BBC NW Broadside Ballads 19/09/2016

Subject: RE: BBC NW Broadside Ballads 19/09/2016
From: GUEST,CJB
Date: 22 Sep 16 - 05:39 PM

A radio-type documentary about Harry Boardman is here.

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/8eqadbzls2bbn/Harry_Boardman

This was 'rescued' from the now sadly defunct Music Well website.

Subject: RE: BBC NW Broadside Ballads 19/09/2016
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 22 Sep 16 - 06:21 AM

Very true, Nigel.

A lot of the work of the Halliard has been absorbed into the tradition, but without acknowledgement.

Subject: RE: BBC NW Broadside Ballads 19/09/2016
From: Mark Dowding
Date: 21 Sep 16 - 06:46 PM

That's me above!

Subject: RE: BBC NW Broadside Ballads 19/09/2016
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Sep 16 - 06:22 PM

Now I do get 5 seconds of uncredited performance in that programme - the chorus of "Manchester's An Altered Town" at 13:16!

Subject: RE: BBC NW Broadside Ballads 19/09/2016
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Sep 16 - 03:45 PM

Eliza Carthy

BBC Radio 4 The folk singer Eliza Carthy visits Chetham's Library in Manchester to find out about nineteenth century broadside ballads, and to see if she can find a new song to perform.

Subject: RE: BBC NW Broadside Ballads 19/09/2016
From: MoorleyMan
Date: 21 Sep 16 - 10:15 AM

What a disappointing programme, tucked in almost as a filler at the end of the piece about fly-tipping and with virtually no advance notice.
A rank beginner's introduction and flimsy appetite-whetter, no more.
Barely ten minutes is nowhere near enough to do this topic justice, but I for one feel that mention (at the very least) should have been made of Mark Dowding's contribution if not also the Snapes.
A missed opportunity there.

Subject: RE: BBC NW Broadside Ballads 19/09/2016
From: Nigel Paterson
Date: 21 Sep 16 - 04:14 AM

Mark, you're a gent!

Subject: RE: BBC NW Broadside Ballads 19/09/2016
From: Mark Dowding
Date: 20 Sep 16 - 05:40 PM

Just ordered it Nigel!

Subject: RE: BBC NW Broadside Ballads 19/09/2016
From: Nigel Paterson
Date: 20 Sep 16 - 02:05 PM

May I humbly suggest that 'The Halliard, Broadside Ballads' (Book & CD) also represents a valuable contribution to the Broadside genre. Both are available directly from Nic Jones.net

Subject: RE: BBC NW Broadside Ballads 19/09/2016
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 20 Sep 16 - 10:57 AM

It was the briefest introduction to the Manchester Ballads, which sadly didn't live up to its publicity. There is more than enough for a longer programme.

Peter and Barbara Snape are singing them too. From their interview in the Living Tradition;

Another source investigated was the Paul Graney collection which was, until December 2014, at the Sound Archive Library in Clitheroe Castle. It is now in Manchester Central Library. No More Shall I
Work In The Factory and Hold The Fort are two current favourites of
ours from that archive.

Manchester Central Library also hold a copy of the 35 street
ballads selected and edited by Harry Boardman and Roy Palmer and published in 1983 (Manchester Ballads). One of the songs we do is Rag Bag, a temperance song sold on the streets in 1861.

In 2005, Mark Dowding and Chris Harvey made a valuable contribution to the preservation of these ballads when they recorded them all on
a CD.

We spent some time in Chethams School of Music Library too and
viewed the Manchester Ballad collection (whist sitting at the
table that Karl Marx sat at whilst visiting Frederick Engels in 1846
and 1870). Fancy Lads is an eight verse broadside printed by Swindells of Manchester between 1800 and 1830.

Never Look Behind is also a Manchester Ballad sold on the streets in the 1860s and printed by T. Pearson. It was also a song from the music halls written and sung by Harry Clifton, who wrote over 500 songs and often borrowed old tunes for them.

It is worth noting also that Mike Harding brought out a collection
of songs of Lancashire in 1980 which contains some great songs,
very well illustrated and with very helpful notes.

Subject: RE: BBC NW Broadside Ballads 19/09/2016
From: GUEST,Mark Dowding
Date: 20 Sep 16 - 03:55 AM

I suspect that this was brought to the BBC's attention by the publicity department of Edward II and Jennifer Reid who have recently been involved in separate projects of their own using the Manchester Broadside collection.
As Nigel says "discovered" was quite the wrong word as I was under the impression that they hadn't been lost!
Most of the ballads that were shown were included in Roy Palmer and Harry Boardman's folder "Manchester Ballads" that was published in 1983. Ten years ago, Chris Pollington and I recorded a double CD of all 35 songs in that collection (including the original tune to The Calico Printer's Clerk written by C. Coote Jr to the words of Harry Clifton). No mention of either of those!
Mark Radcliffe's throwaway line when he was flicking through the sheets in the library about "even one about ballooning whatever that was about" deserved an explanation that James Sadler used the recently invented hot air balloon to hold demonstrations in Manchester of a manned ascent in what is now called Balloon Street just across the road from Victoria Station. Anybody with a Co-op bank account will recognise the address!
All in all an advert for two parties who have recently come across the ballads but a wasted opportunity to illustrate the history of Manchester as seen in the ballads written through the century. More could have been said about "The Great Flood" which told of how coffins and bodies were uprooted from Philips Park Cemetery, What about the Peterloo Massacre which "The Meeting at Peterloo" chronicles? Songs about hardship in the cotton industry especially the cotton famine of the 1860s didn't get a mention.
I suppose you can only get so much in the ten minutes they had available.
Mark

