Full Circle

Classic house sessions of traditional Cape Breton Music 1956-1977

Can anyone tell me much about bill lamey? I had never heard of him before, until yesterday. I was at this little store that sells old LPS for like 3 dollars and I came across him and thought, “hell its only three bucks, so if its awful who cares?” I thought his playing was absolutely amazing! I was even more excited it only cost me three dollars. I reccomend him.

Tell us more - for example, what does he play?

http://www.folkmusic.net/htmfiles/inart642.htm

An article with some more information:

http://www.folkmusic.net/htmfiles/inart642.htm

Interesting. Mentions the late Ron Gonella - some fiddle player he was!

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004S5EH/thesession-20/103-3281397-6668609

Amazon has a bunch of samples if you scroll down the page.

Anna, you should post your review in the recordings section. The comments section on that recording is awfully sparse. 🙂

He was a fiddle player. sorry guess I forgot to mention that. All I know really know about him is that he was born in 1914 in cape breton and that he eventually moved to massachusettes. He really does play very wonderfully though. I thought the old LPS capture fiddle playing a certain way that cds just can;t do. I just like how it sounds better on LPS I guess.

thanks for the links guys. They helped alot.

Bill Lamey was Jerry Holland’s main fiddle teacher and influence. Bill’s daughter Mary has been active in producing Cape Breton concerts in the Boston area for years. And Bill’s grandson Doug is a fine fiddler, I think in his late teens or early 20s.

http://www.cranfordpub.com/recordings/Lamey.htm

Altan picked up some tunes from his recordings. You’ll find a couple of tunes associated with him in the database.

“Classic house sessions of traditional Cape Breton Music 1956-1977”. Debateable - Niel Gow, Donald MacLeod and G.S. MacLennan weren’t from Cape Breton, although there’s no doubt that their music is very popular there.
Having said that, I enjoyed the “Shanachie” re-issue of Bill Lamey’s classic recordings, and would love to hear this recording were it ever to be re-issued.

Bit of a pedant, are you, Kenny? By that standard, nearly all CB music from Lamey’s time isn’t trad CB music, because it’s trad Scottish. As if tunes cannot be trad in more than one area?

And then there are those Scottish tunes that have taken on a life of their own in Cape Breton. Compare the original version of Marshall’s “Miss Gordon Fochabers” with Buddy MacMaster’s version, and you’ll see what I mean. Heck, the same thing happened in Ireland. “The Braes of Auchtertyre” and the myriad Irish (and American) descendants, “Sandy Duff” to “The High Reel”, “John Roy Stewart” to both “Maud Miller” tunes and “Julia Delaney”, etc., etc., etc.