As hot as...

Photo: Simon Meeds

As expected at the end of another scorching day we were slightly low on numbers at last week's Dragon Folk Club session but we carried on singing. Paul selected from his repertoire songs he hadn't sung recently, Simon appropriately sang mostly songs relating to hot or warm weather, and Denny just sang some excellent songs.

Simon as stand-in MC and first comer started off the session with Three songs to one burden (*), a song written by our old friend Derek Brinkley. Denny followed on with I live not where I love (roud 593) and Paul finished the first rotation with Waking dreams (roud 22620).

Simon's second was The hippopotamus song (Michael Flanders, Donald Swann) where instead of singing a chorus in Russian as Flanders sometimes did, he switched to Latin:

Lutum! lutum! Pulcherrimum  lutum|

veni, o veni huc mecum ablutum

sequimini cuncti, laeti coniuncti

et volvamur uncti in luto pulchro.

Looking over Paul's shoulder, Denny managed to follow from the front, singing Sweet thyme (John Conolly, Pete Mundy) in correct expectation of Paul's Wild mountain thyme (roud 541 - Francis McPeake).

When Simon followed that with Brian Bedford's This is the way the world ends Denny asked how she knew the writer's name. Brian Bedford was a member and the main songwriter of Artisan, the harmony group that also included his wife Jacey and Hilary Spencer. Simon thought that Denny may know Brian's song What's the use of wings (*) and so she did, from the singing of Vin Garbutt (his version which he called "Wings"), and so proceeded to sing it. Below the YouTube video of Vin's version I see Jacey Bedford has made this comment:

"We (Artisan) played Trowbridge Folk Festival many years ago, and Vin was on the same bill. We were put up in the same pub and late one night we were sitting in the bar with Vin, sharing songs. We sang What's the Use of Wings - that's its full title - and Vin immediately asked Brian if he could sing it, Brian was delighted, of course. Some years after that Artisan was invited to play the Port Fairy Festival in Australia and on the way we did a stop-over in Hong Kong where we were accommodated by the Hong Kong Folk Club (which was in Doyle's Irish bar in Kowloon - how surreal!). We sang Wings and the whole audience sang it with us... courtesy of Vin taking it there long before we did. Thanks, Vin, you took Brian Bedford's song around the world. Lovely job."

Paul returned us to our old friend Derek Brinkley by singing his song Lament for the fishing (#).

Simon spent some of the evening well off the folk piste, including sharing The bare necessities (Terry Gilkyson).

Denny charmed us with Linden Lea (William Barnes, Ralph Vaughan Williams), which became this week's photo feature thanks to a chance find only yesterday.

Simon took a leaf out of Denny's book by singing a popular song from the early 20th century - 1932 in this case. So he sang The sun has got his hat on (* Noel Gay, Ralph Butler) - and yes, he made a small word replacement from this original version found on YouTube. Ensuing talk of songs evolving to fit changing fashions and mores caused Simon to make his last song of the session Ol' man river (Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II). Simon remembers watching a whole television documentary programme about adjustments made to that song over time.

Denny's final song was a good sing-along: Byker Hill (roud 3488) and Paul finished the session appropriately with the Farewell shanty. Having no reference for this other than that it is one sometimes used by our friend Mike Starkey when asked to sing at a funeral, I decided to do some digging. I didn't have far to look because MainlyNorfolk provides a quote from the notes for Brenda Wootton and Robert Bartlett's 1975 album Starry-Gazey Pie:

"Mervyn Vincent from St. Issy and Alan Molyneux from Plymouth are largely responsible for the revival of this lovely West Country shanty. Mervyn found it in an old book on boat-building and it later served as the closing song at Alan’s Breakwater Club in Plymouth."

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

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

In the above report songs new to the Dragon database (though no always new to the club) are marked with an asterisk (*).