When we released the 1960s Fred Hamer recordings of Harry Green on cassette in 1998, the album was met with great approval. Since it became unavailable we have had constant requests for it to be re-released on CD. So here it is in all its digital glory. Harry was born in 1874 and lived in Tilty near Bishop’s Stortford in rural Essex. Whether he performed a rural ditty, a comic recitation or a rarely heard classic ballad he always had a certain twinkle in his voice.

Realising there are just forty minutes of recordings of Harry, we scoured the sound archives for other Essex traditional singers and came up with four great ones: Ernest Austin (Great Bentley), 'Sugar' Bailey (Shallow Bowells), Stan Walters (Stansted Mountfitchet) and Lorna Tarran (West Mersea). So the new CD has two tracks from each of them plus seventeen from Harry plus, of course, a sixteen booklet with photos, biographies and song notes. Yet another piece in our East Anglian jigsaw!

Tracks (click on the title to see the words of each song and read notes about it)

Harry Green 

  1. The Merchant's Daughter and the Highwayman (3.25)

  2. The Pear Tree (2.00)

  3. Two Sweethearts (2.03)

  4. When Jones' Ale was New (2.29)

  5. The Blackguard Gypsies (0.55)

  6. Oh Joe the Boat is Going Over (2.45)

Ernest Austin

  7. John Barleycorn (4.25)

  8. Hares on the Mountain /Knife in the Window (3.16)

’Sugar’ Bailey

  9. The Photo of the Girl I Left Behind (2.12)

 10. Bunch of Thyme (2.08)

Harry Green

 11. The Fox and the Hare (2.42)

 12. Green Mossy Banks of the Lea (0.55)

 13. Treat my Daughter Kindly (2.28)

 14. Banks of the Sweet Primroses (0.50)

 15. Down in the Fields Where the Buttercups All Grow (3.11)

Stan Walters

 16. A Girl Who Led a Life so Straight (2.31)

 17. When Irish Eggs are Frying (0.37)

Lorna Tarran

 18. The Herring Song (2.03)

 19. The Flash Girl (4.07)

Harry Green

 20. As I Walked Out One May Morning (2.03)

 21. Once I Courted a Fine Young Lass (1.58)

 22. Thaxted Bells (0.13)

 23. She Was a Stranger in London (3.42)

 24. Ladies Won't you Marry (2.33)

 25. The Nutting Girl (3.26)

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