Back in March this year, we shared news of a Kickstarter Campaign led by Colin Harper to release Dick Gaughan: R/evolution 1969-84, a 7-CD, 1 DVD box set featuring 126 audio tracks (9 hours) and 37 video tracks (2½ hours, spanning 1970–2012) from five broadcasters and two amateur documentarists.
As well as celebrating his incredible legacy, the campaign also raised funds for Dick Gaughan himself, who is now retired and visually impaired. That Kickstarter was successful, and the remaining 600 copies of the Box set are available to pre-order via Last Night From Glasgow. They can be pre-ordered here.
The release of this box set has sparked a lot of interest, and naturally, many people may be wondering why a large chunk of his early releases, especially those released on Bill Leader’s imprints (notably Trailer), were not included. Those who don’t know the history may be surprised to learn that Dick Gaughan is trying to reclaim the rights to several of his albums. A GoFundMe Campaign, again led by Colin Harper, who’s been a great support to Dick, is currently underway to raise legal fees to test the claims by an entity called Celtic Music to the rights to a tranche of Dick’s recorded works – music recorded between 53 and 30 years ago.
This includes: No More Forever (Trailer, 1972), Kist O’ Gold (Trailer, 1977), Songs of Ewan MacColl (Rubber, 1978 – with Tony Capstick & Dave Burland), Live in Edinburgh (Celtic Music, 1985) and Call It Freedom (1988) plus the band albums The Boys of the Lough (Trailer, 1973) and Clan Alba (1995) and the two Gaughan tracks on the collaborative album Woody Lives! (Black Crow, 1987). As the campaign states, the other members of the Boys of the Lough – Aly Bain, Cathal McConnell and, for the late Robin Morton, his widow Alison Kinnaird – are 100% behind Dick’s campaign, as are Dave Burland and the former members of Clan Alba.
Anyone familiar with the British Folk Revival will be aware of Bill Leader’s 1960s production work for Topic and Transatlantic Records, featuring artists such as Anne Briggs and The Watersons. In the 1970s, he went it alone with his two imprints, Trailer and Leader. Many notable releases followed from artists that British Folk lovers will be familiar with, including: Peter & Chris Coe, Vin Garbutt, Robin & Barry Dransfield, Nic Jones, Dave & Toni Arthur, The High Level Ranters, Tony Rose, Dave Burland, Dick Gaughan, The Boys Of The Lough, Bob Davenport, Peter Bellamy, Cyril Tawney, Bill Caddick, Martin Simpson, Cilla Fisher & Artie Trezise, Andrew Cronshaw, Jean Redpath, Bob and Carole Pegg, Roy Bailey, Lal & Mike Waterson, Leon Rosselson and more.
The Leader/Trailer catalogue features some real gems. As well as Dick Gaughan’s albums mentioned above, there was plenty to get excited about for those interested in 1970s folk music, which I am. As an example of some of the other music held, in 2008, Honest Jon Records released (under license from Celtic Music) a fantastic compilation (available on CD/Vinyl) titled Never The Same – Leave-Taking From The British Folk Revival 1970-1977, which included a transcribed interview with Bill Leader in the liner notes.
Over the next ten years Leader put out a series of albums at a standard unmatched by any other major folk label. Not all of it was straight traditional folk. Leader was always open to experimentation and released albums as varied as the psych folk of Dave and Toni Arthur, the singer-songwriting of Rosie Hardman, and the elaborate arrangements of John Tams’ Muckram Wakes. He also released the song suite Bright Phoebus by Lal and Mike Waterson; and two of the songs here represent this lost classic. But at the heart of the label’s output were very simple virtues: great singers and great instrumentalists playing and singing the traditional music of Britain.
Several years later, in 2017, Domino Records announced the vinyl reissue of Lal & Mike Waterson’s 1972 debut, Bright Phoebus, which, alongside Nic Jones and Dick Gaughan, is one of the most sought-after albums in the catalogue. As David Kidman wrote in KLOF at the time, the album was “a strange but wonderful beast of a record: a collection of entirely self-penned material from two siblings who were previously known exclusively for performing traditional folk songs acapella in the context of the acclaimed Waterson’s group. After the group had split, Lal and Mike Waterson had begun, quite independently of each other, to create their own songs “freed from the strictures of folk orthodoxy”. In 1971, Martin Carthy heard the songs they’d been writing and alerted Ashley Hutchings, who set up some recording sessions with Bill Leader.”
Celtic Music took Domino to court, sued them for copyright infringement, and obtained injunctions against the company. As a result, the album was withdrawn.
The Domino re-issue included a deluxe edition with a second disc’s worth of demos dating from 1971, the majority of which had been previously unreleased.
Since the death of its joint founding partner Dave Bulmer in August 2013, Celtic Music has been retrenching and reviewing the development of its large and varied back catalogue of recordings, and is currently planning a programme of re-releases to cast new light on valuable folk music performances from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
As an example of other heavyweights from that catalogue that deserve a physical and digital presence today, look no further than Ray Fisher‘s 1972 debut, The Bonny Birdy. Fisher managed to gather an impressive roster of guests for her debut, including Martin Carthy, Tim Hart, Ashley Hutchings, Alistair Anderson, Peter Knight, Bobby Campbell, Liz & Stefan Sobell, and Colin Ross. In the liner notes, Ashley Hutchings ends his notes: “And what do you do when you hear that at long, long last Ray Fisher, your favourite Scottish singer and person, has made her own album? You beg Bill Leader to give you a copy (or buy one yourself). That’s What!”
It’s a real shame that we don’t have an entity like Smithsonian Folkways in the UK today to ensure such cultural legacy recordings are preserved and available for future generations. One of the primary conditions of the Smithsonian Institution’s acquisition of the original Folkways Records catalogue was that every album would remain “in print” forever, regardless of sales (i.e. a physical presence. Their catalogue is also available digitally, something Topic Records took on back in 2012 with their Great Big Digital Archive Project).
If you can help Dick Gaughan towards establishing his rights to some or all of his works, allowing them to be widely heard in the 21st Century, it’s possible that the process will reveal information and set precedents that may allow other now elderly artists from the 70s or their heirs to pursue claims of their own.
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Source: klofmag.com