esp in the UK), had a long history of groups singing in harmony “unaccompanied”. But sadly, so many of these wonderful experiences in concerts, folk clubs, and the like, were never captured on film, nor even audio tape that has survived the ravages of time. All were pre-mobile phones, the internet, and YouTube :))    So every time you see a performance online from last century (!), realise that it was just the tip of the iceberg and that SO MUCH good stuff happened that was not able to be recorded for posterity.   But it is indeed wonderful to revisit with the fabulous Arramaieda after all this time – so thanks Tony!!! "

Food for thought, maybe,

Cheers - Tony

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: The Sandman
Date: 10 Dec 25 - 02:43 AM

Anyone who managed to consistently gig for 50 years?

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: rich-joy
Date: 10 Dec 25 - 03:43 AM

HaHa! That YT Land correspondent was Me, Tony!!

It always saddened me that so much good performance was never able to be captured, and thereby lost to time. I had myself been a part of many a cappella harmony groups, in both Darwin,NT and Maleny,Q, over the years - and some were excellent, LOL!
But without all members having the drive, opportunities, youth, finances - and Good Health! - to join the commercial juggernaut, one just has to "Let Go" of any expectations to be more than enjoyable Folk Ephemera!!!
C'est la Vie ......

Cheers!
Rich-Joy

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Dec 25 - 07:23 AM

Who knows if any human made music will still have a value in the future?   AI created folk songs are flooding out - polluting streaming and youtube   The only good thing, folk music as a live idiom cannot be replicated, nor the singalong collective memory of certain songs.

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 10 Dec 25 - 11:04 AM

Is AI polluting music or enhancing it? I have no axe to grind so it is a genuine question. Bear in mind that everything that is created has probably been done in one way or another before so surely AI written music may be no different to that written by a real person if the same roots and criterea are used. Now, performing the music is whole different kettle of fish of course. Well, at the moment anyway...

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Tony Rees
Date: 10 Dec 25 - 01:25 PM

Well, the whole AI thing is certainly a different kettle of fish; but here we are dealing with music (if you like to term it that) which is not only "born digital", but being post-2020 or whatever, has a whole different chance of persisting than older materials, which is really the topic I had in mind when starting this thread - the history of the folk revival, and its social context (i.e. starting with both music played socially among "the folk" for entertainment, relaxation, and creative expression, and music created in the folk style with at least the aspiration to affect us in some way that "pop" music generally does not... so I am not really concerned about how digital creations are preserved, but as Rich-Joy said a few posts above, performances typically from the last century now, and recorded pre-mobile phones, the internet, and YouTube :) ... just as now, scholars and enthusiasts alike might study true "folk" performances recorded outside the context of the revival, or early jazz and blues, the practitioners of which are mostly long gone now.

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 10 Dec 25 - 03:20 PM

Amen to most of this.

What we have been doing in Yorkshire is making sure as many of the materials as possible are passed on safely to the next generation, website (yorkshirefolksong.net)paper records, song collections.

On a smaller scale our Hull Folk Club recordings, (60s/70s) including non-commercial recordings of the Watersons and lesser mortals, are currently being digitised to go into the Hull Folk Archive housed in the state of the art Hull History Centre, along with all of the paperwork and local folk magazines, photos, etc.

Unfortunately digital/online is very fragile vide British Library website, Bodleian, etc. Very worrying. Of course it is in the interests of the powers to reduce the access to information as much as possible.

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 10 Dec 25 - 10:24 PM

I think some of the stuff that will last forever if it is stowed away somewhere is the reality songs..the Fisher Poets, probably songs of the Ukrainian refugees, the equivalent of the Doffing Mistress songs...the mining songs, cowboy etc. One group of people who have almost no (that I know of..probably some in Australia) positive or at least neutral songs written about them is those who served in the Vietnam war. Oh, there are lots of I am smarter than you are songs, or you pitiful fool songs, but songs that describe the experience, or praise them for their incredible bravery etc. are lacking. We can weep for Willie McBride but not those of our own (boomer) generation. There is an expression of the Vietnam War -- for those who fought for it freedom has a flavor others don't know. That is what we should look for and preserve -- a flavor of a shipwreck, or a farm disaster, or a beautiful wedding.

