THE content of Hexham musician Vic Gammon’s latest CD adds up to more than the sum of its parts thanks to some painstaking detective work.

For Early Scottish Ragtime not only features some of the liveliest tunes around, but it also explores the roots of ragtime-type music published in Britain generally, but mainly Scotland, significantly before America’s ragtime boom of the late 1890s.

It begs the question, said Vic, whether Scots were playing ragtime years before America’s ‘King of Ragtime’ Scott Joplin even put pen to paper.

“What’s interesting is that we have these ideas about the chronology of certain musics,” he said, “about the times they have arrived on these shores and the connections between them.

“A lot of British music went to North America with the pilgrims and immigrants, but we found American music was coming back to Britain by the 1830s.”

Some of the singers and musicians themselves were also crossing the pond, such as Don Emmett, founder of the first troupe of the blackface minstrels and reputedly the writer of the song Dixie that, much to his disgust, became the rallying call for the Confederate States during the American Civil War.

Vic said: “He was here in the 1840s and performed in some of the big cities – Glasgow and Liverpool among them – playing the banjo and the fiddle.

“We associate ragtime with the very last years of the 19th century, but music that sounds very like ragtime was being played here a good 40 or 50 years earlier, and certainly in Scotland.

“Most important of all, though, is just the fact that it’s fabulous music! It’s so quirky and lovely and such great fun – it’s really worth playing!”

A singer in his own right, as well as a concertina, melodeon, tenor banjo and mandolin player, Vic roped in a plethora of equally accomplished friends to help him record the CD.

They include Sandra Kerr, who first came to prominence as a member of Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger’s Critics Group and moved on to produce the music for the famed Bagpuss children’s television show of the 1970s.

While Vic spent the bulk of his career as a senior lecturer on the folk degree course at Newcastle University before retirement, performing and recording have always been part of the mix.

Indeed, Early Scottish Ragtime, produced by Fellside Recordings, of Workington, is but the latest of Vic’s CDs. He has been recording folk and jazz music since the late 1960s and one CD, in particular, has become something of a classic.

The Tale of Ale, which Vic describes as a collection of drinking songs, was first produced in 1978 as a double LP and the CD version is still selling today.

Early Scottish Ragtime is available for purchase at www.fellside.com.