There was a huge country music thing going in England. Every miners welfare had a country and western night. There were many professional groups and artists making a full time living from country music - bands like the Hillsiders, Kelvin Henderson - solo artists like Tony Goodacre, Dave Curtis, Royston Jones, Mel Hague. The standard was incredibly high. Butlins Country weekends were well supported.

It was a very working class thing though. Weird really - I remember John Peel going crazy, really creaming his jeans - because some Dutch punk band were sing 'I raised a lot cane back in my youger days, and Mother used to pray my crops would fail....'. Peel obviously didn't realise it was a Merle Haggard song, Lonesome fugitive, that he could have heard evry night of the week at the country music club - which a middle class guy like Peel would never consider attending - the southside of Chicago - no problem, but no one was venturing into the southside of Doncaster.

I was amazed one day when i was supply teaching in Hucknall (a little mining town in Nottinghamshire), and I was taking a music lesson - every kid in the class knew all the words to Merle Travis's Dark as a Dungeon.

I'm not too sure that the rich tapestry of English folk music ever got past the rarefied places like the folk clubs and morris dancing clubs. Maybe in some places like the North East and Lancashire - maybe rural places - I never encountered it much on a street level. Not that its not very good music - but not many of the kids knew any folk songs where I was teaching. the Jamaican kids knew Yellow bird - and some of the songs that I recognised from Cliff of the Spinners doing. The Irish kids and the and the Indian kids seem to have some ethnic thing going - but not many English kids. A few rude playground and football chants - and that was it.