Founder Paul Adams
Linda Adams Country of origin England Official website www.fellside.com | Genre Folk, jazz Location Workington, Cumbria Founded 1976 | |
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Distributor(s) Proper Music Distribution Albums Game of Life, A Distance from the Town Profiles | ||
Fellside Recordings is a record label formed by Paul Adams and Linda Adams in 1976 in Workington, Cumbria, and still run by them.
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Paul Adams toured semi-professionally with the Barry Skinner Folk Group in his teens. He and Linda married in 1974. Fellside started as a folk music label. They issued jazz under the name LAKE and children's records as "small folk". In 2007, BBC radio celebrated the company with a program called "30 Years of Fellside". Three of their acts, John Spiers & Jon Boden, Nancy Kerr & James Faga, and Kirsty McGee were nominated for BBC Folk Awards, and two of the acts were winners on the night. The label has won many awards including 12 from the Music Retailers Association.
Most of the Fellside catalogue was recorded and produced by Paul Adams.
The Amazon website lists over 130 titles still in print, including albums by Spiers and Boden, Nancy Kerr & James Fagan, Dr Faustus, 422, Fribo, Hughie Jones, A. L. Lloyd, Peter Bellamy, James Keelaghan, Clive Gregson, The Queensberry Rules, Jez Lowe, Last Orders, Bram Taylor, and Grace Notes. Their anthologies have included songs by Maddy Prior, Richard Thompson, Frankie Armstrong, John Kirkpatrick and Martin Carthy. Fellside, along with Topic Records, are the two most significant and longest serving record labels for traditional music in the UK.
On the jazz side, LAKE Records's roster includes George Melly, Digby Fairweather, Ottilie Patterson, Phil Mason, John Hallam, The Fryer-Barnhart International All Star Jazz Band, The Savannah Jazz Band, Spats Langham, Debbie Arthurs and Keith Nichols.
In 2004 they started reissuing recordings from the defunct jazz label Record Supervision. This included the reissue of albums by Humphrey Lyttelton, Acker Bilk, Alex Welsh, Ken Colyer, Chris Barber, Terry Lightfoot, Sandy Brown, and Archie Semple. Singsong described this set of reissues as "A milestone in British jazz". They have a "Vintage" Series as well as a series recorded at the legendary Dancing Slipper Jazz Club in Nottingham in the 1960s.
LAKE has won a BT British Jazz Award and Paul Adams was nominated for a BBC Jazz Award.
The Tradition Masters
Jazz albums on LAKE
The themed albums
Voices: English Traditional Songs (various artists) (FECD87) All the singers here are what are termed Revival singers having come into this style of singing through the folk song revival. Many were probably influenced by singing traditions within their own families, but they have also turned to books, recordings and other revival singers as well as the whole gamut of 20th Century musical culture, to develop their style. They will also have used as their focal point what are termed "source" singers: people who have grown up in a culture where singing songs (traditional or otherwise) was part of the life which went on around them. Various source singers are mentioned in the notes to the songs and the listener is encouraged to seek out what recordings are available. There are almost four generations of revival singers represented here: starting with the late A. L. Lloyd, on to Cyril Tawney, Hughie Jones and Martin Carthy to Jez Lowe and The Wilson Family right up to young singers such as Damien Barber and Eliza Carthy who have joined the continuum. It is hard to find a stereotype folk singer here. A wide variety of styled and techniques are used. All have absorbed from, and paid their dues to, the tradition. This album does not set out to represent all types of traditional songs. The singers were asked to contribute a song of their choice. In fact you will find examples of sea songs, broken token ballads, rustic idylls, industrial ballads, ritual songs and classic ballads. The sources include songs from the early collections of Cecil Sharp, from the continuing traditions of families such as the Coppers from Sussex and from other singers who are still alive. Are traditional songs relevant today? This subject could occupy many pages, but suffice it to say that you will find in these songs madness, abduction, sex, transvestites, songs about work, tall tales, love, war and all the other things we read about in our daily papers which have interested folk for centuries.
Rolling Down to Old Maui (various artists) (FECD140) The traditional songs of this association with the sea can be divided into three types: work songs (usually called Shanties), fo'csle songs (songs sung by mariners in their leisure time) and shore songs (about the sea, ships, sailors etc. but probably originating on land). Such divisions can be very arbitrary and there could be a fair amount of cross-over. The approach with all these songs has not been to go for authenticity. They have been treated as songs for singing and/or listening to. Where appropriate we have indicated the type of job for which a particular song in its original form would be used. For anyone interested in shanties the best text on the subject is Shanties Of The Seven Seas by Stan Hugill.
A Celebration of English Traditional Songs and their Australian variants (various artists) (FECD176D, double album) "Song Links" is a project that was conceived when Martin Wyndham-Read realised that certain Australian traditional songs were related to those of the British Isles. The history of Australia is of course tied to that of the British Isles, and with so many people having come from there to Australia, voluntarily or involuntarily, many of their songs have inevitably travelled with them. Often these songs would have been the only source of solace to the convicts, early settlers, migrants, or goldrushers. It could be, for instance, that a Sussex shepherd, transported for some petty crime, took with him the knowledge of the Bonny Bunch Of Roses-O, and sang it to others. Over time, the words altered as they were passed along orally and people forgot or mentally re-wrote certain parts, so that for instance the phrase "beaten by the drifting snow" has become replaced by "overpowered by grief and woe"; but the basic structure of the song has remained the same. Such a combination of differences and common elements makes the comparison between Australian versions of these songs and their counterparts from the British Isles a fascinating study.
A Celebration of English Traditional Songs and their American variants (various artists) (FECD190D, double album) Also conceived by Martyn Wyndham-Read, Song Links 2 compares and contrasts English traditional songs with versions that have travelled over the Atlantic and been sung (and further developed) in North America with a cast of folk performers representing the cream of singers specialising in traditional songs from their own country.
Trip to Harrowgate (various artists) (FTSR2) Tunes & songs from Joshua Jackson's book — 1798. In Yorkshire lives a family called Jackson, millers and farmers in the Harrogate area for many generations. Fiddler ancestor Joshua Jackson kept a manuscript book from the late 1700s, with tunes, dance instructions and songs, and it is some of these which have been recorded here. With fiddle, concertina, mandolin, harmonium, small pipes, whistle, melodeon, banjo, guitar, and vocals a grand album has been produced. A piece of musical history with a strong Yorkshire accent.
Enlist for a Soldier (various artists) (FTSR3) Not just pretty old songs about muskets and cockades, swordsmen and battle chargers, but the stark reality of current loss of life in Ireland, and the ridiculous atrocities of the Falklands War. Gunners, light horsemen, female drummers, foul sergeants, conscription and present-day insanities. Three hundred years and more of soldiering songs sung to appropriately stark accompaniment.
The Bold Navigators (various artists) (FTSR4) The Story of England's Canals in Song. The period from the early 1760s through to the 1800s was a time of massive expansion of the English canal network — the motorway system of the day. The navvies recorded their triumphs, and more frequent trials and tribulations, in song. Recorded mainly in 1974 and now re-released, The Bold Navigators records the difficulties, the dreams, the realities and the results — a fascinating album of folk-song in its socio-historical setting.
Seasons, Ceremonies & Rituals (various artists) (FTSR5) Here is an album that places the songs — most of them Northern English — in their seasonal context. Such favourites as The Boar's Head Carol, Trunkles, and Country Garden are joined by other less well-known songs played and sung by local artistes.