I'm a big fan of the Peter Kennedy field recordings available at folktrax.org, and feel grateful to Mr. Kennedy first of all for making the recordings--typically well before the artists were ever commercially recorded, and secondly for making them readily available, something which many archives and collectors do not do, presumably for legal reasons. (They lack the resources to sort out copyrights and royalties, permissions etc.) I also feel grateful to artists like Michael Gorman and John Doherty, who gave collectors like Mr. Kennedy permission to publish the recordings. I've heard that some musicians, like Michael Gorman and Margaret Barry, got their starts in commercial recordings and performance careers because of the efforts of collectors like Mr. Kennedy.
So here's my question: I have also gotten the impression that some people view Mr. Kennedy as somewhat of a villain, that he tricked artists into giving permissions etc. Is this true? I am afraid that even if it is I would still seek out the recordings, because most of the musicians he recorded are now dead. I don't see the field recordings as in competition with commercial recordings and I don't think publishing them detracts from the sales of commercial recordings, because real fans of a musician often want to collect as much as they can of their heroes, whereas casual buyers who would buy only one recording are most likely to buy the recordings most readily available (i.e. commercial). In the liner notes to John Doherty and Neil Boyle recordings Peter says that John and Neil freely gave permission for publication because they wanted the music to be available for future generations. It must be remembered that this was back in the early 1950s before the revival.
So--does anyone out there know anything about this debate?
Thanks Ed. I just did a search on the IRTRAD archives and read some of the accusations and gripes about Peter. I can't say that they impressed me. Some of them are quite obviously false, such as the accusations that he never got permissions from anyone. The gripes mostly seemed to be that he charges a fee, and that a good portion of that fee goes to himself (presumably to finance the operations of the archive). Well IMHO, Mr. Kennedy is entitled to something for his work, and I certainly hope he is able to continue it, and that it will be continued after his death. I was surpised to find that he responded to my email in person! It can't be any easy thing to run the archive at his age. Another gripe was that his liner notes are brief and/or inaccurate, and his packaging shoddily produced! Well there are hundreds of recordings in the archive, and plenty of information is available to collectors online if they want to learn more.
I have no idea why people would want to malign someone who so obviously cares so much about traditional music, who preserved so much of it (of the very highest quality) through so much labor of his own, who continues to make it all available on a website he runs himself, and whose fees are quite reasonable, being less than the cost of commercial recordings. A man does a great thing and they complain it isn't perfect?
I guess I'll stand by my original impression, that Mr. Kennedy is a trad hero!
I think you are right in standing by your first impression, the logistics of spending a lot of time in the field are difficult to say the least. I was offered £7 a tape (portable Uher) out of which I had to buy food, transport and lodging: This was in the mid 70's and transport was almost non existant in the 50's and 60's in Ireland and not too good in Scotland. Stories of situations become exagerated with time, so I think people who spent their own money to do something like that are allowed a few errors. When Ewan McColl was recording Caroline Hughes, her husband took 10shillings for a song called "The Varmint" which turned out to be a rendering of "Clementine" that he had heard on the wireless whilst drunk. You can't afford too many like that......
There can only be one Peter Kennedy, from the description. This has to be the man that I saw in the late 50's/early60's in Guernsey, when I was just a lad, but it still sticks in my mind ( was this a seminal moment that turned me on to folk music ? ) because of its utter uniqueness.
He had a dark green Austin A35 station wagon ( just that description is an oxymoron in itself ) stuffed full of BBC tape recorders. I remember it because he had parked down at La Vallette, on the way to the swimming pools, and was running through some locally recorded tapes and discussing them with a colleague as I passed by, rolled beach towel and trunks under my arm.
Just the fact that he went around collecting stuff, wherever, and it's still available at some small cost to whoever wants a copy is quite remarkeable and praiseworthy.
There will always be people who criticise someone else for doing something they didn't or couldn't do themselves, especialy with the gift of hindsight. Bad cess to them !
FTX-302 - THE FAIRY PIPER by Seamus Ennis is in actual fact an Outlet LP from the late 60s, Masters of Irish Music, filled out with a few items Peter recorded himself, which admittedly are fantastic music. Not very honest dealings here.
I sent Peter titles for the nameless tunes on the Willie Clancy/Bobby Casey record but he doesn't seem to have used them.
Kevin, I think he did use the tune names, because every tune was named except for a waltz and a mazurka--unless it is those to which you refer. So he probably didn't ignore you, he was probably just busy!
