We get up to all sorts

(Photo: Simon Meeds)

There was no theme at last week's Dragon Folk Club session and there will be none again this Friday. There were however some great songs and providing a huge variety which was lots of fun.

This Friday we will be without several of our regulars, so if you are an occasional Dragon, a lapsed Dragon or a potential new visitor to the dragon's lair, you would be even more welcome than usual if that's possible. There is no theme this week, but even when there is it is totally optional with any sort of performance encouraged as long as it's acoustic, and if you don't want to perform, just listen, join in the banter, and maybe sing along to the odd chorus then that's fine too.

Back to last week, Colin was MC as usual, and he started us off bawdy with The red light saloon (roud 9424). Simon followed with a partial match in the form of The tailor's breeches (roud 1610).

Sue gave us Big Rock Candy Mountain (roud 6696) and Bob followed that with Call me the breeze (J J Cale).

Paul called us to order with Waking dreams (roud 22620) and Denny completed the first rotation with The pickled herring man (# Cathy Wallis).

Other songs not found on YouTube and therefore not included in this week's playlist were:

• Paul -  Lament for the fishing (# Derek Brinkley)
• Colin - The labourers' union ( # roud V48257)

 There were four songs new to the Dragon database:

• Bob - Crystal Chandelier (*  Ted Harris)
• Denny - You'll never walk alone (*  Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II)
•  Sue - Ob-la-di, ob-la-da (* Lennon-McCartney)
• Colin - The weight (*  Robbie Robertson)

When it came to the time to close the session it was Sue's turn to sing and she sent us home with Things (Bobby Darin).

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

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

In the above report songs new to the Dragon database (though no always new to the club) are marked with an asterisk (*) and any songs not included in the "a selection" playlist are marked with a hash (#).

The Last Farewell

Roger Whittaker in 1971

At the Dragon Folk Club session last week it was great to welcome visitors Tricia and Tony. Tricia sings and plays the ukulele, though her instrument was conspicuous by its absence, and describes Tony as "an experienced audience".

Colin, as MC, started the proceedings with The good ship Ragamuffin (roud 10466). This is a music hall song written around 1882 by John J Stamford for William J "Billy" Ashcroft. Stamford also wrote McNamara's Band for Ashcroft. This (Ragamuffin) was the first song of the evening new to the Dragon database (usual disclaimer: not necessarily new to the club). There were many new songs for the database on this occasion, so rather than get repetitive I will mark them with an asterisk (*).

Tricia's first song was Race of long ago (*), based on a poem by Cicely Fox Smith called Racing Clippers.

Stan found us Waiting for a train (* roud 699, laws H2, Jimmie Rodgers). Simon gave us King of Rome (Dave Sudbury) before Sue took us to Big Rock Candy Mountain (roud 6696, Harry McClintock) and Bob returned us to the American railroad with Golden Rocket (Hank Snow).

Roger was showboating with Ol' Man River (Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II) before Chris sang She's like the swallow (roud 2306) sweetly despite having a frog in her throat.

And so ended the first rotation. We went on to sing an impressive total of 38 songs during the evening. You can hear mostly other people's renditions of all but one of them by following the "a selection" link below. I will however mention a subset of them starting with those sung by newcomer Tricia:

• Green grows the laurel (* roud 279)
• Breaking wind suddenly (* Les Barker)
• The Nightingale (* roud 1093, laws M37)
• Here's a goodbye to you, dear Mabel (* Don Thompson) This is the only song of the evening not present in the linked playlist "a selection"
• Farewell to the Clan Line (* Ron Baxter, Ross Campbell)

Talking of "farewell", Simon noted the recent death of Roger Whittaker to whom he was originally introduced by his parents' record collection. He didn't sing The last farewell (Roger Whittaker, Ron A Webster) in the title of this report, but rather Durham town (Roger Whittaker), complete with the geographical inaccuracy which sees the River Tyne flowing through the city rather than the Wear.

Stan and Bob both sang several songs from the pen or the singing of Hank Williams with the effect of marking his recent hundredth birthday. Among them was Stan's rendition of Jambalaya (* Hank Williams, Moon Mullican).

Other songs sung during the evening included:

• Stan - Take these chains from my heart (* Hy Heath, Fred Rose)
• Sue - Gatherin' rhubarb (* Keith Hopwood, Phil Bush), from the mini-series Soul Music based on the Terry Pratchett novel of the same name
• Bob - Drivin' nails in my coffin (* Jerry Irby)
• Stan - Hawaiian sunset (* Sid Tepper, Roy C Bennett)
• Sue - Make you feel my love (* Bob Dylan)
• Colin - I married my Jenny Wren bride (* Shep Woolley)
• Stan - Poor little fool (* Sharon Sheeley)
• Stan - I'm just a country boy (* Fred Hellerman, Marshall Barer)

Simon finished the evening with a rousing chorus song: When All Men Sing (Keith Scowcroft, Derek Gifford).

