Fifty come Friday

A well-dressed man is dragged away, head down,
by police officers after sitting down during the huge
Ban-the-bomb rally in London's rain-soaked
Trafalgar Square, United Kingdom on Sept. 17, 1961

So yes, The Dragon Folk Club is almost fifty years old. In fact that milestone comes round at the end of this month (May). This week's session is on 31st,m which is perfect. But let's not have a slight celebration, we're going to make a whole month of it. Whether you have been to the club before in its long history or not, you will be very welcome to join us this week or any Friday in June for the celebration. If you have been to the club before perhaps you would like to sing some of the songs you sang at the club in the past, maybe in the distant past! If you do intend to drop in during this celebratory season then let us know when you are coming by posting a comment below this report or on our Facebook page.

Back to last week, Colin was MC and started the theme-less proceedings off with Chris Sugden's The Water Is Wet, an O Waile Waile parody (Wally, Wally). Unfortunately for this scribe many Kipper Family songs are kept off the web for understandable reasons, so I can't say much more about that.

Simon's first offering of the evening was Benjamin Bowmaneer (Roud 1514) followed by Derek who echoed Colin's song with Jamie Douglas / O Waly Waly (Roud 87, Child 204).

Geoff had decided to offer an evening of classic pop songs of the fifties and sixties and kicked that off with Green Door (Bob "Hutch" Davie, Marvin Moore).

Mike had reached "W" in his old song list and came up with The Collier Brig (Roud 1855) "Waiting for the day".

Derek quite took to the concept of following Colin and his next exploit along those lines was to give us a bit of a Singing Postman break, Colin giving us Hev Yew Gotta Loight Boy and Derek Following The Boinder Round, both from the pen of that very postie, Allan Smethurst. The latter song mentions a good dog, which is in contrast to Geoff's use of the word in Boudleaux Bryant's Bird Dog.

Mike clearly impressed Derek with his own surprising yet perfect pairing of the words of The Wild Colonial Boy (Roud 667, Laws L20) and the tune of (Ghost) Riders In The Sky (Stan Jones).

Colin sang Ewan MacColl's Lullaby For The Times. On a previous outing for this song I had failed to find the story behind it, but this time it came to me without really looking.

In 1961 the Committee of 100, dedicated to nuclear disarmament, initiated its first large civil disobedience campaign. This took the form of a series of mass sit-downs outside government buildings and foreign embassies. The most spectacular of these took place on Setpember 17 when 100,000 people gathered in Trafalgar Square in defiance of a government ban. The some 6,000 uniformed guardians of the peace, who had been specially brought from all the Home counties into London's West end, were kept busy carrying the thousands of limp, passive men and women to waiting trucks, buses and Black Marias. Anumber of the 800 who were arrested refused to pay the fines and served out one-three months of jail instead.

Derek continued a war / anti-war theme with a version of A Poor Aviator Lay Dying (Roud 3454) from the Korean conflict - the linked version appears to be from the First World War. Geoff followed this with Good News Week (Jonathan King) about the times of the Vietnam War but linked also because it was originally sung by a band called Hedgehoppers Anonymous, made up mainly of members of the RAF.

I should point out, since I may have helped perpetuate the myth in the past that Jake Thackray's explanation of his song Molly Metcalfe given in the linked here was by his own later admission bogus, and the character in the song was purely fictional. It was Colin who sung it to us on this occasion. The song's refrain has us counting sheep in the traditional northern English way: "Yan Tan Tether Mether Pip...". Which left Derek with no option but to sing his Welsh Goat Counting Song, Cyfri'r Geifr. The linked video isn't really a performance but more of a tutorial, which is useful given the break-neck speed at which Derek sings the song.

Colin sang Leslie Haworth's Sunshine, a cricket themed song from the repertoire of the Spinners, mentioning the Lancashire team, which led Derek to recite a poem, At Lords by Francis Thompson which also mentioned the red roses.

Geoff referred to his song, The Battle of New Orleans being from Lonnie Donegan's repertoire. Of course many of the popular songs of that time sung by British artists had made the journey across the pond from the USA and this was no exception. Simon mentioned that it was made famous by Johnny Horton. Colin inferred that Horton was the "original" but no, it was written and first performed by Jimmy Driftwood, a school principal who wrote historical songs to help his students with their studies (see the linked video).

Colin sang Lamorna (Roud 16636) which seems to be a Cornish song but Simon remembered Mike Harding being adamant that it was from Manchester and that there was a story to it. I haven't managed to find the story, but I have found Mike saying very emphatically that Pomona (Roud V15486), a song about a pleasure ground in Manchester, is the original. Unfortunately I have not yet traced the story to go with the claim.

Geoff wasn't sure who originally sang his song Big Bad John. I think we all knew the song but no one could help on the spot. In fact it was written by Jimmy Dean and Roy Acuff and was sung by Dean himself.

So there were lots of interesting songs and connections in this session which was topped off by Derek singing that instructional on how to blind your husband, Marrowbones (Roud 183, Laws Q2).

Here's a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 5, of whom 5 performed)