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Paul Burke
Date: 11 Dec 25 - 07:49 AM

Well, mg, if you've read other threads, many of the "realist" songs would be rejected as "folk" by many of the chaps of all genders here. Because they aren't kosher, provenence uncertain, might even be made up. See any number of threads mentioning Bert Lloyd and Jimmy Miller, not so much about Peter Bellamy though.

Where to store the stuff though? Anywhere online won't last. Anywhere offline won't last either, sadly. Remember the BBC Domesday Project that was very nearly lost because they used a technology that didn't take? Who has a floppy disc reader? (I do, but only for 3.5") How many VHS tapes have you seen in Non-Recyclable Waste at the recycling site? CDs are becoming scarcer as nostalgists turn back to vinyl. USB sticks look best at the moment, but who knows about 10 years' time?

The big problem is reading the archive in a hundred years. It's a fairly trivial to reverse engineer a readback system for anything up to and including 33RPM stereo LPs. As long as someone knows how ears work. Anything after is problematic, either for the complexity of the access technology or the fragility of the data.

The archaeological legacy of our era will be mostly uninformative rubbish. Most of us won't even leave behind anything like the Lloyd's Bank Turd , because it all goes to be purified or dumped raw in the nearest river. Even photos on good quality paper won't last as long as cave wall paintings.

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Tony Rees
Date: 11 Dec 25 - 12:30 PM

Paul Burke wrote:

> Where to store the stuff though? Anywhere online won't last.

Yes, that is certainly an issue. My thoughts in this context are to leverage the storage/persistence/accessibility of (mainly but not exclusively "public good"), "big players" in this space on the basis that if they cannot do it, no-one can ... so I use Wikimedia Commons for my original photos, and at this time YouTube (not public good but the best we have, especially for material from a range of sources) for audio and video (yes I know these are compromised a bit). Internet Archive might be another option. Dime is a service for accessing better quality audio but so far as I understand it, the material does not reside there, but on contributors' computers which seems less than ideal. Sugarmegs has some material sourced from Dime, at lower quality, but at least the material is actually online there - although their ultimate persistence is not quaranteed. Questions, questions...

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: GUEST,paperback
Date: 11 Dec 25 - 12:47 PM

Depends where you live. Runes chiseled in stone or papyrus in clay pots. Archivists were as much interested in the laundry receipts as anything in the Cairo Geniza so take your *rare* Silver Burdetts to the desert somewhere and bury them. Maybe someone in the future will did them up.

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Tony Rees
Date: 11 Dec 25 - 01:15 PM

Whatever you do, don't donate stuff to the British Library - a good way to ensure that 99.99% of the world will never be able to legitimately access the material unless they can go there in person, book a session, and listen with headphones! Anyone familiar with the recent discovery of a tape of the Beatles in concert at Stowe School, 1963 will already be aware of this situation... On the other hand if you have a spare 20 pounds and can get along in person in April next year, you can listen to "a special playback of the recording" along with guest presenters. So much for their by-line: "Your support helps us open up a world of knowledge and inspiration for everyone."

Of course the bootleggers have also got in there and made a nefarious under-the-coat recording of the recording which can be purchased from various sources as well as listened to on youtube...

- Tony

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Charmion
Date: 11 Dec 25 - 01:26 PM

Historians are interested in what they find, and their work is mostly figuring out what the stuff they find means. (The rest of their work is explaining what the stuff they find means, and arguing with other historians about the meaning of the stuff they find.) The hard part is finding stuff before it deteriorates beyond interpretation, and in its original context so the major barriers to interpretation are eliminated.

I once worked at the Public Archives of Canada (as it then was). At the time — mid 1980s — the folks in charge were just beginning to act on their Big Brown Surprise: that machine-readable media are useless unless the machine that reads them is preserved along with the records. So they started collecting Hollerith machines, Radio Shack TRS-80s, Word Perfect diskettes, and every imaginable kind of personal computer and version of software. Now that the CD, then brand new, is nearly dead as a content-storage device, I wonder how many warehouses the Machine-Readable Archive has now, or if they’ve just quietly given up.

