For Singing

Harry Brown
(Based on a photograph by Hugh Llewelyn - Flickr)

Numbers were unfortunately back to being depleted last Friday but some worthwhile singing was done.

Colin arrived in time to take up his regular role as MC, but with Simon arriving first it was his job to start off the session, singing a Canadian song, Peggy Gordon (Roud 2280). This was followed by Colin with Old Johnny Bugger (Roud 19111). Those who are squeamish of the title of this Lancashire/ Yorkshire version may prefer the title used by Shirley Collins on her 2016 album Lodestar which was Old Johnny Buckle. The album notes say "Sung by Mrs Hewett, a ploughman's wife of Mapledurwell, Hants, recorded by Bob Copper in July 1955. It's an upside-down song, a daft little nonsense song of contradictions. A far nobler variant of this type of song is Nottamun Town." I have also seen the final name of the title as Booker, Bigger, Booger, Boker, and many more.

Mike's first song was Napoleon Bonaparte (Roud 1626) which is also called Napoleon's Farewell to Paris.

We visited a couple of the big folk rock bands. First Simon with Boys of Bedlam (V16366) the tune being by Dave Moran and Nic Jones of The Halliard, and which became associated with Steeleye Span. Second was Colin with Fairport Convention's Genesis Hall (Richard Thompson). "Genesis Hall" was an abandoned hotel in London's Drury Lane, originally the Bell Hotel. It had been occupied by hippie squatters. The London police had evicted the squatters, and eventually caused the building to be razed. Thompson's father was a member of the London police force at the time, and the lyrics refer to the incident.

Mike had been reminded about his next song by the singing of his Bristol Shantymen colleague, Jeff Blake. The song was Sailboat Malarkey about which A L Lloyd wrote "The tune and most of the words come from the Bahamas, from the singer Frederick McQueen. In the Bahamas it's mostly used for boat-launching, but it serves equally well for capstan work. ‘Malarkey’ here is a mispronunciation of ‘Malachi’."

Colin brought out If by David Gates of the band Bread. A bit of trivia is that this song reached number one in the UK singles chart in 1975, not for Bread but for Telly Savalas (his version), becoming the song with the shortest title to reach No. 1 in the UK.

Mike sang Harry Brown a written by Pete MacNab with a little help from Mike himself. The song, in the form of a shanty, tells of a well-loved Bristol-based dredger which eventually sank in a second life working in Bahrain.

After a lot more singing the evening was closed by Colin with a new song from Tom Lewis called A Shanty For Singing.

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

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

Harvest, wars and other stuff

Photo: Simon Meeds

Sorry, I won't get round to writing a proper report of last Friday's session. Suffice to say that Colin was MC and he was joined by Mike, Derek, Maggie L and Simon. A good evening of singing was had and you can get an idea of most of the songs sung from the link below.

See you this Friday for more of the same and more of something different.

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

(Number of people present - 5, of whom 4 performed)

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)

Somewhat nautical

(Photo: Simon Meeds)

We are still on low numbers but at least we now have a good idea of why our other core members are absent at the moment and hope to see them in the next few weeks. In the meantime newcomers and visitors would be very welcome to join us.

I'll keep the report short to reflect the reduced number of singers.

MC Colin started us off with That's What It's Like In The Navy written by Cyril Tawney, a songwriter he returned to later in the evening with Chicken on a Raft. Chicken on a raft is naval slang for a fried egg on toast.

Simon kept it nautical with Ian "Nobby" Dye's Welsh Back Quay as did Mike with Johnny Come Down to Hilo.

The second round started with Colin singing Coaly Tyne (Roud V21088) which prompted Simon to give us Mark Knopfler's Sailing to Philadelphia ("Far away from the coaly Tyne"). Mike followed up with When Johnny Comes Marching Home (Roud 6673), which he said has been used as a shanty.

We continued, not always in a nautical vein until the evening was rounded off by Simon singing Suzanne Vega's Tom's Diner.

The following evening Simon and Colin (dubbed "The Wreckers") joined Mike and two of his fellow Bristol Shantymen as an ad hoc chorus for an enjoyable evening of shanty singing at Tormarton.

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

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

Three wise monkeys

We were once again thin on the ground at last Friday's sing-around session. We started with three and later diminished to two, but we sang and chatted the evening out nevertheless, finishing only marginally earlier than our tradition in what one friend of mine calls "the before-times".

This report is being produced late and in order to avoid it being later still I will leave the YouTube playlist to do the talking because although it claims below to be "a selection" of the songs we sang, it is in fact on this occasion a complete record.

Let's hope we can muster greater numbers this week.

