Description

Will Noble comes from a South Pennine family of farmers and builders and is well-known to lovers of English traditional song for his rich oak baritone and his repertoire of Yorkshire songs, many of them learned at the hunt suppers of the Holme Valley Beagles during the early 1970s. He sang with the group The Holme Valley Tradition for several years, and later as a duo with John Cocking (see VT147CD ‘Yon Green Banks’) but is now best known as a solo singer, having appeared at many festivals and traditional singing events, and been twice invited to the USA. Will is also a dry-stone waller with an international reputation, a craft reflected in the title of this new CD. His son Cuthbert and daughter Lydia are both keeping the family traditions of walling and singing and can be heard on several tracks providing vocal encouragement. Here Will presents a selection of songs he’s never recorded before; although many have connections with his own home ground, others were learned during his travels to folk clubs and festivals, and there are some newer pieces as well. They were never precious about the repertoire at the old singing dos,” he recalls, “you could sing anything.” It’s a tribute to Will’s natural way with a song that everything on this recording, whatever its origin, comes out sounding as if hewn from the very millstone grit of the Yorkshire Dales.

Tracks

1. The Brown Hare of Whitebrook (4.46)
2. Edward (2.32)
3. Boys of Marsden (3.09)
4. Nothing Else to Do (1.39)
5. Little Musgrave (5.32)
6. It Hails, It Rains (1.37)
7. Doctor Mack (3.42)
8. Watercresses (3.39)
9. The Outlandish Knight (4.27)
10. Watter Rattle (2.29)
11. Two Sisters (3.06)
12. Female Cabin Boy (2.58)
13. Jepson Brown (1.44)
14. Walling Song (2.43)