I probably shouldn't go on lots more about Peter Bellamy, since you didn't love the YouTubes you sampled. As a result of your mention I listened to some YT clips from Bellamy's earliest Kipling albums (Merlyn's Isle of Gramarye and Oak Ash and Thorn, both albums which were unobtainable until their recent CD reissue) and I'll try to pick those up this month. I wonder who the other performers are on those discs -- maybe The Young Tradition singers? I also found an excellent Bellamy retrospective, 20 years after his death, from Colin Irwin, who is probably the leading British journalist on folk music going back 40 years or more.
""It is said that Celtic Records have a large cache of quality recordings that are unlikely to be issued." " I tracked this through to a Mudcat forum post about Peter Bellamy. This is a reference to the company Celtic Music and its owner Dave Bulmer. Celtic Music used to be a nice normal CD label and distribution company based in the UK -- many of the folk LPs and CDs I got from the old Schoolkids Records store had Celtic Music Distribution stickers on them.
Dave Bulmer got, shall we say, weird about business later in life. CM acquired the rights to several British folk labels which went out of business in the 1970s and 1980s -- most importantly the Leader/Trailer family of labels run by Bill Leader. And then he decided to just sit on this accumulation of master recordings. Bulmer seemed to feel that if he piled up this horde of recordings which no one could listen to, somehow it would increase in value and he could cash in. Sometimes he would state that he would not release any of the classic recordings on CD until he had sold off his stock of LPs -- this was after sales of LP had gone to effectively zero, in the 1990s.
Dick Gaughan had a masterwork with his "Clan Alba" supergroup album in 1995. But Dave Bulmer decided that Celtic Music would get rich by having a monopoly on sales of that album -- literally, the only way you could get a copy was by mail order from CM, it was not in any stores, not even UK folk specialist stores. And so the album disappeared almost without a trace, even though it is epically good.
(Here's a live YouTube of a Clan Alba performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtyXYdP6f6g Dick Gaughan, plus the Sileas harp duo, plus Brian McNeill on fiddle, bagpipes, drums, another guitarist.)
Some items from the Celtic Music collection did get reissued on CD, in limited run CD-R format. My information is that such CD-R discs did not have to have royalties paid to the original artists under UK copyright law, and that while regrettable, this was all completely legal.
I had not heard before that Celtic Music had a batch of Bellamy recordings, but this ties in with the idea that CM were hoarding things. Dave Bulmer died in 2013, and I hold hope that his estate will somehow sort things out.
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Date: 2015-07-31 04:59 pm (UTC)""It is said that Celtic Records have a large cache of quality recordings that are unlikely to be issued." " I tracked this through to a Mudcat forum post about Peter Bellamy. This is a reference to the company Celtic Music and its owner Dave Bulmer. Celtic Music used to be a nice normal CD label and distribution company based in the UK -- many of the folk LPs and CDs I got from the old Schoolkids Records store had Celtic Music Distribution stickers on them.
Dave Bulmer got, shall we say, weird about business later in life. CM acquired the rights to several British folk labels which went out of business in the 1970s and 1980s -- most importantly the Leader/Trailer family of labels run by Bill Leader. And then he decided to just sit on this accumulation of master recordings. Bulmer seemed to feel that if he piled up this horde of recordings which no one could listen to, somehow it would increase in value and he could cash in. Sometimes he would state that he would not release any of the classic recordings on CD until he had sold off his stock of LPs -- this was after sales of LP had gone to effectively zero, in the 1990s.
Dick Gaughan had a masterwork with his "Clan Alba" supergroup album in 1995. But Dave Bulmer decided that Celtic Music would get rich by having a monopoly on sales of that album -- literally, the only way you could get a copy was by mail order from CM, it was not in any stores, not even UK folk specialist stores. And so the album disappeared almost without a trace, even though it is epically good.
(Here's a live YouTube of a Clan Alba performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtyXYdP6f6g
Dick Gaughan, plus the Sileas harp duo, plus Brian McNeill on fiddle, bagpipes, drums, another guitarist.)
Some items from the Celtic Music collection did get reissued on CD, in limited run CD-R format. My information is that such CD-R discs did not have to have royalties paid to the original artists under UK copyright law, and that while regrettable, this was all completely legal.
I had not heard before that Celtic Music had a batch of Bellamy recordings, but this ties in with the idea that CM were hoarding things. Dave Bulmer died in 2013, and I hold hope that his estate will somehow sort things out.
More than you wanted to know, right?