As to The Fairy Piper, which I do not (yet) have, it says on the site that the tunes and stories on it were recorded by Lomax, Kennedy and George Pickow in 1952. It is quite possibly the case that all of the duplicate material on the Outlet CD comes from the field recordings of these collectors. Were the sources given in the Outlet notes? I recently got a couple of CDs from Smithsonian Folkways and Rounder featuring (among others) Gorman, Clancy, Ennis and Barry, also using material from Kennedy's and Lomax's collections. Is it possible that Kennedy gave permission to Smithsonian to publish some of his recordings, and that something similar happened with the outlet release? In any case I don't blame Kennedy for offering some of his recordings to other publishers to publish at that time, because it seems he lacked the resources to self-publish via Folktrax Cassettes until the mid-1970s, and he was right to make some of the recordings more readily available to a wider audience. In any case I doubt I could get my hands on the Outlet CD now, but Peter is still there, and not holding back.
If he really was trying to capitalize on his field recordings for personal profit, with the quality and extent of his collection, if he put together professional packaging and liner notes he could set up a small but successful commercial label all on his own. The material in his collection is equal in quality to much of the material made commerically available recently by Reg Hall (of whom I am a huge fan), and all he would need is someone to research and write liner notes to be able to come out with competing commercial compiliations. As it is, he certainly does a better job on tune identification than Smithsonian, which recently sent me a Gorman/Clancy disk which failed to identify The Mountain Road! (!) So I don't see Peter in the negative light you see him in. Kevin, if you've got in your possession many of the great recordings he has made (which I am assuming you do)--you ought to have a little gratitude, or at least a bit of magnanimity to overlook those faults or imperfections that may be there. It seems to me like he's very busy and needs help with his work-he posted a notice on his site to that effect.
Sorry, I don't mean to sound sanctimonious. I just hate to see people getting judged all the time. God knows we are none of us perfect.
& if you did send those tune names to Peter, thanks Kevin! You helped out Peter, me, and everybody else who gets those recordings.
1) Kennedy was employed by the BBCfrom the early 1950s as part of a project to record the folk and traditional music of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales and did so - many of his recordings, along with those of Seamus Ennis and Brian George were subsequently broadcast on BBC radio.
2) Any contracts that were signed at the time involving Kennedy and the singers or musicians were actually between the BBC and said singers/musicians and did not involve a contract with Kennedy himself.
3) There is a stack of biographical and anecdotal evidence which indicates that, in many cases, such contracts were never profferred to the singer/musician. It's also the case that many of the Traveller musicians recorded by Kennedy could not have signed such contracts on the basis of a true understanding of the terms they contained since the musicians themselves were illiterate. There are also many accounts of musicians who actually refused to sign such contracts, but whose work has been subsequently issued by Kennedy without either their permission or that of their descendants. There is absolutely no evidence, for example, that either John Doherty or Neillidh Boyle ever signed a contract.
4) After leaving the BBC Kennedy claimed the rights to all his recordings on the questionable basis that they were made on his own tape recorder, despite the fact that he was working for the BBC at the time. For some reason, the BBC has never challenged this.
5) Kennedy's releases are shoddy - poorly produced, badly written notes and incorrect song and tune titles.. Many are clearly copies of BBC transcription discs - you can even hear the clicks from the original vinyl on some of them.
6) Kennedy has also released material to which he has absolutely no claim to copyright or had any involvement in recording. Most notably, this includes Tom Munnelly's recording of John Reilly and John Corry's recordings of Tyrone singers.
7) There is some evidence that Kennedy has paid royalties to some singers or their families. Unfortunately, there is also overwhelming evidence that the vast bulk has never received a penny.
8) There are singers and musicians who actually refused to be recorded by other collectors because they'd previously been visited by Kennedy and hadn't received a penny for their work.
Kennedy's standing in both Ireland and the UK is lower than a leech. If he had chosen to donate the Irish part of 'his' collection to an organisation such as the Irish Traditional Music Archive, then everyone would be happy. However, he has continued to profit personally from this and resists all attempts to get him to come clean on his past manoeuvres.
The good news is that, in Europe at least, everything Kennedy currently sells which is older than 50 years since it was recorded is now copyright free. I'm personally working on a complete Neillidh Boyle collection, of which more anon.
Hmm. Geoff, sounds like you feel pretty strongly about this
I'm glad you posted. You obviously have access to more facts than I do, and that's why I asked the question in the first place--to get some more information. I'm new to this.
I would point out that lot of your assertions are rather vague, or rather that your allegations are somewhat telegraphic or conclusory, so that I would like to hear more. The following questions are intended not to irritate you or to suggest that what you are saying is wrong, but to elicit more information.