When they're still in the first year or two of undergraduate study, historians come to realize that our knowledge and understanding of the past depends on books that didn’t burn with the Library of Alexandria, parish records that were not stored in churches sacked by invading armies, archaeological sites identified before super-highways were built on top of them, and letters and diaries and photo albums not flung into burn barrels by executors eager to get Granddad’s house cleared out and sold.

Now that so much music is recorded electronically without ever being written down with standard notation, I wonder what of current popular culture will be at all retrievable a few generations on?

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Paul Burke
Date: 11 Dec 25 - 01:51 PM

letters and diaries and photo albums not flung into burn barrels by executors eager to get Granddad’s house cleared out and sold.

Sad story: not far from where I live, an amateur archaeology group spent about 10 years very competently excavating a very interesting site. All carefully mapped, measured, drawn, put in context, photographed, recorded, finds carefully labelled and stored. And all kept on numbered and indexed shelves and cabinets in in a secure dry garage belonging to one of the group. Then he died suddenly. His heirs dumped the whole lot.

Fortunately periodical summaries had been written and circulated, but no one can now examine their work in detail.

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Mark Ross
Date: 11 Dec 25 - 03:08 PM

"The older the technology, the longer it lasts. Consider carved in stone." Utah Phillips

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Beer
Date: 11 Dec 25 - 06:51 PM

I was doing some research of the CBC television show called “Don Messer and His Islander’s” around 2007/8. Anyone here in Canada watching T.V. in the 50ties and 60ties would remember them. CBC cancelled the show in 1969 causing a huge public outcry across Canada. But before the television show, they played on a radio station CFCY in Charlottetown Prince Edward Island, and this is where my story begins.

I heard my Mother say once that she was a guest singer on the radio show and Dad was a guest piano player, but both at different times and they only realized this after they were married in some discussion. Don Messer radio show started 1939 until they switched over to television. So I thought, wouldn’t it be great if I could make a connection at CFCY and they would have some recording of Mum and Dad in their archives. Well I got absolutely nowhere, so I started searching for who was still alive in the musical group.

All Dead except the MC of the show “Don Tremaine”. I tracked him down in Nova Scotia and gave him a call. Filled him in on what I was trying to do. He couldn’t help me, but he related a story that kind of fits in with this thread. He told me that CBC in their wisdom dumped all of the films ( Probably 16 mm film.) of Don Messer and His Islanders in the trash. And if it wasn’t for a custodian that noticed this and retrieved a good bunch which was later put on VHS tapes, there would be no films of Don Messer’s shows. Maybe this is true and maybe he added to the story, I don’t know. However, I told him that I had volume one and two of the shows (2 VHS Tapes). He said that I was lucky because when he retired, they only gave him Volume One. I told him I was going down to Nova Scotia in the summer, and I would bring him Volume two. He thanked me and a few months following I arrived at his door with number one and two for him. He was very pleased, but I sensed some bitterness towards CBC which I completely understood. Don Tremaine passed away December 15, 2019, at the age of 91.

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Tony Rees
Date: 12 Dec 25 - 12:08 AM

Charmion wrote:

(quote) Historians are interested in what they find, and their work is mostly figuring out what the stuff they find means. (end quote)

Well, a few of us - or maybe more than a few - have the facility to influence matters prior to this stage, in other words we have rare or unique materials in our possession of varying quality and/or historic/archival interest, so the buck stops with us to decide what is made publicly or privately available for potential preservation, and what simply sleeps on the shelf until the day when it is consigned to the tip... (which was indeed the topic that was on my mind when I started this thread).

To assist with this I have arrived at some sort of a hierarchy for my audio visual materials, being a mix of original (mainly pre-digital) photographs, audio recordings on a range of formats, original videos (same) plus some off-air recordings (the latter generally not unique but you never know...).

In my mind, when the subjects are local-only, amateur artists, however competent/talented, my presumption is that the materials are mainly of interest only to the artists themselves and perhaps a small circle of their acquaintances; so in general I offer them copies of what I may have for their personal collections if interested, but take no further action in the archiving direction. Of course this applies to my own performances as well, which you will not find on YouTube even though I do possess a number of such going back through the years!

