Singing The Fishing - Radio-Ballads 3

Ewan/Charles Parker/Peggy Seeger, Ewan MacColl | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 10, 2002)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Topic
• ASIN: B00000JG3V
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #436,249 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the finest radio programs ever made, now on CD, June 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Singing The Fishing - Radio-Ballads 3 (Audio CD)

The story of herring fishing in England and Scotland from the 1880's to the 1950's.

A beautiful recording to send shivers up your spine. Much based on the life of Sam Larner, who tells of how he started on board a sailing ship when aged about 12 in the 1880's.

The blending of actuality, speech and song has never been surpassed. The songs were written based on interviews and speech patterns of those interviewed, and have a real feeling of "traditional" song. They are not just incidental, but really help the action along. "Shoals of Herring" is perhaps the most famous song from the programme, but all the songs are pure imagery.

A fine document, and one which no one interested in recording techniques should leave unheard.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A classic in the true sense of the word - excellent, June 6, 2009

By 

Niall Macdonagh - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Singing The Fishing - Radio-Ballads 3 (Audio CD)

I remember, back in the early sixties, my Dad telling me how wonderful Ewan McColl's radio ballads and particularly Singing the Fishing were. The problem was I had to take that on faith because they had only been heard on radio and had never been issued on record. Sure, some of the songs (The Shoals of Herring, the North Sea Holes and others) had made it onto record but I had no way of knowing what a masterpiece this was. Finally, in the 70s, it got published on Argo. Even the opening announcements, in perfect BBC English, were exciting. I was mesmerized. I wish I had a way of explaining just how good this is and why. It is a documentary but it is so much more than that. It is about singing but that only begins to say what it is. Look at the price and think how often you have paid more than that for an indifferent dinner. To be able to pay that llittle for a masterpiece?