1. You talk about "overwhelming evidence". Can you name actual performers who went on the record and said they wouldn't record for anyone else because they were ripped off? i've seen these accusations elsewhere but they were never more specific.
2. If it was standard BBC practice to create contracts (a photo on one of the Folktrax discs shows Simi Doherty signing what is purported to be a contract), what makes you think there _wasn't_ a contract with John or with Neil? A seeming absence of evidence for positive does not always prove the negative. Has someone gone through BBCs legal files and reached this conclusion?
3. How much money in royalties do you really think there is to distribute? Perhaps I am naive but I don't imagine the market for such recordings is vast. Even in the world of ITM I imagine the great majority would think Neillidh Boyle egomaniacal and daft and his music screechy, eccentric, old-fashioned, and at times poorly executed. (I could be wrong about this, somebody please prove me wrong and start a Neillidh Boyle fan thread!) And as much as I love and look up to Michael Gorman, I could certainly understand why a lot of ITM listeners and musicians and even fiddlers would not be much interested in him, because he is not at all smooth and dazzling and easy and slick like some of the modern players. Kennedy's recordings of him are mostly unaccompanied, or accompanied by the sometimes monotonous banjo of the good Ms. Barry. I'm guessing too (and this is just a guess) that if most ITM fans got the Reg Hall compiliation of Michael they would feel they had more than enough of that (again, somebody please prove me wrong and start a Gorman fan thread!) What I am saying is, can Kennedy really profit all that much off of these recordings? (I honestly don't know, which is why I am asking.)
4. As to the "shoddiness", I have to say the Kennedy's first recording of Michael Gorman is one of my all-time favorite recordings, and that the other Gorman disc with the story of the naming of the Mountain Road is a close second. Reg Hall's compilation is certainly more extensive, assembling great material from Lomax and other sources (including a few of the great Gorman/Clancy tracks previously released on Folkways), but I do not think that it provides a better portrait of Michael than Folktrax 74 standing alone, despite the extensive and lovingly-researched liner notes of the Hall compiliation, because Kennedy's recordings give Michael a chance to tell a bit of his own story in his own voice, and to hear that voice is a great thing. Good God, you can't listen to the CD without coming away loving the man! On his best recordings Peter gives the performers ample time to talk, and their speech is often deeply informative, to say little. The Neillidh Boyle disc is a masterstoke. How could it be any better? I am afraid I just don't understand what you mean when you say that it's badly produced. Neil may not have made any money off of it, but his heart-felt opinions and his bird imitations are recorded for people to hear for generations to come. It is a master portrait and not at all "shoddy'! The editing is brilliant. And as to the skimpy notes, granted, not every tune is always identified, but what resources does Kennedy have to identify the tunes? He didn't publish until more than thirty years after most of the recordings and may have lost some of his notes. & if you know better maybe you should him like Kevin did & set the record straight. Reg Hall had the resources of Topic behind him, don't forget. I'd happily research a few sets of more extensive liner notes and send them to Peter gratis just so other people who were interested in these great musicians could learn more about them.
5. What good would it have done _me_ if Kennedy had donated his works to the ITMA? Who is "everyone"? That wouldn't have made _me_ happy! They might as well be in the boiler room of the Titantic as in the ITMA as far as I am concerned. (Somebody please explain to me: is ITMA a lock-box? Can you actually go there with an empty mp3 recorder and come out with priceless treasure?)
6. If in fact many of Kennedy's greatest recordings (1952-1955) are now or soon to be in the public domain, then what harm has been done to ITMA or to you or anyone else? Unless you live in Leinster it costs you more to go to ITMA than it does to send away for one of Kennedy's recordings. He doens't even charge much postage.
7. What attempts have there been to get him to "come clean"?
I so far for me everything pales in comparison to two main points: 1. the quality of the material, 2. it's availability. But like I say I am interested to hear specifics about the allegations.
In the alternative you can just write me off as an idiot
Look on the Chiff and Fipple website for some more dirt on Peter. I'm forever grateful all this music has been made available to the public but I certainly don't have any scruples about obtaining it second-hand from his customers - or copying the CDs I did buy from him for other people. Tit for tat, you know. People do get very heated up over these issues.
So copyright has passed back to 1955? That means all the Seamus Ennis material Peter recorded is public domain now? I believe most of it was recorded in 1952, the "Pied Piper of Dublin" or "Morning Brush" record - Peter seems to have about four titles for it! Was recorded in '59. This was the source for the first track on the 40 years of Irish Piping LP, too. That was produced by Pat Sky, who's also rubbed people the wrong way on occasion.