At the other extreme are generally nationally recognised artists of talent, innovation or influence that it is almost a no-brainer that future cultural historians would be interested in their creations or performances; generally I will try to find a way to save such things, either putting them online myself or sending to the artist concerned for their own actions as desired. The only items I do not try to archive are where a high degree of duplication is present - maybe I recorded 2 shows on successive nights, with pretty much the same material, in which case I would defer to the better one only; or maybe an artist made a return visit to a venue a year later but their repertoire or performance had not changed greatly in the mean time.

So those are the "generally no" / "generally yes" categories for further action as appropriate. But in between is a large swath of "better than average", if not "greatest of all time" artists, who may have a limited (or larger) local, or even wider following but do not quite make the "top 50/100/200" ranking in the eyes of the educated observer. For these I tend to err on the inclusive side for archiving where I have the resources, unless for some reason the night does not show the performer at their best (everyone can have an off night or struggle with a cold, etc.) so hopefully not too much of this material will be lost to posterity.

Off air recordings (radio and TV appearances) are a bit more tricky; of course I am not the original recordist so have no "proprietorial interest", plus in addition it is likely - although I guess not guaranteed - that other copies exist elsewhere already. Generally I will just sit on these, listen or watch for my own enjoyment, and wait for better copies to emerge through legitimate channels - although this is not always the case; in some cases the "trading mafia" have an interest in hearing or seeing some such items so I will dispatch copies privately if they do not seem to be otherwise in circulation (plus others will reciprocate of course).

I hope the above goes some way to explain my current philosophy for dealing with these things, and providing at least some source materials to future historians that otherwise would not exist... Others' views and experiences are of course welcome!

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Tony Rees
Date: 12 Dec 25 - 12:30 AM

From my data wrangling days I am also reminded of the LOCKSS ("Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe") project, which although in this case is a controlled approach to archiving some materials only, does point to a wider philosophy, under which having multiple copies of any item in storage or circulation (in particular, at multiple locations) does mitigate against any one particular archive or copy going under.

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 12 Dec 25 - 04:59 AM

Go Iron Mountain, Inc. or go home ;)

Archivist, curator, librarian and historian all come with different job descriptions. Get familiar with your country's professional standards for whichever it is you're doing at the time.

Most of the OP falls under archivist. What media gets left in or out is a “survey” or “audit.” Hardware is for the curator. Different skill sets and both have working guidelines for what shall/shall not be considered 'important' or 'valuable.' All subject to the usual academic politics du jour of course.

Don't expect an archive or collection to behave like a public library or museum. It's not, even when it's housed in same-same. Library materials are, generally/relatively, already more widely distributed and more readily replaced if lost or damaged.

There is just no predicting what any one future historian will value. Whatever it may be that floats their individual boat, +99.9% of everything else will be of little or no interest. There's only so many hours of daylight to work with.

Old trash heaps are definitely a thing. Imagine how many long lost Roman rowing/tow path 'shanties' it took to produce something like Monte Testaccio.

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Paul Burke
Date: 12 Dec 25 - 05:36 AM

But back to the point: what will historians value? I think the answer is, almost certainly not what anyone now thinks they will value. The future, like the past, is another country. We don't know what is ordinary for them, and how they view the world.

Up till the middle of the 20th century, history (apart from a few dissidents like Marxists) was about how things came to be in the present, assumed best of all possible worlds, state. The Growth of the Empire. Great Men, Heroes, Kings, Queens, Parliament, Great British Industry and so on.

Since then, prior to the recent reaction, history of everyday life has been seen as having higher value, and historians scrabble about for information. What was the working day like in the 13th century? What did ordinary people eat, what did they wear, were they usually comfortable or not, what were their values? The bulk of people generally only appear in official reecords as births, marriages and deaths, transgressors in court, people with taxable hearths or windows, and so on. The historian gets some stuff from almost accidental references in the diaries of the well off, humorous or idealised bucolicisms like Aelfric's Colloquy, the occasional goldmine like Gough's incomparable History of Myddle. And archaeology - it's almost miraculous that they've found what some neolithic folk had for dinner, by analysing the remains of their cooking pots and the plaque from their teeth.

