For Singing

Harry Brown
(Based on a photograph by Hugh Llewelyn - Flickr)

Numbers were unfortunately back to being depleted last Friday but some worthwhile singing was done.

Colin arrived in time to take up his regular role as MC, but with Simon arriving first it was his job to start off the session, singing a Canadian song, Peggy Gordon (Roud 2280). This was followed by Colin with Old Johnny Bugger (Roud 19111). Those who are squeamish of the title of this Lancashire/ Yorkshire version may prefer the title used by Shirley Collins on her 2016 album Lodestar which was Old Johnny Buckle. The album notes say "Sung by Mrs Hewett, a ploughman's wife of Mapledurwell, Hants, recorded by Bob Copper in July 1955. It's an upside-down song, a daft little nonsense song of contradictions. A far nobler variant of this type of song is Nottamun Town." I have also seen the final name of the title as Booker, Bigger, Booger, Boker, and many more.

Mike's first song was Napoleon Bonaparte (Roud 1626) which is also called Napoleon's Farewell to Paris.

We visited a couple of the big folk rock bands. First Simon with Boys of Bedlam (V16366) the tune being by Dave Moran and Nic Jones of The Halliard, and which became associated with Steeleye Span. Second was Colin with Fairport Convention's Genesis Hall (Richard Thompson). "Genesis Hall" was an abandoned hotel in London's Drury Lane, originally the Bell Hotel. It had been occupied by hippie squatters. The London police had evicted the squatters, and eventually caused the building to be razed. Thompson's father was a member of the London police force at the time, and the lyrics refer to the incident.

Mike had been reminded about his next song by the singing of his Bristol Shantymen colleague, Jeff Blake. The song was Sailboat Malarkey about which A L Lloyd wrote "The tune and most of the words come from the Bahamas, from the singer Frederick McQueen. In the Bahamas it's mostly used for boat-launching, but it serves equally well for capstan work. ‘Malarkey’ here is a mispronunciation of ‘Malachi’."

Colin brought out If by David Gates of the band Bread. A bit of trivia is that this song reached number one in the UK singles chart in 1975, not for Bread but for Telly Savalas (his version), becoming the song with the shortest title to reach No. 1 in the UK.

Mike sang Harry Brown a written by Pete MacNab with a little help from Mike himself. The song, in the form of a shanty, tells of a well-loved Bristol-based dredger which eventually sank in a second life working in Bahrain.

After a lot more singing the evening was closed by Colin with a new song from Tom Lewis called A Shanty For Singing.

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

(Number of people present - 3, of whom 3 performed)