My love affair with the fiddle began at the sweet age of 16; it was then that I first heard an album by a British folk/rock group called Fairport Convention. I soon after parted company with my electric guitar, as I had forsaken the piano before it, and took up with the mandolin and fiddle. When I was 18, I became engaged to my first band, Rakish Paddy, but eight months later, in 1975, I eloped with a newly formed group called Figgy Duff. Thus my fate was sealed and my destiny revealed as we set out to learn the traditional music of rural Newfoundland and to later emerge on the stages of the world.

My early piano training proved valuable as I began notating the tunes I was learning from Newfoundland fiddlers such as Rufus Guinchard and Emile Benoit. My purpose then was to create a database for myself: a reference manual to help me recall the ever-growing repertoire of music I was discovering. I soon realized that much of this music was being written down for the first time, so I thought I should publish a definitive collection of Newfoundland & Labrador fiddle tunes to create an accessible and permanent record of this unique music.

In 1978, I received a Canada Council grant to travel in search of fiddlers, taping and notating their music. Many of the tunes in my collection were recorded during my travels between 1978 and 1980 and were transcribed over subsequent years with pencil and notation paper, both at home and while on the road. I recorded over 30 fiddlers from all over Newfoundland and Labrador, resulting in a collection of over 500 tunes. Approximately half of these are from my two main sources, Rufus and Emile, all of which are published in Volume 1. The remainder will be published at a later date in Volume 2.

I have often felt guilty for not publishing this work sooner, as most of the first draft notations have been completed for over 15 years. There are, I justify to myself, some good reasons for this. First of all, there was the small matter of a publisher: someone who would do all the layout, printing, collating, binding and various other tasks involved in producing a book. Then, there were issues around cost, creative control, reproduction rights, etc. So I procrastinated for many years until, with the advent of desktop publishing in the 1990's, I realized I could possibly publish the book myself.

In 1994, I embraced the digital age and acquired a computer and a music software program with which I could write and print professional quality sheet music. Then began the long task of entering each tune, note by note, into the program. In time, I required a good quality laser printer and subsequently a high-speed copier with which to make the necessary volume of duplications required for a quantity of books.

I began by printing small booklets to accompany some of the CDs and Cassettes that I had produced in recent years. The See Sounds CD/Cassette & Book Series offered 4 different packages of a CD or Cassette with a booklet containing lyrics and music to accompany each recording. Next, I produced a small book of Newfoundland music called Forty Favourite Fiddle Tunes, geared towards the beginner and intermediate level fiddle student. With these print jobs under my belt, I felt qualified and ready to tackle the bigger task of publishing my entire collection. In order to make this a little more manageable, I decided to publish this rather large work in 2 volumes.

Kelly Russell's Collection - The Fiddle Music of Newfoundland & Labrador - Volume 1 was published in November 2000. Now begins the task of completing Volume 2, which will contain another 250 tunes from fiddlers all over Newfoundland & Labrador. It is my sincere hope that this work is useful to aspiring Newfoundland fiddlers for many years to come. My reward is the tremendous sense of satisfaction that stems from knowing that this music, from which I and so many others have derived much enjoyment, will not go to the grave with those who played it, but will live on after they, and we, are long gone.