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| HM Bark Endeavour replica details (1997) (Photos: Simon Meeds) |
Please remember that this Friday (30th October 2026) we will not be at The Bridge as usual, a very rare exception. However some of us will instead be visiting Pucklechurch Open Mic. The last time we went we had a great evening, a bit of a change, and you are welcome to join us. The session there starts at 8pm and is held at:
Pucklechurch Village Sports and Social Club (PVSSC)
St Aldam's Drive
Pucklechurch
BS16 9QQ
We will of course be back at our usual venue, the barn at The Bridge Inn, on 6th November and, we hope, every Friday from then until we take a short break for Christmas - watch this space in case of any exceptions.
Before the start Simon explained why he was wearing a vintage-style sailor's uniform with smock and straw hat. Not only had it been Trafalgar Day on Wednesday, but the very day of the session would have been his father's one hundredth birthday. Stan was in the Royal Navy in the 1940s and much more recently (hence the vintage uniform) had been a steward on the HM Bark Endeavour replica during two separate visits she made to Boston Dock in Lincolnshire. Simon therefore set out to sing sea songs throughout the evening and some of the others assembled joined him in doing so.
When we got underway Colin asked Simon to start the singing, which he did as close as he could manage to the Trafalgar Day sub-theme by singing the junior school version of Boney was a warrior (roud 485). This was followed in more definite Trafalgar mode by Paul singing Nelson's death (roud 18837 - rewritten by Richard Grainger from a fragment).
Denny kept to seaward with John Conolly's Fiddlers green before Helen went in a slightly different direction with Sabrina Jordan's Hazel eyes.
Colin's first song of the evening was Woody Guthrie's Dusty old dust (roud 15161) and Heather completed the first rotation with Wild mountain thyme (roud 541 - Francis McPeake).
Unusually there were no songs new to the Dragon database that evening, but there were quite a few songs that were new (according to the database at least) to the singers. Just two performances were of material not found on YouTube and therefore not included in this week's playlist:
- Paul - Turn ye seasons (Andy Barnes)
- Heather - NWR Halloween (Heather Brooks) - NWR is the National Womens Register of which Heather is a member. The poem relates to a Halloween party thrown by her for her local group.
There were a few "matters arising" that I would like to follow up...
Heather read I'm my own grandpa (roud 10444) as a poem which she attributed to Shel Silverstein. I have no idea whether or not Silverstein performed it as a poem, but as several people said, it is a song and it was written by Dwight Latham and Moe Jaffe.
Simon sang Jenny Wren bride which was already in the Dragon Database, but which I think had previously been attributed to Shep Woolley. While Shep, who I know a little from my days in Portsmouth, obviously sings it (see the linked recording), Roud gives its earliest reference as "Vicarion, Book of Bawdy Ballads (1959 edn.) no.30" (when Shep was about 15). Cyril Tawney in his book Grey Funnel Lines (Traditional song & verse of the Royal Navy 1900-1970) published in 1987 writes "It is difficult to estimate its date of origin, but if the verse mentioning HMS Hood was in the original version it must have been made up after 1920 (the requirements of rhyme preclude any other ship's name being used at that point)".
Helen sang a song she knew as Cups (roud 17225 - AP Carter, Luisa Gerstein) and that is worth a few paragraphs - there's even a Bristol link in the story.
I knew it to have been used in a film which turns out to be Pitch Perfect (2012) in which Anna Kendrick sings the song using the cup game for rhythm. I incorrectly related this to Sport Stacking a mostly American sport where (usually) children compete to stack 9–12 specially designed cups in predetermined sequences as quickly as possible. I therefore assumed that, like the film and Kendrick, this was an American combination of song and rhythm. This assumption was wrong.
Landshapes is a British band known primarily for their effects-heavy psychedelic alternative rock. The group consists of Heloise Tunstall-Behrens (vocals, violin) and Luisa Gerstein (vocals, ukulele) with Jemma Freeman (guitar, vocals) and Dan Blackett (drums, vocals). The band members first met as students at the University of Bristol, forming in 2009 under the name Lulu and the Lampshades.
Band members Tunstall-Behrens and Gerstein are known for their revival of the 1931 Carter Family song When I'm Gone as Cups. Note that this video of Cups was posted in 2009.
I first came across the Carter Family many years ago because original member Maybelle Carter's daughter, and later member of the group, June was the wife of Johnny Cash. Many of the group's songs are attributed to another original member, Maybelle's brother-in-law A P Carter. It is well known that his songs tend in fact to be traditional with AP making just minor adjustments under instructions from the group's manager and publisher, Ralph Peer, in order for Peer's company to be able to claim copyright. Indeed in this case, Roud lists versions of When I'm gone back to the 1870s, including in Jennie Lindsay's Style of the Day Songster (1876) pp.32-33 A. J. Fisher (New York).
After that long digression all that remains is to mention that Denny sang the final song of the evening: Old fid (Bill Lowndes).
Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.
(Number of people present - 8 of whom 6 performed)
In the above report songs new to the Dragon database (though not always new to the club) are marked with an asterisk (*) and any songs not included in the "a selection" playlist are marked with a hash (#).
