Vintage Worship Tapes

Aiming towards the production of digitised tracks of the music from all these tapes and more!

During the Charismatic Movement, the Church had seen a vast resurgence of beautiful worship music, which was both intimate and easy to sing.

From simple choruses to major new hymns, ordinary people with a love for Jesus Christ began to write anointed music for their congregations to use in their worship.

From the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, one of the Church's principal sources of this new, living music was the Harvestime organisation based in Bradford in the North of England. Growing from the Church House congregation and the Restoration Movement, Harvestime was the publisher of many classic live worship tapes. These fell broadly into two main categories: live worship from the Dales Bible Week - an annual gathering of Christians at the Great Yorkshire Showground in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, UK; and live worship from Special Praise Gathering events - generally recorded at the Christ For The Nations Institute in Dallas, Texas, USA.

For many years, roughly until the advent of the Hosanna Music organisation, these tapes were the best source of Charismatic worship music for use in personal devotional worship. They were also an excellent source of new and fresh songs for congregational worship for those outside the Restoration Movement.

Indeed, in my opinion, the vitality, freshness and genuine worship heard on these tapes has never been equalled or surpassed in any recordings since. These tapes obviously received very little post-production processing: there is microphone feedback, there are people coughing gently in the background, there is spontaneous whispered prayer and praise. Contrast this with today's modern sterile, clinical, perfectly-mixed "live worship" CDs and you will know what I mean. This worship is raw, gritty, down-to-earth; it's real and it's absolutely brilliant. Plus it brings back some great memories!

When you listen to the Dales tapes, you really can imagine yourself in the giant cattle shed in Harrogate, in the company of the Lord and of eight thousand other worshippers. You can imagine such spiritual giants as Bryn Jones and Arthur Wallis up there on the platform, and the worship band at the front. I was there in August 1983, when John Daniel Lawtum came forward to the microphone to sing his prophetic solo as recorded on Sing Praises unto God. God's promises in that solo are just as relevant today as they were then. Was that the year when they had complaints from the locals about the music continuing into the small hours, when in fact the main meeting had stopped long before? We all thought it was the angels continuing in worship.

It is the purpose of this site to make this music available to the Church, as MP3 tracks made from the original tapes.

Concept

The Tapes

The Copyright Question

It is the aim of this website to make available MP3 files of these tapes at no cost, to all those who would like a copy. Naturally, the question of copyright immediately raises its ugly head, so let's take a look at the issues:

Basically the situation is this:
The copyright holder in the original recording is the defunct Harvestime organisation. I have found out from Phonographic Performance Limited (basically a company who administer copyrighted music) that Harvestime are not, and never were, registered with them. It's therefore very unlikely that this material was ever registered for copyright purposes. If anyone knows different, I would be obliged if such people would please contact me so that I can liaise with the correct people.

Because the Harvestime organisation is now defunct, it is now very hard to work out who specifically to contact about this issue; indeed, I have contacted several people about it and nobody seems to know what the current situation is. In fact I would even go as far as to say that nobody wants to commit themselves, in writing at least, to making either an authoritative statement or even a judgement call on the copyright issue.

When this music was recorded, of course, the very idea of anyone trying to copyright the wonderful sounds of Christians worshipping Jesus in the Spirit was a ludicrous one. It simply didn't form part of our vocabulary in those days. Remember how many songs in the Dales songbooks were simply listed as CopCon - that meant that they didn't know who that song belonged to that they were using in their songbooks!

Also, of course, some of this music is already in the Public Domain, particularly the older hymns, and because all of this this music has been recorded in public divine worship services, and sung by unpaid members of the public. Indeed, in some cases I was myself actually present in the congregation at the time of recording!

These tapes have now been out of print for some time, and are therefore very, very hard to find, particularly copies in good condition. Therefore it is essential to preserve this wonderful music; the tapes are part of the musical history of the charismatic movement in the United Kingdom and as far as I know they were only ever available on vinyl LP and cassette tapes (in fact only the later recordings were available on LP). But the point is that all the recordings, whether on LP or tape, will deteriorate with time. The idea here is to 'snapshot' the tapes at their current preservation level so that the music is preserved. This music needs to be preserved and made available to those who will be blessed by it.

• I have asked, researched and worked hard to try to find out who knows about the copyrights, if any. I've tried my best, with all the resources and contacts I can find. However, nobody has been able to give me a definitive answer. It seems that the only thing remaining for me to do is to make this appeal: If there are any copyright holders who object to their material being used and distributed here, please let me know and I will gladly and immediately remove it.
• There is no money involved in this. I am not making any money from this and nobody is losing any money either - well, actually, I am, because I pay for my website to be hosted. But hey, it's a labour of love, and it's an integral part of my ministry to bless others with music. These songs and recordings are so old that their profitablility, if there was ever any, is long since exhausted. Therefore, until I hear otherwise, then, I intend to distribute the music recordings as MP3 files for anyone who wants them.
• The intention here is to bless people with these songs, and perhaps to remind certain people of the songs and worship from their youth, not to make any money. This music is part of Church legacy, and needs to be preserved!

Contribute

Your support is vital! You can help by contributing tapes, sharing our project, offering your expertise in audio restoration, or providing financial support. Every contribution helps us preserve this unique musical heritage.

Do you have any Harvestime tapes not listed on this site? We would be incredibly grateful if you could consider loaning, donating, or even selling them to our project. Your tapes could fill missing gaps in our archive! It would be really helpful if anyone who has copies of missing cover images could contact me so I can complete the collection's artwork library.

Please contact us to get in touch regarding tape contributions.

Help us spread the word! Share this website with friends, family, and church communities who might appreciate or have knowledge of vintage worship music. The more people who know, the greater our chances of finding more tapes and connecting with copyright holders.

If you have skills in audio restoration, digital archiving, or web development, and are willing to volunteer your time, please let us know! Your expertise could significantly accelerate our progress.

Digitising, preserving, and hosting this music requires resources. Any financial contribution, no matter how small, helps us cover equipment, storage, and operational costs.

• I am still actively looking for a few missing tapes from this range, particularly: Majesty 1 and Majesty 2 Dales compilations, Fulness of Joy Downs 1982. (Ok I know it's not a Dales tape but it's still a good one!) In fact any Harvestime or live worship tape from this era would be a welcome addition to the digitisation collection.
• There may well be tapes out there in a better state of preservation than the ones I already have, so if you do have any Harvestime tapes at all, then I would be pleased to audition them. I am always happy to look at other copies of these tapes in order better to preserve the music in a better quality form. In addition, I would return, with the original tape, a digital copy of your tape for you to use as you see fit. I would of course pay all postage costs and would pledge to look after your tapes extremely carefully. Thank you.
• It would be really helpful if anyone who has copies of missing cover images could contact me so I can complete the collection's artwork library.

And finally, I would like to say a huge thank-you to all the excellent people who have already helped me with this site: its content, its philosophy, its goals, and with the legal issues. Your input is most appreciated and I really couldn't have done it without you all. May God richly bless you for your generosity.

Thank you for considering how you can help us preserve this precious part of worship history!

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