Saturday 14 May 2016

The only Nightingale album you will ever need.

This could be the only Nightingale album you ever need. All of your old favourites on one disc, including "A Nightingale to Remember", "How Big, How Brown, How Beautiful" by Florence and the Nightingales, Wilson Thicket's "In the Midnight Hour" and a selection from "A Nightingale with the Stars". But you already have those don't you? This rare album never went to vinyl or tape; it went straight from shellac to CD and it can be yours today.


http://www.bto.org/…/past…/nightingale-appeal/nightingale-cd

No-one could make this album in 2016 because it's so hard to get a clean recording, what with traffic noise and passing trains and planes. But the noise problem was often just as bad in the old days. If you stumbled out into the Kent countryside at night in 1942 you might spend an hour setting up your gear only to have the entire Bomber Command pass overhead, twice! It was no better in Surrey where it seems you could never get away from Beatrice Harrison scratching away on her cello.

Despite these minor grumbles, I thoroughly recommend this album and you really should buy it. You don't even have to play it or listen to it because it is actually a concept album - a piece of art. It's the idea that matters. Most of the album consists of different nightingales recorded in different counties of England, so it's also a very English album. (None of your inferior Eurosong here.)

Best of all, it's not available in the shops, just from the British Trust for Ornithology. I can guarantee that none of your friends has this album, so it makes a great present. Hurry while stocks last.