In fairness to Pete and Pat the powers that be will sit on this kind of material forever if they're so inclined, while the rest of the world wonders what the big deal is. Can you even buy a Bobby Casey record right now, except Peter's?
Hmm. It seems the major objection to Peter is that he runs a web site which makes available to traditional musicians all of the field recordings he himself made while working for BBC in the 50s and 60s, plus some other recordings (either out-of-print or never otherwise published) which he was not involved in recording. And above all that he personally profits from this activity.
A distinction has to made here between the recordings he made and to which he can assert a (however ethically questionable) copyright, and other recordings to which he has no such copyright, though he is certainly free to publish and charge for anything which is in the public domain (something book publishers do all the time). If Peter publishes works to which he has no legitimate copyright or which are not public-domain material I do see that as an ethical problem only partly mitigated by the service to the tradition he performs by effectively rescuing this material from oblivion (or at the very least limbo) and making it available.
It seems to me that there currently exists between musicians and collectors a certain amount of private copying and distribution of noncommercial recordings and out-of-print commercial recordings (mostly of the "my friend gave me this, I'll pass it along to you" variety). I myself have been the beneficiary of this practice. This sort of thing may seem less objectionable than Peter's dealings, because the copying party does not profit by his act (except where an exchange or swap takes place). However, in this instance as in Peter's, the author of the recording (the musician) receives nothing for his performance (and on previously-published material receives no royalty). So there is no difference between this behavior and Peter's from the point of view of the artist, except that in Peter's case he typically has some sort of colorable copyright claim, and also that he distributes more copies.
It's a pity in a way that so many great recordings circulate privately only and therefore become available to musicians in the tradition only if they make connections with the right people. There must be a vast body of material of the highest quality passing hands. It would be nice if it were possible to make this material readily available to anyone interested in a copy, but if someone took Peter's approach and started openly selling recordings from a web site easily Google-able [neologism?] the problem that the musicians on the recordings aren't receiving anything would be worse than in Peter's case, where at least he has a colorable legal claim (even if ethically repugnant to many).
The same problem applies to archives like the ITMA who have a gold mine of material but can't release any of it because of the legal and ethical problems. I still wish that the ITMA and other archives would act as clearing-houses for public domain material and would love to see a publisher make it possible for private collectors to make public domain material in their collections available for wider publication (by the hypothetical non-profit publisher) upon reaching some kind of financial arrangement between the collector and the publisher. Another pipes-dream would be an organization which could research and determine who ought receive profits from publication of material (in many cases a still-living author or his or her family). It would then publish material from private collections at a price determined by overhead plus the cost of royalties paid to the rights holders. The royalty might be 25 or fifty cents per track. Prior to release the publisher could offer a standard contract to the rights-holder, which, if the holder declined, would prevent release.
Unfortunately the demand is probably so small that such a publisher couldn't survive even if it worked mostly with public domain material (do Topic et al make a proft on releases like The Sligo Champiom?).
A publishing company of this sort could in theory be run by a consortium or union of artists as well, a higher-tech version of Ed Reavy's Phildelphia Irish Musicians Union which could cut out the big-publishing-house middleman.
But I am rambling hopelessly at this point.... & I suppose there are already independent labels much like that already.
So I am left with the dilemma as to what to do about Foltrax. I want more recodings in the catalogue. I think what I'll do is simply to order them from Peter like I ordered the others. It happens that many of the recordings I want appear to be in the public domain in any case, so that I can order them from Peter with a clear conscience. His prices aren't exhorbitant in my view and delivery is quick and reliable. I am new to the ITM scene and it sure beats begging on on the lists
Peter Kennedy Question
Peter Kennedy Question
I'm a big fan of the Peter Kennedy field recordings available at folktrax.org, and feel grateful to Mr. Kennedy first of all for making the recordings--typically well before the artists were ever commercially recorded, and secondly for making them readily available, something which many archives and collectors do not do, presumably for legal reasons. (They lack the resources to sort out copyrights and royalties, permissions etc.) I also feel grateful to artists like Michael Gorman and John Doherty, who gave collectors like Mr. Kennedy permission to publish the recordings. I've heard that some musicians, like Michael Gorman and Margaret Barry, got their starts in commercial recordings and performance careers because of the efforts of collectors like Mr. Kennedy.
