A little bit folky, a little bit country

(Source: library of Congress)

At last Friday's Dragon Folk Club session Geoff got out his cowboy songs, so that became a bit of a theme together with the usual eclectic mix of folk and not-so-folk.

Colin as MC started off with Ewan MacColl's The Manchester Rambler (roud 26771). This prompted Simon to inform the gathered singers that our previous week's blog report had gained "likes" from both Peggy Seeger and Davey Arthur. A quick side-note to Colin: Davey Arthur is younger than you.

Rob gave us the first of two songs from the singing of The Pogues which was The Irish Rover (roud 4379) - are we surprised that one is traditional? The second was the definitely non-traditional Navigator (Phil Gaston). Gaston was manager of Shane McGowan's first band, The Nips.

Next was Simon singing Blues run the game by Jackson C Frank.

After Simon came Sue with the gospel song, This Train (roud 6702), followed by her partner Bob with California Cotton Fields (Dallas Frazier, Earl Montgomery).

And so we got round to Geoff and the first of his cowboy songs, Marty Robbins' Big Iron. Geoff told us how Robbins went into a gun store and found a Colt revolver that had been converted with a rifle barrel and was labelled "Big Iron". This is apparently just one of several origin stories.

Just for the sake of argument I will list the remaining songs that were sung and exist in the Roud Folk Song Index to prove that we do sing folk songs.

• Colin - The Battle of New Orleans (roud 17913, Jimmy Driftwood)
• Rob - Santianna (roud 207)
• Sue - The owl and the pussy cat (roud 30935, Edward Lear)
• Colin - The water is wide (roud 87, child 204)
• Rob - Sally Brown (roud 2628)
• Bob - Fireball mail (roud 28855, Fred Rose, Floyd Jenkins) - note that Floyd Jenkins is a pen name for Fred Rose.
• Colin - The bold fisherman (roud 291, laws O24)
• Rob - Rosemary Lane (roud 269, laws K43)
• Simon - The tailor's breeches (roud 1610)
• Geoff - Only the hangman (roud 2, laws B01, Wayne P Walker)
• Rob - The Winnipeg whore (roud 8348)

Simon finished the evening off with the non-roud song The Plover Catcher (Elizabeth Padgett).

Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 6 of whom 6 performed)

Seventh of March-ing on to war

Mervyn Penny, the founder
of Swindon's White Horse Folk Club,
who died recently at the age of 90

Before we started the session this week there was much reminiscing by Derek, Mike and Maggie S about the traditional singer, Fred Jordan. Derek in particular remembered a story about him being taken to an art gallery to see works by Constable and Stubbs, showing rural scenes and livestock. Fred took to complaining about the accuracy of the paintings: "that cart will tip over" or "I wouldn't buy that horse". After a short while he had a crowd of people round him lapping up his every word. Soon the word got round that he was an art critic and when he left he was given an appropriately respectful send-off.

We were joined this week by Rose, who we hadn't seen at the club for a while, and a non-singing visitor, Bob.

There was no official theme to the session this week but Derek explained he had searched for "March" to remind himself of what he might sing of relevance to the new month. The issue was that it threw up a lot of songs about marching, so that ambiguous search became the basis for his song selection.