Rambling Syd Rumpo rises again

Cyril Tawney

Mike kicked off the session this week with the Heights of Alma about the Battle of Alma which took place, reasonably topically, on 20 September 1854 and is usually considered to be the first battle of the Crimean War.

Last week Mervyn remembered a folk session with the theme "one song sung to the tune of another", and sang his version of Kathy's Song to the tune of The Silkie. He also related that Kitty Vernon had sung Wild rover to the tune of Away in a manger. This week we heard that Derek went home that night singing just that combination in the car. He said it went quite well, but he couldn't possibly repeat something that had been done before. Derek therefore charmed us with Hell's angel (the parody of Wild rover) to the tune of Lord of all hopefulness, which is in turn based on Banks of the Bann. When Paul showed an interest in knowing the difference between these two tunes, Derek dredged his memory and sang, from beyond his already huge repertoire, Banks of the Bann.

Paul is becoming a regular with his guitar tunes which is great. His first offering, inspired by a previous visit to the club was called Dance (Diddly Diddly Do). He related that his mother died aged 41 when he was 20 and he wrote a song about her but having realised that the song was mainly about himself, he decided to write a song from the viewpoint of his father, who died almost 40 years later. So far the song has a tune and a chorus. The chorus gives the song its title: That's all I know, and Paul performed it for us as an instrumental.

Richard caused some interest and maybe a little confusion with his singing of The black grunger of Houndslow, one of the cod folk songs written by Barry Took and Marty Feldman for Kenneth Wiliams' character, Rambling Syd Rumpo in Round the Horne. Richard caused further discussions when he sang The girl I left behind me, the main question being the name of the tune. After some Googling on his phone, Simon came up with the answer: Brighton Camp.

Two of Colin's contributions were Dougie MacLean's Ready for the storm and Richard Thompson's Waltzing's for dreamers. Steve G's contributions included Al Stewart's Gesthemane Again.

Simon sang Jez Lowe's The Bergen, which Derek declared was the only song written about Seaton Carew where the sinking of The Berger may be the most exciting thing to happen in the last 300 years. Simon also sang Cyril Tawney's Sally free and easy, which was matched by Steve who sang Sammy's bar, also by Cyril Tawney.

An occasional visitor, Keith, put in an appearance and as usual gave us some fine guitar playing, with Carole King's It's too late, Steely Dan's Pearl of the quarter. He closed the session with Christy Moore's Dying soldier.

4 October is harvest at the club, so please bring along your produce to be raffled or auctioned for charity, your harvest songs, but chiefly... yourselves (and some cash to buy stuff)!

Here's a selection of these songs plus some others sung during the session.