- Format: CD
- Label: GottDiscs
- Genre: Other
The Song Of Steel - the decline of the steel industry in Sheffield and Rotherham. Disc one of the six-CD BBC Radio 2 series The Radio Ballads.
The 2006 Radio Ballads are self-narrating music documentaries about issues of our time, featuring interviews with rarely-heard communities and songs inspired directly by their stories. The series examined the emotions of communities involved in steel production, shipbuilding, Northern Irelands Troubles, hunting with hounds, fairgrounds and people living with the HIV/AIDS virus, and was first broadcast on BBC Radio 2 between February and April 2006.
Gott Discs are delighted to be releasing the BBC Radio 2 series The 2006 Radio Ballads as a complete set on CD over the next three months. The Song of Steel is the first of the six Ballads to be released, followed by a special limited edition box set with additional features.
The series took its inspiration from the Radio Ballads made by folk singer Ewan MacColl and BBC producer Charles Parker for the BBC Home Service in the 1950s and 1960s. The original Ballads are widely considered masterpieces of radio, weaving direct personal experience with songs written from and about the tales told.
The Song of Steel tells of tough shifts alongside red-hot furnaces in noisy steelworks and the terrible accidents once common in an industry which dominated the lives of the people of Sheffield and Rotherham. But the humour and stoicism that enabled steel workers to survive also shines through.
A stunning and beautifully produced 60 minute musical and speech memoir telling the story of the rise and decline of the steel industry in South Yorkshire
Includes ten superb original songs inspired by personal testimony, and features poignant songs and anecdotes throughout
Liner notes explaining the writing process and historical context
