Steve Gardham English Folk Music Collection

Long description:

Recordings in this collection can be played by anyone.

Some 20 hours of field recordings of music recorded between 1967 and 1988 by Steve Gardham in Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire, England.

This collection of unpublished field recordings was made by Steve Gardham over a period of 20 years from 1967 and concentrates mainly on singers from Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire. The collection provides a uniquely comprehensive and detailed overview of the traditional and popular music tastes to be found in one urban industrialised centre and its satellite rural districts.

Steve took great pains to record all forms and genres of music that the singers could remember from their youth, even if they could only provide him with fragments. Included in this kaleidoscopic sampler of early twentieth century vernacular culture are: parlour ballads, children’s skipping songs, customs, music hall, hunting songs, dialect numbers, tales, minstrel ditties and shanties.

Steve's collecting work started with his family. His first recording was of his grandmother Annie Sykes singing Derby Lam at her home in Air St., Kingston upon Hull. From his family he then branched out to include their friends and associates and then the singers and musicians of the neighbouring towns and villages.

Transcriptions of a number of the recordings in this collection appeared in An East Riding Songster. A selection of folk-song from the East Riding which was published by Lincolnshire and Humberside Arts in 1982. British Library shelfmark: E.1885.l.(1.)

For more on Yorkshire’s folk song heritage go to The Yorkshire Garland Group, chaired by Steve Gardham, at http://www.yorkshirefolksong.net/