STEPHEN BALDWIN

 STEPHEN BALDWIN ENGLISH VILLAGE FIDDLER

Leader, 1976, LED 2068

S. Baldwin was a fiddler from Bishop Upton, Herefordshire. He was recorded on 22 June 1954 by Russell Worley at the local primary school because there was no electricity in Baldwin's house. It is possible to hear children play and other noises from the people taking part to the session.
Baldwin was born at the beginning of the 1870's and died in 1955 so shortly after those recordings. He was old enough in 1954 and his playing was somehow impared for this reason. But we can hear that his bowing was still very good; he used to play for dancers in his youth and the tempo and rhythm are very important to them. All the tunes are played one after the other without any real break so I had to make tracks out of it.
The repertoire is typical I guess of any English fiddler of the time with a lot of hornpipes and jigs, waltz, scottisches, polkas etc ... Some of these tunes or settings are probably local so this album is interesting for that reason too. Note that B11 and B12 are on the same track.  Finally, records of English fiddle music before the revival is not that common.
Leader was a very good label founded by Bill Leader in 1969 along with the label Trailer. He was very instrumental in the British revival in the 60's and 70's with the publication of the works of Woody Guthrie, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Pentangle, The Dubliners, etc ...

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