Bears on the loose in Dublin

Most BIB readers will already be aware of the German Bear Family record label, which has been producing for thirty-five years an astounding series of re-releases of classic bluegrass, traditional country, rockabilly, and other music. The bluegrass enthusiast is in Bear Family's debt for the great boxed sets covering the recorded work of Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, Jimmy Martin, the Osborne Brothers, Mac Wiseman, Jim & Jesse, etc., etc., to say nothing of such other Bear Family products as the 12-CD collection of Carter Family recordings and the 13-CD box covering Bob Wills's later career from 1947. These boxed sets have been available for some time from - among other stores - Tower Records in Wicklow St., Dublin.

But Bear Family also do a large number of single-CD releases; and you can now find Bear Family CDs in a special bay at Tower Records - on the left-hand side of the ground floor, near the headphone section. To give one example: Windy mountain by the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, with personnel including Bobby Osborne, Paul Williams, the Goins Brothers, 'Curley' Ray Cline... The 26 tracks (recorded 1950-54) include such classics as 'Pain in my heart', 'Twenty-one years', and 'My brown-eyed darling', and the notes are by Gary Reid, world expert on the Stanley Brothers and their era.

If there are displays like this in other record shops in Ireland, we'll be glad to hear about them.