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

(Number of people present - 9 of whom 8 performed)

Blood and Roses

(Photo: webentwicklerin)

Last week's Dragon Folk Club session continued the trend of eclectic songs and of meeting new and old friends. Notably, we saw the return to the club of old friend Roger who came with occasional visitor John. Roger said he would try to persuade his wife Chris along next time; it would be excellent to see and hear Chris again. We also had an unexpected and welcome visitor, but more of her later.

Your scribe wasn't around at the very beginning of the session, so please forgive any slight inaccuracies. Denny started things off with Young Banker (roud 3321), which Paul followed with the Ballad of Cursed Anna (Jonathan Kelly).

Sue gave us (Haywire Mac) Harry McClintock's Big Rock Candy Mountain (roud 6969) and Bob sang Sweet Little Liza (Dick van Altena). The latter was the first new song of the evening for the Dragon database. As usual this doesn't mean it definitely hasn't been sung at the club before, but that it probably hasn't been recorded in this blog.

Colin's first of the evening was The Greenside Wakes Song (roud 4585). Not only is is new to the database, but nowhere to be found on YouTube (at least not as a song), and therefore it is not in the "a selection" playlist linked below. The only song of the evening which is missing.

John B fittingly gave us Sloop John B (roud 15634) with accompaniment from Roger and singing from all assembled. Meanwhile, Roger's turn brought Ralph McTell's Streets of London.

Simon completed the first round with Roger Whittaker's geographically inaccurate Durham Town. A boy sitting by the river in Durham would be by the River Wear and not the Tyne. How should South African Roger know?

Denny quickly picked up on that and made a pairing with The Water of Tyne (roud 1364), the third song new to the database that evening.

Paul also brought a new song to the party with Seven Virgins (roud 127), from the singing of Norma Waterson.

The new songs for the database were coming thick and fast when Bob sang The Last Ride, written by Robert Halcomb and Ted Daffan, and made famous by Hank Snow.

John had found a new song from Glacia Robinson in the form of Survivor.

Paul got us all singing along to Blood Red Roses (roud 931) which AL Lloyd suggested might be from the early 19th century, but the chorus at least of which Bert himself seems to have brought in possibly with some standard shanty verses.

Bob shook us all up with I knew the bride when she used to rock'n'roll (Nick Lowe) - another new song to the database.

Paul revisited his rendition of Alex Glasgow's Close the Coalhouse Door from the previous week for Bob's benefit since he had been absent.

John was Knockin' on Heaven's Door, but not with the straight Bob Dylan version, rather with words by Ted Christopher relating to the 1996 Dunblane Massacre where in an incident unusual in the UK 16 pupils and one teacher were killed and 15 were injured at a primary school. The man with the gun also shot himself dead. It remains the deadliest mass shooting in British history. It resulted in the private ownership of most handguns within Great Britain being made illegal with few exceptions.

It was Denny who introduced us to A Mon Like Thee which was written by Edmund Hill from St Helens in Merseyside, formerly Lancashire.

It was around about this time that the door opened and there stood Allie, a pub regular who some of us have come to know in passing and have regularly encouraged to join us for the singing. She declared that she had been standing outside the door for some time and was enjoying the music. We tried again to encourage her to enter and while she did not, she stood on the threshold and sang a creditable performance of Here Come the Navvies, written by Ian Campbell. I hope we see and hear more of Allie in the future. She was about to head into singing the Lincolnshire Poacher (roud 299, laws L14), but in the end disappeared off down the corridor.

The last "new" song of the evening was John's singing of Farewell Angelina (Bob Dylan) before Simon brought the session to a close with When All Men Sing (Keith Scowcroft, Derek Gifford).

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

(Number of people present - 9 of whom 9 performed)

Halloween 2022

Stanton Drew (Photo: Simon Meeds)

Last week's Dragon Folk Club session had the theme of Halloween. Happily we were back to reasonable numbers with five singers. We didn't all slavishly follow the theme, but that's fine.

While I think of it, this Friday's theme is variously "Bonfire Night", "Guy Fawkes" and "Campfire Songs", so that is a fairly large target to aim for, but as always the theme is optional. You are welcome to sing, play or otherwise perform anything as long as it's acoustic.

The five at last week's session included two first-timers, Bob J and Sue. In line with tradition I will aim to mention everything that they performed through the evening.

