A song and a story

Softcover book catalogue of The Family of Man exhibition

We were low on numbers again but not on singing. It was not our fault that we got through only fourteen songs. Just before 10 o'clock the landlady knocked on our door and said we were the only customers, so they were clearing up early. We agreed to sing two more songs and get out. If only we had more people we may have been able to justify them keeping the place open for the remaining hour.

Colin was MC and started the evening with Steve Knightley's All at Sea.

Simon remained at sea or at perhaps returned to harbour with The Last Farewell (Roger Whittaker, Ron A Webster). Whittaker hosted a radio programme in 1971, backed by a full orchestra with arrangements by Zack Lawrence. Whittaker is quoted as saying that "one of the ideas I had was to invite listeners to send their poems or lyrics to me and I would make songs out of them. We got a million replies, and I did one each week for 26 weeks". Ron A Webster, a silversmith from Birmingham, England, sent Whittaker his poem entitled "The Last Farewell", and this became one of the selections to appear on the radio programme. It was subsequently recorded and featured on Whittaker's 1971 album New World in the Morning.

Colin gave us Sydney Carter's John Ball. John Ball was an English priest who took a prominent part in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.

Simon sang The Galway Shawl (roud 2737). Simon mentioned that when he sang it at another gathering a few months ago, someone had suggested it was a non-political Irish song. Another of the people present proceeded to work through the song showing that by the use of more or less obscure references it was in fact possibly one of the many political Irish songs.

Colin brought us The Ballad of Seth Davy. The song was written by Glyn Hughes in the late 1950s. Seth Davy was a popular street entertainer during the 1890s in Liverpool.

He was originally a sailor from Jamaica but Seth Davy became a fixed character on the streets of Liverpool where he entertained people, and especially young children, with his three dancing dolls which he made himself. The famous dancing dolls were attached to the end of a plank which Seth Davy would tap with his hand to make them dance while he crooned his minstrel songs. Seth Davy’s stage was the street outside the Bevington Bush Hotel on the north side of the city of Liverpool. He was known to sing minstrel songs and his most popular one which he was often heard singing was called ‘Massa is a Stingy Man.’ It is an old minstrel song from across the Atlantic and it contains the lines which would go on to form the later ballad about the street entertainer: ‘Sing come day go day, god send Sunday, we’ll drink whiskey all the week, and butter milk on Sunday.’

The song has particular interest for us since our friend Tom Mossman remembers his grandfather having dolls which danced on a plank. Sadly when he died the dolls were thrown out before Tom had a chance to save them.

Simon sang Sugar in the Hold Below which he got from the singing of The Longest Johns. Simon is visible in the audience in the linked video. It was a river steamboat song the earliest record of which occurs in 1924, but it probably predated that. The JM White in the song was a steamboat famed for its technological advancements that travelled the New Orleans to Greenville trade route, and was supposed to have been the fastest ship to have steamed that line.

The Family of Man, sung by Colin, was written by Karl "Fred" Dallas after he saw the exhibition of the same name. It was an ambitious exhibition of 503 photographs from 68 countries curated by Edward Steichen, the director of the New York City Museum of Modern Art's Department of Photography. According to Steichen, the exhibition represented the "culmination of his career." The title of the exhibition was in turn taken from a line in a Carl Sandburg poem.

The Wizard of Alderley Edge, written by Pete Coe, was sung by Simon. It tells a story relating to the supposed sleeping knights of Alderley Edge in Cheshire. Nell Beck, mentioned in the song, refers to a legend about an unfortunate servant girl, Ellen Beck, who like the Wizard, knew where to find the iron gates which gave entry to the underworld. She saw the iron gates and described them as a pair of folding iron gates situated not far from the holy well, but when she returned to show another person the gates were nowhere to be found. After this the tale of her life is a sad one. Apparently records show that an Eleanor Beck was baptised at Wilmslow church on 13 February 1721.

Roger Davies' song, Brighouse on a Saturday Night, tells more recent tales of that town in West Yorkshire. The Richard Oastler pub referred to in the song was previously a Methodist chapel. Our friend Richard Gillion used to tell us that his grandparents were married there. In November 1977, The Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band, also mentioned in the song, reached number two in the UK Singles Chart with its recording of The Floral Dance (1911 - words and music by Kate Emily Barkley 'Katie' Moss), where it stayed for six weeks.

Simon gave us I Am a Rock (Paul Simon). Paul Simon first recorded the song in May 1965. It was included on his solo-acoustic The Paul Simon Songbook LP released in the UK in the summer of 1965. Until 1981, this initial recording remained unavailable in North America partly because Paul Simon himself was dissatisfied with the album.

Colin referred to Mike's singing of Keith Marsden songs and presented his own version of Marsden's Prospect Providence. 'Prospect' and 'Providence', along with 'Albert', 'Valley' and 'Crank', were the names of some of the mills that dominated Morley (near Leeds) in the boom years of the Industrial Revolution.

While Northwest Passage (Stan Rogers) clearly refers to John Franklin's ill-fated 1845 attempt to traverse the Northwest Passage, as well as to other explorations, its theme is really to compare the songwriter's own travels to those of men in history.

Famously, many people mistakenly think that Dirty Old Town (Ewan MacColl) which Colin sang, is an Irish Song. Not only is it not Irish, but it is about Salford in the North West of England. Simon pointed out that some of the rough areas mentioned in the song are now taken over by MediaCityUK, mixed-use property development on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal. Tenants include the BBC, Granada TV and ITV studios.

Closing the evening fell to Simon who sang When All Men Sing (Keith Scowcroft, Derek Gifford).

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

(Number of people present - 2 of whom 2 performed)