Tune bank

About the Project

Joe Scurfield (1958-2005) was a fiddler, entertainer, active socialist and a friend and inspiration to many. He was one of the founder members of The Old Rope String Band who you can read about here https://newropestringband.com/history/. But this website is about Joe’s Tune Bank. What he loved was playing, learning and sharing fiddle tunes. Most of these tunes were recorded on a basic, portable cassette player in Joe’s kitchen at 2 Wellesley Terrace, Fenham, Newcastle upon Tyne in the 1990s and early 2000s. It’s the house on the corner with the topiary-train hedge that was another of Joe’s projects. It’s a living tribute to him and being very well maintained.

So when Joe found a new tune he liked, he’d play it twice through on the current cassette and list it in his notebook. Some details are a bit sketchy. There’s quite a few that just say ‘Reel in D’ or ‘Jig in C’ but some have additional notes about where he got them. The titles on the tracks are what he has said aloud on the tape or what is in the notes. For some unknown reason, some of the numbers are missing and some are repeated, so that on Tape 9A, for example, there are three different tunes all numbered 476. We decided it would be more confusing to start numbering different to what Joe says on the tape so we’ve turned these into 476, 476a, and 476b.

Regarding names of tunes, we have put a dotted line or a question mark where we either couldn’t read Joe’s writing or make out what he’s saying on the tape. If you have any additional information about any of them let us know and we’ll add it. Over time we will hopefully find complete names for all the tunes.

Joe was always very organised, in his own unique way. What he has left behind is an amazing cross-section of tunes from Irish, Scottish, Swedish and American traditions with some other exotics thrown in like three tunes learned in China from a blind erhu-playing busker called Chen (285-289 tape 5 ), or some Quadrilles learned in the Grenadine Island of Cariacou from an old guy called Canute Caliste (472-474 Tape 9).

There are a few tunes that were Joe’s own compositions, e.g. 160 Reel Madrid and 161 Reel to Reel (tape 3), 286 Fire Hose Reel (Tape 5), 315 The Bacon Thief of Longtown (Tape 6), 439 I’m Going to Speke (Tape 8), 420 The Creche Jig (Tape 7), 621 The Bells of Hazelbruick Jig , 622 Jig in E the ‘Lost Jig’ and 623 Reel in A (Tape 10).

Thanks to all the friends who helped chop up large sound files into individual tunes.

Enjoy the tunes. Thanks Joe.

Donate

If you’ve enjoyed Joe’s Tunebank please make a small contribution to help with the upkeep. There are some monthly running costs to host this amount of music files and we don’t want the people who have given time and skill to put it together to be left out of pocket.

Should you donate very generously and we suddenly find a large surplus we will decide on a good cause to support. At Joe’s funeral in 2005, we collected money for the Cuba Solidarity Music Fund, for example. We will find one of the many current campaigns that Joe would have been keen to support. Rest assured your donation will be put to good use. Thanks.

Contact

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