Clyde Water (Nic Jones)

From Spiers & Boden's  2008 release Vagabond, with lyrics by one William Shakespeare.

The Rain It Rains

In the early 1980s the Essex-based broadcaster and journalist Dennis Rookard produced a series of radio ballads to be broadcast on hospital radio. This month’s recording is an extract from one of those programmes – called Wind Over Tilbury – which was based around Tilbury Docks and told the story of the enormous changes to working practices brought about by the introduction of containerisation in the 1960s. It was first broadcast on Basildon Hospital Radio.

‘Radio ballad’ is a term used to describe a particular type of radio programme which uses a mixture of songs and the spoken word to create an entertaining, possibly sentimental, form of documentary. The term was coined for a series of programmes made between 1957 and 1964 for the BBC Home Service by Charles Parker, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger. They were entirely new in that they used the voices of the ordinary people involved, carefully edited and interwoven with the music, to tell the story without the need for a narrator. 

Dennis Rookard was greatly influenced by this series and he used a similar template to make his radio ballads which, like the originals, were generally focussed on the working lives of ordinary people and used folk music to tell the story. In Wind Over Tilbury and other programmes the South-Essex musician and songwriter Jack Forbes has composed songs specifically related to the subject in hand.

The extract I have chosen is the part of the programme in which we hear a large container ship called Jervis Bay being lined up to enter a lock. Amongst other things, it provides evidence for the assertion that radio is better than television because it allows you to create your own pictures. I hope you enjoy it.

Martin Astell
Sound Archivist

The Essex Record Office can preserve your old recordings, or provide talks and training on oral history and sound archives. To find out more about the services we offer, visit our website - www.essexrecordoffice.co.uk/services/sound-video-services/.


Docking of the Jervis Bay (SA 19/1057/1)

RETURN FROM HELSINKI - Album Preview Jan 2024

I wasn't certain what to title this track. Then as I was recording it, a stink bug crawled onto my computer (who is the being of which I said "Om Namah Shivaya" to at the end of the recording). So I thought I'd title it for this insect. While they do stink, "stink bug" doesn't seem to be the nicest name for this beetle. So I titled it "Geometric Master of Walking Meditation", since to me they look like some sort of abstract geometric African art, and they walk in a slow manner that appears reminiscent of walking meditation. I wasn't certain if I would definitely title it this, but then it flew up and landed on a photo of Thich Nhat Hanh doing a walking meditation in a lotus flower garden, which made me feel certain that I should indeed stick with this title.

Instruments:
tenor guitar, flutes, tin whistle, tingsha bell, triangle

Geometric Master Of Walking Meditation

A set of variations for Northumbrian small pipes by Chris Ormston, of The Lass that Made the Bed to Me, a song by Robert Burns.

THE LASS THAT MADE THE BED TO ME

Composed in memory of Professor Ross Anderson

Professor Ross Anderson

Never written in

The Restless Feet of Jimmy Allen

Composed to mark the 150th anniversary of the Hartley Pit Disaster

Fathers and Sons: A Lament for Hartley

This track features Becky playing the Northumbrian Small Pipes at the tender age of 15. It's taken from the album New Horizon which is still available on vinyl and CD format from the Chantry Bagpipe Museum in Morpeth.

Permission to reproduce this track was kindly given by the Northumbrian Pipers' Society.

Bobby Casey's Hornpipe/The Orphan (Trad.)

We all need a bit of love and madness. Enter the Northumbrian Small Pipes

The Restless Feet of Jimmy Allen

JonTheReeds

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