Here are some remarkable Scottish recordings made by Goldstein
In about 1971 the Cleethorpes Festival reunited Archie and Ray Fisher, Glasgow siblings who had not sung together since 1968. Goldstein recorded a 30 minute set, four joint tracks and two solo songs each. The singing is so fine, though Ray's powerful voice distorts the Air Falala Lo sound.
In 1980 Goldstein recorded some unusual Scots songs from Alex Willox, of Fetterangus. I have not so far been able to learn anything about him.
One of his songs, The Bald Headed End Of The Broom is a well known US Old Timey song, to a different tune. Another song, Russian Lass, manages to combine references to the wars of the Crimea, South Africa and WW1.
Elizabeth Stewart of Fetterangus was invited to tour in the USA in 1972, and took the opportunity to visit her friends the Goldsteins in Philadelphia. Here she sings to an academic group there.
There is a 1960 Goldstein reel with songs by Elizabeth and Jane Stewart of Fetterangus. Elizabeth pays piano and their mother Jean plays accordion. None of these lovely tracks were copied by Goldstein to Tobar An Dualchais, so here they can be heard for the first time in 60+ years.
NOTE. When Ewan MacColl visited and heard how the girls played The Hill O Bennachie he was inspired to write 'Come Aa Ye Fisher Lassies', and get the girls to perform it on 'Singing The Fishing'.
On 'I Am A Miller' the girls' aunt Lucy sings, with percussion accompaniment by several hands to imitate the sounds of an old-fashioned water-driven meal mill working.
Other singers have sought to imitate the mill's sound by bumping elbow and hands on a tabletop, or on the back of a turned over guitar, but this track gives the most authentic effect.
There is a 78rpm disc I have heard of I think Willie Kemp, singing the song in an actual mill. At the start he asks, 'Is the mill aa iled? Then, pull the cloot kimmer.' You hear the mill wheel starting and gathering speed.
Aberdonian Norman Kennedy moved to live in the USA in about 1966. I met him sat weaving within a handloom found and brought down from Nova Scotia by himself and Ralph Rinzler, in a small shop round the corner from Harvard Square in Cambridge Mass. On the wall hung a fretless banjo made by Frank Profitt which I would be asked to demonstrate for customers.
In the 1970s Norman had moved on, and here are excepts from a recording of him telling about and singing 'blue' songs to a Philadelphia audience.
Jean Redpath of Leven in Fife worked back and forward between Scotland and the USA from the 1960s. In 1971 she spoke and sang to a Philadelphia audience, saying that she recognised many of the faces there. Latterly known for her serious side, here she shows how well she used observational humour.