That's more like it

The club's old door poster

Last Friday's session was much livelier and more satisfactory than recent efforts. We were pleased to see Derek return to the fold, and Tom make his second visit since we restarted. Even better, Derek brought with him Maggie L and Gerty who we hadn't seen for a very long time. Let's hope we can not only carry on this way but gradually add more names to the roll-call.

MC Colin invited Mike to start the singing but in the end had to kick us off himself with Don't you rock me Daddy-o (Bill Varley, Wally Whyton) which was originally recorded by The Vipers Skiffle Group for whom it  reached number 10 in the UK Singles Chart in early 1957. The song is a variant of Sail Away Ladies (Roud 17635). Whyton was founder of the Vipers which became the resident band at the 2i's Coffee Bar in Soho and had its records produced by George Martin.

Mike did indeed sing the second song of the evening and it was one which Colin had requested the previous week, but which he wouldn't have dared sing had his wife, Maggie S been present. The extremely non-PC song in question was The Chinese Bum-boat Man (Roud 10465).

Tom treated us to an early Gerry Rafferty composition, Her Father Didn't Like Me Anyway. The song was on Rafferty's first solo album, "Can I Have My Money Back?" (1971), and had previously been released by his band, The Humblebums. The band was founded in 1965 by Billy Connolly and Tam Harvey with Rafferty joining in 1969.

Simon sang The Smuggler's Song, which was published in Rudyard Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill. There is some discussion, not least from Tom who was present, about whether Kipling wrote the poem and who wrote the tune which Simon uses. Is it a variant of Peter Bellamy's tune, or of the one written by Christopher Le Fleming, or is it something else entirely? All Simon knows is that he got the tune from our late friend Ray Croll and that when he first heard Ray sing it the tune was already familiar to him from somewhere.

Derek said he doesn't usually sing a song he doesn't know although we know he sometimes pulls one out of a very dusty corner of his "bag" and sings it perfectly adequately. On this occasion though he started one knowing he would not get very far with it since he wanted to address Maggie L with the first verse of Come Write Me Down (Roud 381). With the first verse out of the way, Mike led us a little further down the path of the song he knows well.

And so the first circuit of the room was complete and there followed several more circuits until 31 songs and poems had been performed. This is not a record by any means (we think that would be about 47) but it is a good tally.

Worth a particular mention is that Tom read us two of his own poems. Grandad's Cracket concerns a stool that his grandfather made him for which young Tom seems to have found many uses. Tom gave a very emotional reading of The Driver, remembering the day when he saw a pit pony driver whose "eyes were full of tears" with a group of blind ponies that had finished their working lives. No one would tell him what lay in store for them and he only found out years later.

Derek was asked to finish the evening and clearing it with Maggie L that he would sing a bawdy song, he sent us home with Mary Went to a Tea Party (Roud 24991).

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

(Number of people present - 6, of whom 5 performed)