Coat-Tails Flying

Being able to play just about any kind of music on any kind of squeezebox (with buttons, that is), John Kirkpatrick has, on many of his albums, worked best with the discipline of a theme or concept. In 2015 there was Tunes from the Trenches, and before that albums of Christmas songs, farming songs, Shropshire songs and so on. Here Kirkpatrick has exuberantly broken free of all constraints and recorded 14 pieces chosen simply because they are among his favourites and go down well at concerts. This is, then, a musical pot pourri, beginning with the traditional song ‘Come All You Jolly Ploughboys’ and ending with Rodgers & Hart's ‘Blue Moon’. In between there is ‘Bum She Addity’, the musical equivalent of a saucy seaside postcard, followed immediately by ‘My Soul is Drowned in Sorrow’, an 18th-century Icelandic hymn, with a beautiful melody in the Phrygian mode.
We know from their tune books that traditional musicians drew their repertoire from many sources. They sang old ballads and music-hall songs, played military marches and the latest dance tunes. So does Kirkpatrick; ‘On the Quarter Deck’ is by the ‘British March King’ Kenneth J Alford and ‘See Me Dance the Polka’ is one of 600 songs by the Victorian entertainer George Grossman. In this, Kirkpatrick shows himself a proper folk musician. With his coat-tails flying, Kirkpatrick is happily enjoying himself; and listeners will too.