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)

Calm down children

Children of BALPA performing at Thornbury Carnival, 2019
(Photo: Simon Meeds)

We really were scraping the barrel last Friday, starting the evening with three singers, and dropping to two before the break. You will understand then why there were fewer songs sung than usual and we called it a night when the break would usually have been.

Colin started us off with a parody of Wild Rover (Roud 1173) - Song Of The F.U. (The Kipper Family). Here FU stands for Farmers' Union. As far as I can work out, the union was the NFU from its formation in 1908, so I guess the "N" just didn't scan or maybe there is a contrary message in there somewhere?

When might March follow May?

It was a small throng that met up last week at The New Inn but we are grateful to everyone who made it, especially to Roger, who was unusually Chris-less since she had been singing her heart out the night before and presumably needed to give her voice a rest.

Our numbers were reduced even further at the break and as we started going round in ever decreasing circles we put the night out of its misery slightly earlier than usual but a good variety of songs were nevertheless sung.

Derek started us off in a very seasonal way with Whitsun Dance (Austin John Marshall). Quite a number of May songs were still coming out of the woodwork, starting with Mike's singing of Claudy Banks (Roud 266, Laws N40).

4th July - Independence Day

We've made it to the 100th post on the Dragon Folk Club blog. Granted not all of the posts are session reports but the vast majority are. The session this week took on a largely sateside theme, it being 4th July, American Independence Day.

Opening discussions were wide ranging and not a little seedy. Derek was interested to hear the progress of the Glamorgan versus Somerset cricket match, which was abandoned without a ball being bowled - at least it didn't make Derek quite as depressed as a defeat for Glamorgan but he said his team needed a win, so it wasn't all good news either. It seemed that most other discussions led to 69 and we nearly found out too much information about someone's daughter! I asked Colin what was the obscure song he sang last week about the Potteries. He answered that it was The jolly machine but Kevin misheard and thought he was talking about a contraceptive dispenser.