A charming slice of radio history
Zack Davisson | Seattle, WA, USA | 11/27/2001
(5 out of 5 stars)
""Sing Christmas and Turn of the Year" is an exceptional CD. Alan Lomax, a Texan in Great Britain, broadcast this program in 1957 connecting all the corners of the country. This CD contains all of his on-air talk, as well as live traditional folk music. There is a great contrast between Lomax's Texan accent and the accent's of Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales.The show moves pretty fast, and many of the songs are snippets rather than the full tune. Nice moments are when the same song is sung by different countries, with Lomax moving the show between them. These transitions do a very good job of highlighting the differences between the various cultures of the British Isles.There is some nice story-telling along with the songs. Traditions are discussed. English, Gaelic, Irish and Welsh are intermixed in an authentic manner. Alan Lomax even chimes in with a song of his own. Highly recomended."
The Christmas Spirit of an entire country
Charles Seelig | Providence, RI | 12/05/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)
"While the quality of the individual works is not up to par with so many professional recordings, that is not the reason to buy this CD. It has only been 12 years since the end of World War II and the reverberations of that war still echo through the corners of Great Britain. Alan Lomax, the esteemed folk musicologist puts together a live radio program from all parts of the nation of Christmas music and words. Nowadays, that feat would be shrugged off, but almost 50 years go, the spirit and optimism that this could and should be done overcame any naysayers. You get a sense of a country rebuilding, of a nation of parts yet also of a whole. And it's Christmas, the time when miracles like this can occur. Imagine radios all over Great Britain (and who knows, by the miracle of shortwave, other places in the world) tuned to listen to players, singers, and wordsmiths of all types uniting in the spirit of the occasion. It may not be something that you'll play repeatedly, but you will glad to own it if you have any sense of history, any belief in the strength of radio, and want to have aural proof of the idea of Christmas."
An amazing radio show!
Joe Sixpack -- Slipcue.com | ...in Middle America | 10/29/2002
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Fans of uber-folklorist Alan Lomax will be floored by this holiday oriented tour de force, an amazing live BBC broadcast from Christmas Day, 1957, which gathered the talents of revered revivalists such as A. L. Lloyd, Seamus Ennis, Cyril Tawney, Ewan MacColl and a young Shirley Collins. From studios in Belfast, Birmingham, London, Wales, Plymouth, Derbyshire and Scotland, they were all contributing live on the air to an elaborate Christmas pageant that included not only British and Celtic folk material (including plenty of pagan and protest music), but also the rockin' new skiffle style and a bit of calypso and African highlife music from Britain's immigrant communities(!). The tightly scripted program features narration by Lomax, who had spent the bulk of the '50s in the UK, hosting various folk programs on radio and TV, and who waxes eloquent about the social and mystical roots of Britain's Christmas traditions. Lomax was ahead of the curve in so many ways on this project, it's hard to know where to begin -- stylistically, technically, crossculturally -- this was an ambitious, professionally realized broadcast that gathered together the best of Britain's folk talent, and yet retained the charm of a grade school talent show. Fascinating as a work of art and an historical document, this is one of the jewels of Rounder's extensive program reissuing Lomax's vast recorded legacy. The songs and snippets whiz by too fast, but it's still a dazzling show!"
Track Listings (28) - Disc #1