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r something like that i remember once it was christmas and i went a carol singing and i went with two cousins fred dunn an sam dunn and we went t evans that was the tripe shop they were a musical family we went to various doors and got a copper or two and i can always remember this because when we all went in all the evanses were there they were all choristers and they enjoyed singing we sung by the door an they asked us in after we d sung a carol they asked me to sing one by meself so i sung em one after i d sung it they ad a collection for me threepence or fourpence there was a row about that when we came out they wanted to share it i said oh no i sung for this meself quoted from the musical traditions booklet notes to compound my enjoyment of the carol i found that the tune fitted really nicely on the concertina happy christmas photo of george dunn by janet kerr from the musical traditions website while shepherds were watching https dl dropbox com scl fi 2ralznr4iogqquyajh4dp while_shepherds_were_watching mp3 rlkey uiqm49wxyld0p9gzj11jstev6 st 018a6nll raw 1 t mp3 andy turner vocal c g anglo concertina posted in songs 4 comments tags anglo concertina carols christmas george dunn roud 16898 staffordshire december 5 2025 shepherds arise charity single for cancer research the short version download shepherds arise from https andyturner bandcamp com track shepherds arise all proceeds will be donated to cancer research uk download the track on friday 5th december and every single penny will go to the charity as bandcamp will be waiving their usual commission the longer version for me christmas and communal singing have always been inextricably linked whether it s carol singing with friends door to door busking in oxford city centre with west gallery choir the christminster singers taking part in a rousing pub session or magpie lane s annual christmas concerts singing carols lustily with other people is at the heart of what i love about christmas as december 2020 approached the prospect of a christmas where we weren t able to sing with others was not a happy one so given that we were having to do almost everything virtually at that time i decided to assemble a virtual choir my choice of song was simple it had to be shepherds arise from the repertoire of the copper family and my favourite carol since i first encountered it almost 50 years ago i wrote out an arrangement prepared a backing track and invited a bunch of friends to record themselves singing one of other of the parts almost everyone i asked came up with the goods there were people i had sung with at school when i first got interested in folk music fellow members of magpie lane and the christminster singers who i would in normal circumstances have been singing with that christmas and a handful of professional singers and musicians who i ve got to know through the folk scene jon boden jackie oates jim causley george sansome and ian blake i stitched together all the parts there were twenty individual singers in all some of whom had recorded more than one take and made the finished track available as week 300 of my a folk song a week blog as i wrote at the time i reckon we ve captured the spirit of a really good carol singing session the kind of session i love to be part of and which we ll all be missing this year although as one contributor has quite rightly commented i ain t never been to a pub carol session as tight as that before five years on it still sounds good to me and the track is now being released on bandcamp as a charity single all proceeds will be donated to cancer research uk download the track from https andyturner bandcamp com track shepherds arise download the track on friday 5th december and every single penny will go to the charity as it s a bandcamp friday when bandcamp waive their usual commission why cancer research we all know someone who has had cancer thankfully with advances in medical science the chances are we know someone whose cancer has been successfully treated i m fortunate in being able to count myself in that group but sadly most of us will also know at least one person who was not able to defeat the disease cancer research uk is the world s largest independent cancer research organisation actively working to prevent detect and treat over 200 types of cancer my heartfelt thanks to everyone who contributed to the original recording singalong a shepherds you are encouraged to sing along to the recording at home or even to download the harmony parts and sing shepherds arise with your own friends or carolling group sheet music a backing track and various other resources are all available in this shared google drive folder there s also a youtube video where you can see exactly where you are in the score as you sing along posted in admin leave a comment november 13 2025 50 years a folky 50 years a folky well that s maybe not strictly accurate but 50 years ago today on 13 th november 1975 something happened which not only changed my musical tastes but fundamentally altered the way my life would develop and it all came from watching top of the pops i was 15 years old and although my parents were absolutely not into pop music i usually tried to watch top of the pops on a thursday evening that particular evening the programme started at ten past seven and was presented by noel edmonds thank you bbc genome project the entertainment began with glam rockers hello miming to new york groove then george mccrae miming to i ain t lyin this was followed by pan s people dancing to this old heart of mine by rod stewart providing a bit of dadisfaction as the chart music podcast would say then we got happy to be on an island in the sun by demis roussos why did you do it by stretch god s gonna punish you by the tymes and a video of darlin by david cassidy who at 25 years old was already past the peak of his uk teen idol chart success following cassidy came justin hayward john lodge with blue guitar right back where we started from by maxine nightingale and all around my hat by steeleye span to finish we saw a video of that week s number 1 of course the re released space oddity by david bowie and finally rocky by austin roberts played over the closing credits the foregoing information comes not from my memory but from the top of the pops archive online i have to say i have very little recollection of most of those songs although i had bought a 7 vinyl copy of space oddity with changes and velvet goldmine on the b side the performance which really grabbed my attention that night was of course all around my hat oddly i remember thinking this is folk music even though at that time i had very few reference points for knowing what folk music was i d seen morris dancing once or twice i d probably seen the spinners on tv although they never floated my boat and i d seen a bunch of sixth formers at school singing the nutting girl next day at school as was customary the previous night s totp provided a basis for start of the day conversation on saying that i d really liked the steeleye span song my best friend mike announced that his dad had a copy of one of their earlier records and he d see if i could borrow it mike s dad trevor eaton was a teacher at the school and a really good teacher too although at that point i don t think i d ever been in his class and so it was that a few days later i went home clutching a copy of steeleye s 1972 lp below the salt i may not have been