Pat Shaw & Margaret's Waltz

[Linda Littleton]

Does anyone know who owns the copyright to "Margaret's Waltz" by Pat Shaw?
My band would like to record it but we haven't been able to figure out where
to ask permission and where to pay royalties. We've tried BMI and Harry
Fox and neither could help because we didn't know who the publisher is.
Someone who responded to my last posting about this sent an address in London,
but what would be most helpful (if possible) is a phone number we can call
in the US. We're planning to record it this week, so it would be too bad
to find out after the fact that we can't even get permission to use it.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Tina Hay]

I'd like to add a question to LRL@PSUVM's question (as I am writing the
liner notes for her recording project). Can anyone provide background
information on who Pat Shaw is? And is he still living? We know he wrote
several (maybe many) country dance tunes, but would like to say more about
him. Or, failing that, about the song itself.

Thanks.

[Rosa Michaelson]

Pat Sudham Shaw was a musicologist and folklorist. He collected fiddle
music in Shetland for the School of Scottish Studies, a research centre
of Edinburgh University set up by Hamish Henderson and others after the second
world war. Mr Shaw also collected dance tunes from the south of the British
Isles - and wales and ireland. Margaret's Waltz seems to have been written
for a specific dance - and it was not until Jay ungar and Aly Bain made
the tune popular as a fairly fast waltz a few years ago that folkies
and session peoples played it a lot. Morris dance groups have used
the tune since it was penned.....but they have no influence over 'real'
musicians and the traditional fashions of the day. As I wrote previously
Pat Shaw's own transcriptions are housed in both the SofSS above and used to
be in the library of the English Folk Song and Dnace societie's centre,
Cecil Sharp House. This building may or may not have been sold or sub let
due to money problems well documented on this group 5 years ago. But I made
xeroxes of his transcriptions about 14 years ago on a couple of visits -
and my friend Nigel Jelks copied his whole collection about 20 years ago -
filling a nice fat music book with versions of shetland reels. Have
a read of the out-of-print fiddle collection put out by the Shetland Folklore
Society in 1955ish (published by The Shetland Times - a copy is in Berkley
University Music Department) - there are two copies of the original in the
Edinburgh Public Library on the Bridges.
This has an intro by the man. This is the best
and most rewarding source for shetland fiddle tunes - ignore the later
Andersonia....