Subject: RE: BBC NW Broadside Ballads 19/09/2016
From: Nigel Paterson
Date: 20 Sep 16 - 02:49 AM

Whilst I was pleased to see a new generation of performers discovering Broadside Ballads, Mark Radcliffe's piece left me feeling somewhat underwhelmed. Radcliffe seemed to be saying: "Hey folks, look what I've discovered...", oblivious to the fact that some of us were doing "...a great deal of sickening grubbing..." in the "veritable dung-hills..." a good fifty years ago in the very same library, finding several, more than "...moderate jewels": 'The Calico Printer's Clerk' & 'The Lancashire Lads' to name but two. No mention either of John Foreman, 'The Broadside King', who self-published a wonderful collection of Broadside Ballads back in the 60s. The Manchester Library collection in the 60s was to be found in a row of dusty, largely neglected filing cabinets, so to see the collection properly stored, each Ballad individually mounted was heartening indeed.
         Thank you, henryp for the heads up & for the snippet about Nic,
                                                                                                                  Nigel.

Subject: RE: BBC NW Broadside Ballads 19/09/2016
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 19 Sep 16 - 02:14 PM

BBC One is now advertising;
Inside Out North West 7:30pm-8:00pm
Judy Hobson investigates fly-tipping and illegal dumping.

Could this really be about those "veritable dung-hills, in which, only after a great deal of sickening grubbing, one finds a very moderate jewel"?

We shall see...

Subject: RE: BBC NW Broadside Ballads 19/09/2016
From: GUEST,Ray
Date: 19 Sep 16 - 02:05 PM

He was compensated to the extent of £5 for the sabre wounds he received to his head and hands - which would have bought him quite a few broadside sheets but I suspect he was more interested in earning a crust to feed his children.

Subject: RE: BBC NW Broadside Ballads 19/09/2016
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 19 Sep 16 - 07:23 AM

"Manchester Library has several thousand ballad sheets dating from the 1600s to the end of the 19th Century," says the library's head of music Ros Edwards.

"They are a wonderful social record of what happened over those years. Terrible sorts of things - all sorts of events. Political events, international events even, as well as local events."

BBC Inside Out North West: Broadside Ballads
Monday 19 September 19:30 BBC One TV
I assume that it's a regional programme.

Subject: RE: BBC NW Broadside Ballads 19/09/2016
From: GUEST,Ray
Date: 18 Sep 16 - 12:59 PM

Must record it. I'm particularly interested about rhe Peterloo Massacre as my GGGGrandfather was there. He never mentioned it but that was probably because he died around 90 years before I was born!

Subject: RE: BBC NW Broadside Ballads 19/09/2016
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 18 Sep 16 - 09:14 AM

Nigel, we have just listened to the The Food Programme on BBC Radio 4 - The Antarctic Chef.

It's about Charles Green and the Shackleton expedition - complete with a couple of verses from Nic Jones.

And the Harris Library still has the Harkness Collection on display!

Subject: RE: BBC NW Broadside Ballads 19/09/2016
From: Nigel Paterson
Date: 18 Sep 16 - 08:31 AM

Thank you for the 'heads up', henryp. I shall watch this with considerable, professional interest.
             Nigel Paterson (Mandolin, 'The Halliard')

Subject: RE: BBC NW Broadside Ballads 19/09/2016
From: GUEST,CJB
Date: 18 Sep 16 - 06:12 AM

Can be viewed in the UK from BBC iPlayer.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07v6z35

Subject: RE: BBC NW Broadside Ballads 19/09/2016
From: GUEST,CJB
Date: 18 Sep 16 - 05:38 AM

Duplicate post!! You just beat me to it.

Subject: BBC NW Broadside Ballads 19/09/2016
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 18 Sep 16 - 05:31 AM

BBC Inside Out North West: Broadside Ballads will be broadcast on Monday 19 September at 19:30 BST on BBC One.

BBC NW Ballads

"There was no telly, there was no radio, and we were even five years off the publication of the first Manchester Guardian," says radio presenter Mark Radcliffe, who has travelled around his native Lancashire to make a film for Inside Out North West about the ballads. "But there was a kind of social media back in the 19th Century - they just didn't call it that."

The subjects covered by the broadsides were wide-ranging, from the Peterloo Massacre and Manchester's Great Flood of 1872 to light-hearted ditties about henpecked spouses and gossipy songs about extramarital affairs.

The themes speak of struggle (The Spinners Lamentation, 1846), poverty (Tinkers Garden, 1837), civic uprisings (The Meeting at Peterloo, 1819) and communal tragedy (The Great Flood, 1872). However, they also recall good nights out (Victoria Bridge on a Saturday Night 1861) and day trips around the region (Johnny Green's Trip fro' Owdhum to see the Manchester Railway, 1832).

"They really are a slice of real life and social history from 19th Century Manchester," says Radcliffe.