Proof-reading 😳

 

The monsoon arrived, so the rainy morning is giving back to me the pleasure of enjoying some relaxing music after the recent awfully hot days, quite audio unfriendly.

I’m listening to a 24-bit remastered disk of Joan Baez's first record from 1961 (recorded live in a NYC hotel ballroom, in 1960) whose beloved vinyl disc I listened to so many times in my teens… but I confess I bought the CD for the six rare outtakes recorded in Boston in 1959, before the Vanguard debut.

Joanie’s voice and her ‘29 Martin 0-45 are so nice, lively and timeless…

While listening to the disk, I was lazily reading the booklet and liner notes and I noticed something wrong: not a typo, but something much hard to digest: the “Child’s ballads” suddenly became “children’s ballads”!

I strongly suspect not an oversight but an expression of sheer ignorance occurred here.

Most of the songs are lovingly taken from “Child’s Ballad Book”  - i.e. 305 English and Scottish ballads and their Appalachian variations carefully and painstakingly collected by Francis James Child, which inspired the likes of English composers Vaughan-Williams and Britten and a cohort of musicians… Joan Baez included, of course.

What can I add but proof-reading is a quite overlooked practice, nowadays… same as knowledge and fact-checking, if the case.

😉