'Composer' got rich on working people's songs

There were however a couple of minor errors that perhaps need correcting.

Joseph Taylor, from whom Percy Grainger got Brigg Fair, was a gamekeeper not a shepherd. It was also Fredrick Delius who orchestrated the air as part of his Song of Summer which was given to him by Grainger.

Grainger himself is to be commended for actually recording Joseph Taylor, recordings that were made available by Bill Leader in the early 1970s on an album titled Unto Brigg Fair.

I don't know if the recording is still available but it's well worth tracking down for the sheer artistry of his singing and a severe rebuke to those in the cultural elite who maintain that working people are incapable of producing anything culturally worthwhile for themselves.

Less commendable is the fact that while Grainger made money out of Brigg Fair, it never occurred to him to give any of it to Joseph Taylor.

He performed a similar trick with the tunes Country Gardens and Sheppard's Hey which he orchestrated and made a small fortune from.

Both of these tunes came from William Kimber, a bricklayer from Headington Quarry on the edge of Oxford. Grainger gave not a penny piece to Kimber.

To put no finer point to it Grainger robbed them both.

Recordings of William Kimber are easy to find and worth doing so for the same reasons as given for Joseph Taylor.

Laurence Platt

Pleasley