hooked after just one listen but i doubt that it took more than a couple of plays before i d decided that this was the best thing i d ever heard a few days after christmas i went to w h smith in canterbury armed with some christmas present cash or more likely i suppose a record token and came home with a copy of the all around my hat lp there s some jolly good tunes on there the vocal harmony plus french horn arrangement of cadgwith anthem is absolutely sublime but i think i recognised immediately that it wasn t as good as the less poppy more folky below the salt a few weeks later browsing as i often did through the record racks in the turntable later richards records in bank street ashford i found a copy of ten man mop sadly this was not the gatefold sleeved original issue but even so it was still an arresting cover and the music within was just great i liked what some people have disliked about the album the fact that it s divided roughly 50 50 between tracks that are more or less acoustic and others where martin carthy straps on his electric guitar and the band delivers wonderfully brooding atmospheric arrangements of songs like gower wassail captain coulston or the greatest of them all when i was on horseback that record introduced me to martin carthy and ashley hutchings both of whom would crop up over and over again as my explorations of folk music continued and it remains my favourite steeleye album to this day i ve written elsewhere on this blog about how i moved on from steeleye span to tim hart and maddy prior the chieftains planxty and the watersons that man carthy again before realising that there was no 18 age limit on joining the local public library s record section which meant that i was soon listening to the cream of the 1970s uk folk revival carthy john kirkpatrick and sue harris nic jones dick gaughan shirley collins etc etc but also field recordings of singers such as harry cox thomas moran bob and ron copper and pop maynard and in a lengthy blog post accompanying the song the barley raking i talked about how i started singing in harmony with my friend mike our friendship and singing going very much hand in hand for several formative years if you really want to immerse yourself in reminiscences about my formative years and the importance of harmony singing in particular there s more in these blog posts week 284 down in yon forest week 285 shepherds rejoice in other words i never looked back and while as an academic friend expressed it recently my interest in folk music is not monomaniacal it s fair to say that in many ways my interest in folk music defines me and has defined the way my life has developed these days you re as likely to find me listening to country or soul reggae township jive or mbqanga but when i m not listening to music it will almost always be a traditional tune that s running through my head over the years i ve made many friendships through music i ve got to sing and play with a whole range of talented and inspiring musicians and once briefly i appeared morris dancing live on japanese tv the internet has no record of this but i believe it to be true oh and not least i met my wife through folk music but what was it about that steeleye top of the pops appearance that first drew me in i ve pondered on this frequently in recent years my feeling is that while as an arrangement of a traditional song steeleye s version is frankly a bit crass it helped that the production on the record by wombles hitmaker mike batt was very pop friendly sure they were singing a traditional song but the track wasn t so outré that it was ever going to frighten the horses when presented to the top of the pops pop music radio audience of the day and that may well have made it more palatable to me as well at the time however while the accompaniment is pure glam rock the fiddle and mandolin make it distinctive and i ve no doubt they helped to attract my intention but primarily i think it would have been the voices that really made a difference maddy prior has never sung in a heavily stylised idiosyncratic folky way but her voice is very much that of an english folk singer not a pop singer add in the harmony backing vocals and while the single doesn t sound horribly out of place amongst the rest of the top of the pops fare it also undeniably has something extra until a couple of days ago i d not listed to hat in years i d completely forgotten that it actually starts with the whole band singing unaccompanied in harmony now that sound definitely contributed to making the record stand out attracting the attention of this 15 year old schoolboy subsequently when listening to steeleye albums unaccompanied tracks such as rosebud in june cadgwith anthem and the king were often amongst my favourites incidentally another single i bought in 1975 was bohemian rhapsody which was number 1 from late november that year into january the next and one of the things i really liked about the record was the vocal harmony sections i ve not found a video of either of steeleye s november 1975 top of the pops appearances on the web but here they are miming all around my hat in january 1976 on the children s tv show crackerjack i distinctly remember seeing that performance i used to visit my grandparents most friday afternoons on the way home from school and while i was rather older by then than the intended audience for crackerjack the tv would be on and my ears would definitely have pricked up on hearing ed stewpot stewart announce that steeleye span were on the bill anyway i ve no idea if these ramblings will be of interest to anyone but me but in conclusion thank you serendipity and thank you steeleye span posted in admin leave a comment july 16 2025 week 327 blackberry fold the title track from the 1974 topic lp featuring mike yates recordings of george spicer and one of several songs which i learned when i first heard the record circa 1979 had it not been for this version i d have almost certainly learned the harry cox version which i d heard on the peter bellamy lp the fox jumps over the parson s gate it s an indication of how much i liked that version that i subsequently adapted the tune for a completely unrelated song allan maclean back in the 1980s i used to sing this with chris wood providing a typically polished guitar accompaniment sadly i don t have a recording of us doing the song although i m pretty sure it was broadcast on folk on two probably in 1985 in a live recording from the national festival at sutton bonington when chris and i stopped performing together i pretty much singing the song but for a long time i d been thinking i really ought to revive it and over the last year i ve worked up a concertina arrangement george spicer learned the song from his mother elizabeth matilda spicer née chambers mike yates notes say that pretty much all collected versions seem to derive from the mid nineteenth century broadside printed by henry parker such squire and milkmaid or blackberry fold broadside printed by h such from the vwml archive catalogue george spicer was born and raised at little chart about 7 miles from where i was brought up a very similar version of this song was noted down in the 1940s from william crampton from smarden less than 5 miles away from little chart although mr crampton could only remember 3 verses in fact william crampton knew versions of two other songs which would later be recorded from george spicer the folkestone murderer and outward bound the faithful sailor bo...