So here's my question: I have also gotten the impression that some people view Mr. Kennedy as somewhat of a villain, that he tricked artists into giving permissions etc. Is this true? I am afraid that even if it is I would still seek out the recordings, because most of the musicians he recorded are now dead. I don't see the field recordings as in competition with commercial recordings and I don't think publishing them detracts from the sales of commercial recordings, because real fans of a musician often want to collect as much as they can of their heroes, whereas casual buyers who would buy only one recording are most likely to buy the recordings most readily available (i.e. commercial). In the liner notes to John Doherty and Neil Boyle recordings Peter says that John and Neil freely gave permission for publication because they wanted the music to be available for future generations. It must be remembered that this was back in the early 1950s before the revival.
So--does anyone out there know anything about this debate?
# Posted on April 15th 2005 by 2ndFiddle
Re: Peter Kennedy Question
You're certainly right that Peter Kennedy is not universally popular. If you want an idea of why I suggest searching the Irtrad archives here:
https://listserv.heanet.ie/irtrad-l.html
I stress I have no personal knowledge of Kennedy or his dealings. But since you ask the question...
Ed.
# Posted on April 15th 2005 by Presumin Ed
Re: Peter Kennedy Question
That's only helpful if you have an IRate-TRAD password, I think, Ed....
# Posted on April 15th 2005 by Zina Lee
Re: Peter Kennedy Question
Thanks Ed. I just did a search on the IRTRAD archives and read some of the accusations and gripes about Peter. I can't say that they impressed me. Some of them are quite obviously false, such as the accusations that he never got permissions from anyone. The gripes mostly seemed to be that he charges a fee, and that a good portion of that fee goes to himself (presumably to finance the operations of the archive). Well IMHO, Mr. Kennedy is entitled to something for his work, and I certainly hope he is able to continue it, and that it will be continued after his death. I was surpised to find that he responded to my email in person! It can't be any easy thing to run the archive at his age. Another gripe was that his liner notes are brief and/or inaccurate, and his packaging shoddily produced! Well there are hundreds of recordings in the archive, and plenty of information is available to collectors online if they want to learn more.
I have no idea why people would want to malign someone who so obviously cares so much about traditional music, who preserved so much of it (of the very highest quality) through so much labor of his own, who continues to make it all available on a website he runs himself, and whose fees are quite reasonable, being less than the cost of commercial recordings. A man does a great thing and they complain it isn't perfect?
I guess I'll stand by my original impression, that Mr. Kennedy is a trad hero!
# Posted on April 15th 2005 by 2ndFiddle
Re: Peter Kennedy Question
I think you are right in standing by your first impression, the logistics of spending a lot of time in the field are difficult to say the least. I was offered £7 a tape (portable Uher) out of which I had to buy food, transport and lodging: This was in the mid 70's and transport was almost non existant in the 50's and 60's in Ireland and not too good in Scotland. Stories of situations become exagerated with time, so I think people who spent their own money to do something like that are allowed a few errors. When Ewan McColl was recording Caroline Hughes, her husband took 10shillings for a song called "The Varmint" which turned out to be a rendering of "Clementine" that he had heard on the wireless whilst drunk. You can't afford too many like that......
# Posted on April 15th 2005 by Ian Stevenson
Re: Peter Kennedy Question
There can only be one Peter Kennedy, from the description. This has to be the man that I saw in the late 50's/early60's in Guernsey, when I was just a lad, but it still sticks in my mind ( was this a seminal moment that turned me on to folk music ? ) because of its utter uniqueness.
He had a dark green Austin A35 station wagon ( just that description is an oxymoron in itself ) stuffed full of BBC tape recorders. I remember it because he had parked down at La Vallette, on the way to the swimming pools, and was running through some locally recorded tapes and discussing them with a colleague as I passed by, rolled beach towel and trunks under my arm.
Just the fact that he went around collecting stuff, wherever, and it's still available at some small cost to whoever wants a copy is quite remarkeable and praiseworthy.
There will always be people who criticise someone else for doing something they didn't or couldn't do themselves, especialy with the gift of hindsight. Bad cess to them !
# Posted on April 16th 2005 by Guernsey Pete
Re: Peter Kennedy Question
FTX-302 - THE FAIRY PIPER by Seamus Ennis is in actual fact an Outlet LP from the late 60s, Masters of Irish Music, filled out with a few items Peter recorded himself, which admittedly are fantastic music. Not very honest dealings here.
I sent Peter titles for the nameless tunes on the Willie Clancy/Bobby Casey record but he doesn't seem to have used them.
# Posted on April 16th 2005 by KLR
Re: Peter Kennedy Question
Kevin, I think he did use the tune names, because every tune was named except for a waltz and a mazurka--unless it is those to which you refer. So he probably didn't ignore you, he was probably just busy!