Colin, in his usual MC role, started us off with Chris Hoban's Hallows Eve, a song from the singing of Show of Hands. Steve Knightley says:

It came from socialising with Chris [Hoban]. He’s a Topsham resident, he’s about my age. He’s actually a music teacher. He’s possibly the best unknown songwriter I know, and he’s able to research a topic like this because he’s quite an intellectual guy and from a devout background. His father was seriously high up ecclesiastical figure in London in the Catholic church.

Chris knows his religious history, and in the course of just hanging out he played me this song, and I said “Wow, I love that!” We haven’t really changed the arrangement from how he originally played it to me. There was some debate when we recorded it about the lyric: “the worlds that part us now are twain”, about what that actually means.

I thought it should be “the worlds that unite us now are twain”, but you’d need to talk to Chris about that! It’s a great song, and you’ve just reminded me that it’s one that we should be playing round about now.

Simon gave us another theme-appropriate piece with The Souling Song (Roud 304).

Last week brought a welcome return for Rob who has been busy the last few weekends including singing with Eagle Alley at Mevagissey Shanty Festival. His first song of the evening was The wife of Usher's well (roud 196, child 79). It's always good when it's possible to link to our own singer performing a song.

And so to our welcome first-timers at the Dragon Folk Club... Bob hit the theme with Ghost Trains, written by Famous Lashua. Sue, unable to find what she was looking for to match the theme, gave us Big Rock Candy Mountain (roud 6696), believed to have been originally written by Harry McClintock. Sue's version seemed to be closer though to the Burl Ives, family friendly, version - which is absolutely fine by us.

Colin took us to Somerset to meet the devil in Dancer's of Stanton Drew (Jim Parker, Muriel Holland).

Simon offered With her head tucked underneath her arm (RP Weston, Bert Lee - roud 37117) with mentions of "King Henry", so Rob followed up with King Henry (roud 3967, child 32).

Bob, who variously sings blues and bluegrass it seems, said that his next song had been sung by various rockers, but that his version was from a blues-man whose name I didn't catch. Blind Lemon Jefferson wrote and recorded a song entitled Match Box Blues in 1927, possibly based on Ma Rainey's 1924 Lost Wandering Blues. From the snatches that I noted down of Bob's song it more closely matched Carl Perkins' Matchbox released in 1957. Carl Perkins's father Buck suggested that he write a song based on snatches of lyrics that he remembered. Buck knew only a few lines from the 1927 song from the recordings by Jefferson or the Shelton Brothers. As Perkins sang the few words his father had suggested, Jerry Lee Lewis, who was at that time a session piano player at Sun Studios, started a boogie-woogie riff. Perkins began to improvise on his guitar and with lyrics. Perkins maintained that he had never heard Jefferson's song when he recorded "Matchbox". Of course the Jerry Lee Lewis link is appropriate on the day of his death. Sorry if I've misrepresented Bob's intentions.

Next Sue sang us House of the Rising Sun (roud 6393). It seems that the popular tune made famous by The Animals was first put together by Dave Van Ronk. Van Ronk had learned it sometime in the 1950s, from a recording by Hally Wood, the Texas singer and collector, who had got it from an Alan Lomax field recording by a Kentucky woman named Georgia Turner. Van Ronk put a different spin on it by altering the chords and using a bass line that descended in half steps.

After this Simon couldn't resist sharing Mary McCloud's parody of the same song, House of the Rising Damp (sorry no recording yet).

Colin was still battling away on the theme, singing A Lyke Wake Dirge (roud 8194)

Bob and Sue joined forces to perform In other words (Fly me to the moon) written in 1954 by Bart Howard. At this point, Sue's potential Halloween song turned up among the "Fly me" sheets held by Bob so she went on to sing Riders in the sky (Stan Jones), better known as "Ghost riders in the sky".

Bob's next contribution was Fireball Mail written by Fred Rose and Floyd Jenkins. Sue's last contribution before they both left for the evening was Don't fence me in. Cole Porter received the original writing credits for tune and lyric of this song which was to be used in the film Adios, Argentina which was never made. porter had been asked to write a cowboy song for the movie. He bought a poem by Robert Fletcher for $250 and reworked it. Porter wanted to give Fletcher co-authorship credit, but his publishers did not allow it. After the song became popular Fletcher hired attorneys who negotiated his co-authorship credit in subsequent publications. Although it was one of the most popular songs of its time, Porter claimed it was his least favourite of his compositions.

In the rest of the session we were treated to a couple of "rare songs". The first was from Rob, who sang White dog of Yockenthwaite, a poem by Dorothy Una Ratcliffe set to music by Brian Bedford of Artisan fame. The other was Great Uncle Frank, a song sung by Colin from his own pen.

The penultimate song of the evening, sung by Simon was The Lambton worm (roud 2337) which by coincidence Rob was at that very moment considering singing. Instead Rob finished the session off in theme with Ballad of cursed Anna, written by Jonathan Kelly.

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

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