Category Archives: folklore and ethnography

Birds Again – – –

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Jack is allowed to be late this time because the Monday book review was late – so there!

John Coltrane

A couple of weeks ago I posted about an imaginary conversation between birds in our front yard. But, actually, I’m really fascinated by their songs. They have the most amazing range of sounds – some just repeated but often with subtle changes between each repeat.

It reminded me about something I read about many years ago –

I remember it as being about the jazz sax player John Coltrane, but it might just as easily have been his contemporary Eric Dolphy.

But whoever it was supposedly recorded bird calls then slowed them on playback to half speed so he could learn the phrasing and then use it in his solos. This was in the 1950s or 1960s when people like Coltrane and Dolphy were pushing at the musical boundaries and looking for inspiration in unlikely places. I believe he also listened to ‘Ceol Mor’ (the great music of the Highland bagpipes also called Pibroch) which takes a simple theme (ground) and then repeats it numerous times with ever more intricate variations.

So combining these two influences that might seem very different actually makes a lot of sense.

Unfortunately, when I searched on-line for corroboration I could only find much more recent references to other and newer players, but I’m convinced that I’m remembering this correctly.

Meanwhile our blue jays, robins and house swifts continue to communicate very melodiously.

PS The greatest of the jazzmen was, arguably, Charlie Parker whose nickname was ‘Bird’.

PPS One of the most famous jazz clubs was ‘Birdland’.

PPPS Our guestroom and my radio show studio is called ‘The Birdhouse’ because of the wallpaper!

Vive the Auld Alliance

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Jack makes it in time with his guest Wednesday post – –

This week is the 35th anniversary of the founding of Greentrax Records based in Edinburgh and the brainchild of Ian Green. There’s plenty on-line about the history of the label and how it was built over the years, but here’s some personal connections.

I first met Ian when he was still in the police and running a folk club called ‘FuzzFolk’ in the centre of Edinburgh. Later we met again when he was involved in the annual Edinburgh folk festival. After the label was up and running I was one of the lesser known performers he contracted with for an album of songs.

But there’s a far more interesting connection – –

I helped start a folk band called ‘Heritage’ in the mid-1970s and in the early 1980s we recorded music in my living room which we had copied to cassettes to sell at gigs. One of the cassettes wound up with Ian and he re-labeled it and put it out as a GreenTrax album.

A couple of years later he was attending an industry fair in Cannes in France and met up with a guy who owned a company called ‘Playasound’ that specialized in music from various countries around the world. They didn’t have one for Ecosse (Scotland). What they did have were shops all over the world in French speaking countries.

So a recording made on a borrowed tape recorder ended up in shops all over the world and because Ian was always meticulous about paying royalties we started getting serious amounts of money. Yikes! We might have to pay tax – – –

We all knew the band was coming to an end. We had progressed musically but we had all moved on. But how to avoid the tax stuff? Use it in a final project. We had lots of really good stuff, so invest in a final recording. Our first studio recording had been at Temple Records with Robin Morton, so we decided the final one should be there too.

A few weeks ago I got an email from Ian to say that he would celebrate the anniversary by re-issuing the very first compilation album from the 1990s – ‘Music and Song of Scotland’. There’s a track from my songs album and another from our percussionist Lindsay Porteous, but there is also one from that faraway living room recording.

Here’s to many more years of Greentrax – – –