[mplpost] 'live' interviews

[Bill Usher]

> From: "Mike McKee" <mckee@unm.edu>
> Reply-To: maplepost@icomm.ca
> Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 16:36:03 -0700
> To: <maplepost@icomm.ca>
> Subject: Re: [mplpost] 'live' interviews
> 
snip
> 
> I've been "listening" here for a few days.  What prompts me to finally write
> was Bill Usher's reminiscence.  I remember the show he did for the CBC radio
> and one of my favorite episodes was on Eric and Marty Nagler (Old, Not for
> the Sake of Being Old ...).  Thanks Bill, I always loved your work.


Thanks Mike for your kind words.

The Eric and Marty piece was one of those special hour long documentaries
that I got to do every now and then. Many Maple posters will remember David
Dobbs who engineered a lot of those 4S CBC recording sessions for Paul that
helped many a folk musician pay the rent that month.

David didn't suffer fools gladly or the country for that matter but he was a
brilliant engineer and he graciously and (foolishly) agreed to bring a Nagra
and a couple of great condenser mics up with me to Killaloe (north of
Bancroft - east of the Ottawa Valley) to stay with Eric and Marty in their
cabin. No running water, oil lamps - battery packs.

We spent a few days recording in and out of the cabin. Marty told stories of
Bob and Evelyn Beers, her parents and a pretty influential musical family in
the American folkie world at the time.

Eric took us off to a side trip to meet one of the older locals that they
had made friends with. The elder lady pulled out an old record and put it on
- my memory says it was a 78 but, I'm not sure. It was Frank Leahy (elder of
the now even more famous Leahy family) on fiddle accompanied by piano
playing a beautiful old Ontario waltz.

David had tape rolling. Somehow, the idea of 4 or 5 people sitting around in
an old trailer listening to a 78 doesn't seem like it would make great radio
- but it did. You could hear the old lady talking over the piece as it
played telling us of the old dances and get-togethers she went to when she
was younger and times were different.

You almost got the name of the piece right Mike. It was called "Old for the
Sake of Beauty, Magic and Good Times."

Bill


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