Various Artists

Vigilante Man: Gems From The Topic Vaults 1954-1962
(One Day Music, £5.99)

5/5

THE 1950s and ’60s were decades when Topic Records — the world’s oldest independent label — played a leading role in promoting radical music in this country and internationally. 

Topic’s roots were in the Workers Music Association (WMA) and its first releases can be traced back to 1939. The WMA was allied to the British Communist Party and seen culturally as a “tool of revolution” and “a voice to the people.” 

The label originally sold records via mail order and among its first releases were recordings from the Soviet Union as well as a choral version of The Internationale and Paddy Ryan’s The Man That Waters The Worker’s Beer. 

Dismissed haughtily by one record company in the 1950s as “that little red label,” despite the barbs Topic developed a reputation for releasing music that influenced the folk music boom as well as mining a rich heritage of industrial and left-wing political song. 

Now the CD reissue company One Day Music has just released the double album Vigilante Man: Gems From The Topic Vaults 1954-1962. Among other things, it’s a compilation of traditional British music by artists such as AL Lloyd, Ewan McColl, The Spinners from Liverpool and songs in dialect including Geordie on Johnny Handle’s Stottin’ Doon The Waall and The Collier Lad. Scottish folk music is represented by Ray and Archie Fisher’s The Twa Corbies and Jeannie Robertson’s When I Was Noo But Sweet Sixteen. 

Peggy Seeger along with Isla Cameron and Guy Carawan are also featured with versions of skiffle favourites Cumberland Gap and Freight Train from 1957.

Topic also imported US recordings by Woody Guthrie, who’s featured on Vigilante Man from 1940, Grand Coulee Dam from 1944 and the great This Land Is Your Land from 1945, all taken from his 1958 Folkways anthology Bound For Glory. 

There are four numbers by the late Pete Seeger, including Penny’s Farm and Talking Union Blues, while Ramblin’ Jack Elliot performs The Boll Weevil Song and Salty Dog and there are two songs from Paul Robeson, including the Irish rebel lament Kevin Barry. 

The label also bought in blues sides from Folkways Records, notably Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry and tracks by the one-man band Jesse Fuller, including the stomping San Francisco Bay Blues.

Topic separated from the WMA in 1960 but the label is still doing sterling work. In recent times they issued the most comprehensive release of its kind, a 20-volume anthology of traditional music from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, entitled The Voice Of The People.

Broadcaster Andy Kershaw has described Topic as “The most important record label in Britain” and with this compilation retailing at £5.99 you can easily judge for yourself.

Tony Burke