I just hate to see people getting judged all the time. God knows we are none of us perfect.
As to The Fairy Piper, which I do not (yet) have, it says on the site that the tunes and stories on it were recorded by Lomax, Kennedy and George Pickow in 1952. It is quite possibly the case that all of the duplicate material on the Outlet CD comes from the field recordings of these collectors. Were the sources given in the Outlet notes? I recently got a couple of CDs from Smithsonian Folkways and Rounder featuring (among others) Gorman, Clancy, Ennis and Barry, also using material from Kennedy's and Lomax's collections. Is it possible that Kennedy gave permission to Smithsonian to publish some of his recordings, and that something similar happened with the outlet release? In any case I don't blame Kennedy for offering some of his recordings to other publishers to publish at that time, because it seems he lacked the resources to self-publish via Folktrax Cassettes until the mid-1970s, and he was right to make some of the recordings more readily available to a wider audience. In any case I doubt I could get my hands on the Outlet CD now, but Peter is still there, and not holding back.
If he really was trying to capitalize on his field recordings for personal profit, with the quality and extent of his collection, if he put together professional packaging and liner notes he could set up a small but successful commercial label all on his own. The material in his collection is equal in quality to much of the material made commerically available recently by Reg Hall (of whom I am a huge fan), and all he would need is someone to research and write liner notes to be able to come out with competing commercial compiliations. As it is, he certainly does a better job on tune identification than Smithsonian, which recently sent me a Gorman/Clancy disk which failed to identify The Mountain Road! (!) So I don't see Peter in the negative light you see him in. Kevin, if you've got in your possession many of the great recordings he has made (which I am assuming you do)--you ought to have a little gratitude, or at least a bit of magnanimity to overlook those faults or imperfections that may be there. It seems to me like he's very busy and needs help with his work-he posted a notice on his site to that effect.
Sorry, I don't mean to sound sanctimonious.
& if you did send those tune names to Peter, thanks Kevin! You helped out Peter, me, and everybody else who gets those recordings.
# Posted on April 16th 2005 by 2ndFiddle
Re: Peter Kennedy Question
Sorry, but this thread just beggars belief!
Here are the facts.
1) Kennedy was employed by the BBCfrom the early 1950s as part of a project to record the folk and traditional music of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales and did so - many of his recordings, along with those of Seamus Ennis and Brian George were subsequently broadcast on BBC radio.
2) Any contracts that were signed at the time involving Kennedy and the singers or musicians were actually between the BBC and said singers/musicians and did not involve a contract with Kennedy himself.
3) There is a stack of biographical and anecdotal evidence which indicates that, in many cases, such contracts were never profferred to the singer/musician. It's also the case that many of the Traveller musicians recorded by Kennedy could not have signed such contracts on the basis of a true understanding of the terms they contained since the musicians themselves were illiterate. There are also many accounts of musicians who actually refused to sign such contracts, but whose work has been subsequently issued by Kennedy without either their permission or that of their descendants. There is absolutely no evidence, for example, that either John Doherty or Neillidh Boyle ever signed a contract.
4) After leaving the BBC Kennedy claimed the rights to all his recordings on the questionable basis that they were made on his own tape recorder, despite the fact that he was working for the BBC at the time. For some reason, the BBC has never challenged this.
5) Kennedy's releases are shoddy - poorly produced, badly written notes and incorrect song and tune titles.. Many are clearly copies of BBC transcription discs - you can even hear the clicks from the original vinyl on some of them.
6) Kennedy has also released material to which he has absolutely no claim to copyright or had any involvement in recording. Most notably, this includes Tom Munnelly's recording of John Reilly and John Corry's recordings of Tyrone singers.
7) There is some evidence that Kennedy has paid royalties to some singers or their families. Unfortunately, there is also overwhelming evidence that the vast bulk has never received a penny.
8) There are singers and musicians who actually refused to be recorded by other collectors because they'd previously been visited by Kennedy and hadn't received a penny for their work.
Kennedy's standing in both Ireland and the UK is lower than a leech. If he had chosen to donate the Irish part of 'his' collection to an organisation such as the Irish Traditional Music Archive, then everyone would be happy. However, he has continued to profit personally from this and resists all attempts to get him to come clean on his past manoeuvres.
The good news is that, in Europe at least, everything Kennedy currently sells which is older than 50 years since it was recorded is now copyright free. I'm personally working on a complete Neillidh Boyle collection, of which more anon.
