Ah, Malcolm Price! What memories! I was a regular in the audience at Surbiton Assembly Rooms Folk Club from about 1962 onwards and saw Malcolm, with or without Trio, or Trio Plus One, on very many occasions. I believe it was our Master of Ceremonies, Derek Sarjeant, who referred to them one evening as The Cut Price Trio, a name which stuck. (I think they had agreed at the last minute to fill in for someone who could not make it - and for the same fee.)
Whoever Malcolm performed with, or without anyone else, you were guaranteed an evening of solid entertainment. His guitar picking was the cleanest and fastest on the scene until Doc Watson arrived (though Dr Pete Floyd in his day could come close). He sang with great earnestness, as though his lungs were running on empty. He had the look of a robin singing out on the top of a tree. Those were the days when you could sing folk songs from the Burl Ives song book without shame. On top of the singing was the patter - Malcolm would never stop talking. His introductions to his songs could run on for far longer than the song itself, and were invariably much more funny, unless it was a comic song, which could bring the house down. I would rate Malcolm's ad-lib stage patter easily on a par with Billy Connolly's. And while he was talking he was tuning or doing two or three other things at the same time, all of which were pulled into the thread somehow.
I remember that Mick North turned up with a fretted fiddle one evening. Anyone remember that? He used it for about one number to apply the appropriate notes. I've never seen one since.
If memory serves, Malcolm and the lovely Carol used to appear at the Jolly Blacksmith at Fulwell in the very early sixties. The Farriers were the resident group, with the late Dave Verth on banjo and .....? Was that John O'Flaherty? Skyport Ade Tucker? Geoff 'Winkle' Wilkes? Frank Beaseley on autoharp? Memory fades.