Think of all those books of village photographs that were so popular a few years ago. The photographer, with his hundredweight of plate camera gear, carefully composed the view (sometimes with a few carefully posed rustics), chose the aperture and shutter time for best effect of light and shade, and hoped his (almost always a chap of the masculine persuasion) artistry would be lauded by future generations. And 150 years later Shaun Potts buys the book for Mum's Christmas present. Oooh look, the estate agent's used to be an ironmongers!

So, best of luck, yes, lots of copies and formats, and hope someone else copies it on in the future, and leave to posterity what they make of it. I don't necessarily recommend archiving the teeth of folksingers.

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Dec 25 - 08:03 AM

>>>I don't necessarily recommend archiving the teeth of folksingers.<<<

Already archived mine. Just waiting for the last 3 to drop out before I catalogue and index them:-)

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Tony Rees
Date: 12 Dec 25 - 12:23 PM

Phil d'Conch and Paul Burke make some good points. But with regard to >> "There is just no predicting what any one future historian will value" <<, there are definitely precedents among musicologists/social historians/whatever you might like to call them, who love and study the history of music genres from the past (which does not exclude continuing ones of course) - plenty of scholarly books on early jazz and blues, the folk revival in the US and UK (for the latter, "Dazzling Stranger: Bert Jansch and the British Folk and Blues Revival" by Colin Harper is a standout in my view), skiffle, gypsy jazz, whatever... so in my mind, we should be doing now (in the area of archiving) whatever will make their tasks more complete and/or interesting in the future... And chronologies/discographies such as Clinton Heylin's "Sad Refrains: the Recordings of Sandy Denny benefit immensely from the existing of unpublished as well as published recordings. (In the area of UK folk, another exemplar study/series would be "Ashley Hutchings: The Guv'nor & the Rise of Folk Rock" by Brian Hinton and Geoff Wall, plus its successor (part 2 is titled "Always Chasing Rainbows"; plus magazines such as "Swing 51" made a special point of documenting the early years of the British folk revival in its extended interviews).

So the potential areas for future scholarship are at least partly mapped out, I would maintain!

- Tony

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Tony Rees
Date: 12 Dec 25 - 12:33 PM

OK, I am by profession a scientist (and later: data manager) not a folklorist, but if I were starting again as a scholar of music/folk life, I would be interested in exploring how the music of interest emerged from a particular time and place, who were the principal practitioners and what did they do (as well as as many as possible of the less well known figures who also had something unique to contribute), how did their performing styles and repertoires change over the time interval in question, how were they perceived by audiences of the day, and what materials remain both to document the processes and to transport the listener/viewer of the future back to that time for both education and enjoyment... just a start there!

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Tony Rees
Date: 12 Dec 25 - 01:23 PM

Here is another exemplar from this year (2025) - in both book and audio form (the other examples mentioned had no audio!!) - for lovers of country rather than folk, but you get the idea - now we just wait for the same love for folk music (Colin Harper is already doing it for Dick Gaughan!)

From https://recordstoreday.com/SpecialRelease/18905 :
----------
Patsy Cline
Imagine That: The Lost Recordings (1954-1963)

Imagine That: The Lost Recordings (1954-1963) gathers unreleased performances of legendary country singer Patsy Cline. Though some have traded as bootlegs, all tracks are officially available in this collection and presented for the first time on vinyl.
Expertly curated by discographer George Hewitt, this release provides a comprehensive selection of both rare cuts and live versions of chart hits. Introducing 15 new songs, such as “The Wrong Side of Town” and “Old Lonesome Time,” this marks the first new release of a Patsy Cline album in 13 years and is fully endorsed by the Patsy Cline Estate. Presented in loose chronology, this set traces the evolution of Patsy's artistry from regional beginnings as a featured vocalist with Bill Peer's Melody Boys in 1954 to hosting radio shows as a national headliner by 1963. Every period of Patsy's storied career is represented in the tracklist and the book features insights and commentary on the music, the production, the era, and Patsy. Of special note, this collection offers the long sought “missing middle” by including many recordings from the pivotal year of 1959. Then a proud young mother, Patsy relocated to Nashville and soon after joined the cast of the Grand Ole Opry. A string of timeless hit records followed for posterity.