All the best,
Geoff
# Posted on April 16th 2005 by MacCruiskeen
Re: Peter Kennedy Question
Hmm. Geoff, sounds like you feel pretty strongly about this
I'm glad you posted. You obviously have access to more facts than I do, and that's why I asked the question in the first place--to get some more information. I'm new to this.
I would point out that lot of your assertions are rather vague, or rather that your allegations are somewhat telegraphic or conclusory, so that I would like to hear more. The following questions are intended not to irritate you or to suggest that what you are saying is wrong, but to elicit more information.
1. You talk about "overwhelming evidence". Can you name actual performers who went on the record and said they wouldn't record for anyone else because they were ripped off? i've seen these accusations elsewhere but they were never more specific.
2. If it was standard BBC practice to create contracts (a photo on one of the Folktrax discs shows Simi Doherty signing what is purported to be a contract), what makes you think there _wasn't_ a contract with John or with Neil? A seeming absence of evidence for positive does not always prove the negative. Has someone gone through BBCs legal files and reached this conclusion?
3. How much money in royalties do you really think there is to distribute? Perhaps I am naive but I don't imagine the market for such recordings is vast. Even in the world of ITM I imagine the great majority would think Neillidh Boyle egomaniacal and daft and his music screechy, eccentric, old-fashioned, and at times poorly executed. (I could be wrong about this, somebody please prove me wrong and start a Neillidh Boyle fan thread!) And as much as I love and look up to Michael Gorman, I could certainly understand why a lot of ITM listeners and musicians and even fiddlers would not be much interested in him, because he is not at all smooth and dazzling and easy and slick like some of the modern players. Kennedy's recordings of him are mostly unaccompanied, or accompanied by the sometimes monotonous banjo of the good Ms. Barry. I'm guessing too (and this is just a guess) that if most ITM fans got the Reg Hall compiliation of Michael they would feel they had more than enough of that (again, somebody please prove me wrong and start a Gorman fan thread!) What I am saying is, can Kennedy really profit all that much off of these recordings? (I honestly don't know, which is why I am asking.)
4. As to the "shoddiness", I have to say the Kennedy's first recording of Michael Gorman is one of my all-time favorite recordings, and that the other Gorman disc with the story of the naming of the Mountain Road is a close second. Reg Hall's compilation is certainly more extensive, assembling great material from Lomax and other sources (including a few of the great Gorman/Clancy tracks previously released on Folkways), but I do not think that it provides a better portrait of Michael than Folktrax 74 standing alone, despite the extensive and lovingly-researched liner notes of the Hall compiliation, because Kennedy's recordings give Michael a chance to tell a bit of his own story in his own voice, and to hear that voice is a great thing. Good God, you can't listen to the CD without coming away loving the man! On his best recordings Peter gives the performers ample time to talk, and their speech is often deeply informative, to say little. The Neillidh Boyle disc is a masterstoke. How could it be any better? I am afraid I just don't understand what you mean when you say that it's badly produced. Neil may not have made any money off of it, but his heart-felt opinions and his bird imitations are recorded for people to hear for generations to come. It is a master portrait and not at all "shoddy'! The editing is brilliant. And as to the skimpy notes, granted, not every tune is always identified, but what resources does Kennedy have to identify the tunes? He didn't publish until more than thirty years after most of the recordings and may have lost some of his notes. & if you know better maybe you should him like Kevin did & set the record straight. Reg Hall had the resources of Topic behind him, don't forget. I'd happily research a few sets of more extensive liner notes and send them to Peter gratis just so other people who were interested in these great musicians could learn more about them.
5. What good would it have done _me_ if Kennedy had donated his works to the ITMA? Who is "everyone"? That wouldn't have made _me_ happy! They might as well be in the boiler room of the Titantic as in the ITMA as far as I am concerned. (Somebody please explain to me: is ITMA a lock-box? Can you actually go there with an empty mp3 recorder and come out with priceless treasure?)
6. If in fact many of Kennedy's greatest recordings (1952-1955) are now or soon to be in the public domain, then what harm has been done to ITMA or to you or anyone else? Unless you live in Leinster it costs you more to go to ITMA than it does to send away for one of Kennedy's recordings. He doens't even charge much postage.
7. What attempts have there been to get him to "come clean"?
I so far for me everything pales in comparison to two main points: 1. the quality of the material, 2. it's availability. But like I say I am interested to hear specifics about the allegations.
In the alternative you can just write me off as an idiot
# Posted on April 17th 2005 by 2ndFiddle
Re: Peter Kennedy Question
Um. that should have been "its availability." I hate it when its and it's are swapped.