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

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

The joy of chorus singing

Henry Joy McCracken

Five of us met last Friday to sing. While there was a charity event on in the bar and, shock horror, there was no hand-pumped ale, we proceeded with little disruption except when the barbecue was retrieved from the forecourt through the carriage doors in our room. Colin even received a complement for his performance at that stage!

Indeed Colin was back this week and returned to his customary role of MC, starting off the evening with Keith Scowcroft and Derek Gifford's When All Men Sing: a good way to get everyone singing.

Mike is trying to prepare us for being his chorus on 25 September at Tormarton (see the previous week's blog report), so he sang Outward And Homeward Bound (Roud 18905) which has a chorus made to fool the careless joiner-inner, changing several times through the song. Simon incorrectly thought he remembered Mike saying the song was not a shanty, though he had the right idea in that a shanty "should be" either an outward bounder or a homeward bounder and this song can't make its mind up. Nevertheless, it is apparently not the only only shanty to introduce such confusion. Note that the linked version is based in Liverpool whereas naturally, Mike's is based in Bristol.

Geoff's first song was The Limerick Rake (Roud 3018).

There had earlier been a comment that Colin, who had not found his usual table (we later worked out it had been taken outside), was sitting on a bar stool to better reach the pool table. Simon joked that he was "young and still growing", which Derek took as a request to sing The Trees They Do Grow High (Roud 31, Laws O35).

Simon's first song was Elizabeth Padgett's The Plover Catcher. It didn't go quite to plan because he found himself singing it closer to the way Elizabeth sings her own song than the way he usually does it. Having restarted in something approaching the usual vein it was only much later he worked out what had gone wrong... he doesn't usually use a capo on the third fret as she does.

Mike continued our chorus practice with Spanish Ladies (Roud 687). He asked us why this isn't a shanty. The answer is that the version he sings is from the Royal Navy. The Royal Navy did not allow the singing of shanties, and apart from the national anthem this was the only song allowed on board.

Derek wasn't put off by the fact that it was 3 September and in any case sang The Donibristle Mine Disaster (Roud 3509) which starts "On the twenty sixth of August the fatal moss gave way".

Mike's continuing chorus tutorial brought us Drunken Sailor (Roud 322). He seemed disappointed that most of us chose to attempt to sing harmonies.

It was Colin's singing of Linstead Market (Roud 16397) that impressed the lady who came to bring in the barbecue.

Derek started a trend with Henry Joy (Roud 10612) which Colin followed with Tom Paxton's Ramblin' Boy ("So here's to you my Rambling Boy, May all your rambling bring you joy."), and Simon concluded with Bob Dylan's The Mighty Quinn (But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here, Everybody's gonna jump for joy"). Geoff broke the pattern with Copper Kettle (Albert Frank Beddoe).

It was Geoff also who gave us the penultimate song of the evening. From the second single he ever bought, presumably sung by The Everly Brothers, it was Bird Dog, written by Boudleaux Bryant.

Our final song of the evening was the second part of a pair sung by Derek. The earlier component was The Volunteer Organist (William B Gray, George Spaulding) and the second part was a parody of it from Jack Elliott of Birtley, called The Volunteer Putter. In Northumberland, "putter" was the local term for the person who brought empty coal tubs up to the coal face and took loaded tubs to the pit bottom.

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

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

The Dog Watch (without the dog)

Photo: Simon Meeds

Last Friday we were reduced to just three singers. Mike made an early appearance but was on his way home rather than intending to stay. In the absence of Colin, Simon took over as MC.

The main purpose of Mike's brief visit was to ask that we publicise his now confirmed shanty performance evening from 7pm on 25 September at the Major's Retreat, Tormarton (GL9 1HZ). The Bristol Shantymen were asked to perform but only Mike will be available. He is therefore looking for a crowd of willing chorus singers on the assumption that the pub regulars won't join in without prompting.

When we were finally (barely) quorate, Simon kicked off the singing with Rout of the Blues (Roud 21098).

Derek gave us McCafferty (Roud 1148) which originated as a street-ballad about Patrick McCaffrey, executed in 1862 for the killing of two of his officers. Prompted by Geoff, Derek told how a rumour had arisen among gypsies that singing this song or the more recently Kevin Barry (Roud 3014) could be considered a treasonable offence, leading to imprisonment or even death. He assumes that it was indeed a rumour and had no base in fact.

Geoff's first song, commemorating the recent death of Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts, was You Better Move On (Arthur Alexander) which was the band's fourth single release (January 1964).

Given the small number present, Derek had suggested at the start that we limit ourselves to three songs each. When Geoff entered the room he came with the message that we were required to finish by 10:30pm. In the end Derek and Simon decided that we would go on until Geoff had finished his drink. That lasted through 16 songs and until about 10pm with Derek finishing off the evening by singing Pump Away (Roud 10338).

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

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