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Tony Rees
Date: 12 Dec 25 - 01:28 PM

Of course, box sets such as "[insert performer here] Live at the BBC", "The Complete Fotheringay", and so on tread a selection of this territory already for folk music (sensu lato), with audio and in some cases video, and excellent companion booklets.

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Paul Burke
Date: 12 Dec 25 - 02:28 PM

Don't get us wrong Tony, what you are proposing is a really worthwhile idea. And historians of another generation will be very pleased to have stuff that isn't the bleedin' obvious. But not only what to select, and how to preserve it, but how to arrange it is worth thinking about.

Take Richard Gough's History of Myddle. For those who don't know it: Gough was writing in the early years of the 18th century about his village, a few miles north of Shrewsbury (England). He started with a conventional local history of he time: the Romans, old charters, the church, lords of the manor... and then a thunderbolt struck him: to write about the history of local families, he went round the church, pew by pew. Back then, almost everybody went to church, and almost everybody had their (customary and paid up) place in the church, so he could run round mentally, and tell the story, as far as he could remember or research, of each family. The heroes, the villains, the rags-to-riches and vice-versa, the villains and saints.... it's utterly compulsive reading, but also gives insights into everyday life between the English Civil War and his time that you just can't get anywhere else.

If you haven't read it, do so (you can get a secondhand copy from Abe Books for a fiver or so). Can you use your materials to do something in that vein? The more diverse your selection, the more chance someone will find something relevant to their interests.

Could be a classic.

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 12 Dec 25 - 04:04 PM

Tony & Me: But with regard to >> "There is just no predicting what any one future historian will value" <<, there are definitely precedents among musicologists/social historians/whatever you might like to call them, who love and study the history of music genres from the past...

A music related archive or collection will likely attract more music historians than all the rest. And however one narrows down future "music" historian one does get a narrower set of unknowns... but there's still no telling which/what sub-sub-sub genre. And the more varied and diverse the archive or collection the more diverse and varied the visitor. Some shanty historians can have a real attitude about fiddle music; jazz scholars who won't go near Paul Whiteman; the list goes on.

Best to keep your head on your task in the 'ol production pipeline and do as much and the best you can with what you have to work with. Let what you can't control sort itself out.

And if the odd naval or theatre architect/historian (or whatevs) should wander in, they shouldn't feel unwelcome anyways.

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Tony Rees
Date: 12 Dec 25 - 04:18 PM

Paul Burke wrote:

> Take Richard Gough's History of Myddle ... Can you use your materials to do something in that vein?

Unfortunately my present interests/ self imposed tasks in the science area (in which I continue to be involved) preclude devoting much time to this; in addition, I am now geographically away from most of the well trodden "UK folk" thoroughfares that I love, plus the opportunity to interview persons who were around at interesting times in the past ... but others are working in this space and I commend their activities!

However that has not stopped my from being an occasional Wikipedia contributor in music related topics, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tony_1212#Music_related for a list of my contributions to date (plus scroll down a bit further for photographs...)

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Tony Rees
Date: 12 Dec 25 - 04:43 PM

A few sample articles that I have authored largely or entirely, of relevance to this discussion I would say, here - all Australian in this instance (for no particular reason!):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Robertson_(folk_singer)">Harry Robertson (folk singer)

The Bushwhackers (band)

Sally Sloane

All drawing upon already published work by others, but drawn together for the purposes of consolidation plus giving an overview of their history and contributions in their respective genres, hopefully. So in this sense perhaps I am already a "historian of the future" for these persons and outfits...

Onwards and upwards - Tony

Subject: RE: What will historians of the future value
From: Tony Rees
Date: 12 Dec 25 - 04:44 PM

First link above mangled, try this:

Harry Robertson (folk singer)