# Posted on April 17th 2005 by 2ndFiddle
Re: Peter Kennedy Question
Look on the Chiff and Fipple website for some more dirt on Peter. I'm forever grateful all this music has been made available to the public but I certainly don't have any scruples about obtaining it second-hand from his customers - or copying the CDs I did buy from him for other people. Tit for tat, you know. People do get very heated up over these issues.
So copyright has passed back to 1955? That means all the Seamus Ennis material Peter recorded is public domain now? I believe most of it was recorded in 1952, the "Pied Piper of Dublin" or "Morning Brush" record - Peter seems to have about four titles for it! Was recorded in '59. This was the source for the first track on the 40 years of Irish Piping LP, too. That was produced by Pat Sky, who's also rubbed people the wrong way on occasion.
In fairness to Pete and Pat the powers that be will sit on this kind of material forever if they're so inclined, while the rest of the world wonders what the big deal is. Can you even buy a Bobby Casey record right now, except Peter's?
# Posted on April 17th 2005 by KLR
Re: Peter Kennedy Question
Hmm. It seems the major objection to Peter is that he runs a web site which makes available to traditional musicians all of the field recordings he himself made while working for BBC in the 50s and 60s, plus some other recordings (either out-of-print or never otherwise published) which he was not involved in recording. And above all that he personally profits from this activity.
A distinction has to made here between the recordings he made and to which he can assert a (however ethically questionable) copyright, and other recordings to which he has no such copyright, though he is certainly free to publish and charge for anything which is in the public domain (something book publishers do all the time). If Peter publishes works to which he has no legitimate copyright or which are not public-domain material I do see that as an ethical problem only partly mitigated by the service to the tradition he performs by effectively rescuing this material from oblivion (or at the very least limbo) and making it available.
It seems to me that there currently exists between musicians and collectors a certain amount of private copying and distribution of noncommercial recordings and out-of-print commercial recordings (mostly of the "my friend gave me this, I'll pass it along to you" variety). I myself have been the beneficiary of this practice. This sort of thing may seem less objectionable than Peter's dealings, because the copying party does not profit by his act (except where an exchange or swap takes place). However, in this instance as in Peter's, the author of the recording (the musician) receives nothing for his performance (and on previously-published material receives no royalty). So there is no difference between this behavior and Peter's from the point of view of the artist, except that in Peter's case he typically has some sort of colorable copyright claim, and also that he distributes more copies.
It's a pity in a way that so many great recordings circulate privately only and therefore become available to musicians in the tradition only if they make connections with the right people. There must be a vast body of material of the highest quality passing hands. It would be nice if it were possible to make this material readily available to anyone interested in a copy, but if someone took Peter's approach and started openly selling recordings from a web site easily Google-able [neologism?] the problem that the musicians on the recordings aren't receiving anything would be worse than in Peter's case, where at least he has a colorable legal claim (even if ethically repugnant to many).
The same problem applies to archives like the ITMA who have a gold mine of material but can't release any of it because of the legal and ethical problems. I still wish that the ITMA and other archives would act as clearing-houses for public domain material and would love to see a publisher make it possible for private collectors to make public domain material in their collections available for wider publication (by the hypothetical non-profit publisher) upon reaching some kind of financial arrangement between the collector and the publisher. Another pipes-dream would be an organization which could research and determine who ought receive profits from publication of material (in many cases a still-living author or his or her family). It would then publish material from private collections at a price determined by overhead plus the cost of royalties paid to the rights holders. The royalty might be 25 or fifty cents per track. Prior to release the publisher could offer a standard contract to the rights-holder, which, if the holder declined, would prevent release.
Unfortunately the demand is probably so small that such a publisher couldn't survive even if it worked mostly with public domain material (do Topic et al make a proft on releases like The Sligo Champiom?).
A publishing company of this sort could in theory be run by a consortium or union of artists as well, a higher-tech version of Ed Reavy's Phildelphia Irish Musicians Union which could cut out the big-publishing-house middleman.
But I am rambling hopelessly at this point.... & I suppose there are already independent labels much like that already.
So I am left with the dilemma as to what to do about Foltrax. I want more recodings in the catalogue. I think what I'll do is simply to order them from Peter like I ordered the others. It happens that many of the recordings I want appear to be in the public domain in any case, so that I can order them from Peter with a clear conscience. His prices aren't exhorbitant in my view and delivery is quick and reliable. I am new to the ITM scene and it sure beats begging on on the lists
# Posted on April 18th 2005 by 2ndFiddle