There’s great news for those who love folk music. The Telegraph reports:
Topic Records, who will celebrate their 75th anniversary in April 2014, and who are Europe’s oldest independent label, will undertake one of the biggest digitisation projects by a small record label ever seen.
This month, the label will launch ‘The Great Big Digital Archive Project‘, with 84 folk albums available to download complete with digital booklets, artwork, documentation and sleeve-notes. The first tranche of releases will include rare albums by Dominic Behan, Davy Graham, Ewan MacColl, Tom Paley, Willie Clancy and Rambling Jack Elliott.
Thereafter, a programme of six to ten additional titles (from vinyl LPs originally released in the 1950s, 60s and 70s) will be released every month throughout the year. The digital booklets for each album will be available from the Topic website as well as iTunes. Many of the records have been out of print for decades.
There’s more at the link.
A list of albums and artists currently available for download is available at Topic’s Web site. As a folk music aficionado of long standing, I have to admit that I’m sorely tempted to buy the lot! However, I’ll be good . . . for now . . .
The company released this video clip about its program.
I’m really looking forward to this!
Peter
This is a great idea. My husband grew up with many British folksingers. He'll be happy to see this.
Peter,
Many thanks for ferreting this out. I can see lots of long lost treasures in the list that I thought I'd never hear again.