This is a difficult question, but what did the members of the Ceilidh Band movement think they we trying to achieve.

Some members of the Ceilidh Band movement would have you think they were trying to preserve a dying music. Well, yes, the music may have been dying-out, or it had gone underground. Music collectors in the 1960s and 70 had found numerous musicians and recordings were made of musicians playing regularly in Sussex, Kent, Hampshire and the whole of East Anglia. Granted, most of these musicians were in their 70s and 80s with few younger people involved.

Ceilidh band musicians did meet these people and learnt their tunes. They learnt some of their tunes, but many of the tunes they played were no taken up. Many musician played ‘hits of the day’ and other popular tunes such as Wild Rover, Turkey in the Straw as well as songs from World War Two. Tunes like this, that did not conform to English Traditional Music were cast aside.

Many musicians did make visits to folk festivals and similar events, often taken by Ceilidh Band musicians. Almost like zoo exhibits, they were taken, put on a stage, formally introduced and made to play. Playing in public arenas such as these were not what they were used to, and they often failed to produce acceptable performances.

So what did the Ceilidh Band musicians want. Well, they want the tunes which they got. Many musicians changed the style to a slower, step-hop style. This style grew and became the accepted style: it was the opposite to the style supported by the English Folk Dance and Song Society which had also been manufactured in the late 1940s and early 50s. One interviewee was quite cynical about the movement; after the initial formation, musicians realised that they could have a good time with the music and bands played at festivals and large dances. They began to attracted a large number of followers who liked the high-energy dancing. Did the Ceilidh Band musicians follow the money?

I am researching into the Ceilidh Band movement during the late 1960s and the early 1970s.

I have been interviewing several people who were involved in the movement including dance music  collectors, musicians and record producers. I was particularly interested when I spoke to the record producer. He told me that when they recorded East Anglian musicians, they had been recommended to the record company by other musicians and the producer went down to East Anglia and spoke to the musicians and sealed the deal. The record company booked out the local village Hall for the weekend and set up the tape-recording machine and microphones on Friday night. Saturday morning run throughs were made, recording levels set, microphones re-located to avoid external noises ec. Saturday afternoon the proper recording sessions took place. Twenty recordings were made of four performers. Masses of open-tape was used, as recordings were recorded on full-track at 15 inches per second.

Back in London, the tapes were edited, the order or performances confirmed. Artwork for the record cover commissioned, notes from an ‘expert’ sought and then printed. 500 copies of the recorded were sent away to ‘Decca’ for pressing. Interesting, producing a cover is much more expensive than record-presing, so in this instance 2500 covers were printed and only 500 records. Depending on sales, further copies can be pressed. What about storage costs for record covers!

Then, advertising in trade and customer magazines, records sent out to reviewers, records shipped to customers!

Although this is a summary of the production, it is an involved business. In this case, the record was not a big-seller. A second pressing took place, and in total 750 records were sold.