The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #145963 Message #3466319
Posted By: The Sandman
15-Jan-13 - 04:13 AM
Thread Name: Dick Miles and Stockton folk club
Subject: RE: Dick Miles and Stockton folk club
Fifty Years of Folk
An incomplete and inaccurate history of Stockton Folk Club
1962 – 2012
This is a work in progress. Incomplete because Stockton Folk Club is still
very much alive and because it has been necessary to leave out a lot of
detail. Inaccurate because the author's memory and research skills are
imperfect and because not all the source material is totally reliable. It
seemed important though to get something down on paper while we have
chance. It is hoped that this account will stimulate further recollections of
events and characters in the Club's history and that readers will respond
to correct the omissions and mistakes of the author and to add their own
stories.
John Lawson
March 2012
1. How it all started
Early in 1962 an advert in Melody Maker alerted readers to a folk night in Newman's
Coffee Bar in Dovecot Street, Stockton-on-Tees. This was set up as a monthly (?)
venture by Tony Foxworthy, local EFDSS organiser. Stan Croft remembers meeting
Dave Manship there. Johnny Handle, who had recently started at ICI, recalls being
surprised and disappointed by the material performed "as it was only vaguely
anything to do with folk, and more like scout and girl-guide songs, with a few skiffle
and blues items!" An "excruciating rendering of 'Miss Otis Regrets'" made up his
mind to start a separate venue. Johnny already had experience of the Folk Song and
Ballad Club in Newcastle which he started with Louis Killen in 1958.
EARLY DAYS by Johnny Handle
(From the Club's first newsletter in July 1962)
My impressions of Stockton on arrival during the
winter of 1962, was that one meeting a month of the
English Folk Dance and Song Society was not
enough to encourage an active interest in folk music
on Teesside. So I decided to start a weekly club of
my own, after enrolling Ken Crawford and Dave
Manship as regular singers. An immense pub crawl
of Stockton produced few good sites for pub
premises, until at last I found the "Nut" or "King's
Head", tucked away down Lawson Street off Yarm
Lane.
Johnny Handle
The place seemed to have an atmosphere and cosiness so we started the club there in
April. I wondered at first what sort of people would come and listen, - at Newcastle
when we started four years ago, there was a large number of people who only came
once and then went back to Jazz Clubs which they preferred. Not so Stockton folk.
Most of the members now come regularly, many finding a new interest in folk music.
At first we had no definite policy, the ideas building up as we went along. I
concentrated on British and Geordie material. Ken sang both British and American,
while Dave kept the old spurs jinglin' with his popular mid-western songs. Having
several contacts with other singers I booked some guests including Lou Killen, Ray
Fisher, Laurie Charlton, Ron Duke and John Brennan. Their diversity of styles and
[material] helped to make the evenings more interesting and to prove what a fund of
British songs exists.
Colin Ross comes from Shields to play the fiddle, melodeon and pipes, while the local
lads keep up their end with rheumatic squeezebox and fancy banjo picking. The guest
spot from the floor proved popular and Graeme, our local bard, found a new audience
for his excellent songs.
On the now legendary "Blaydon Races Neet", food was provided for the members
including the traditional "Stotty Kyeks" (Teesside's fatty cakes), the munching of 95
pairs of jaws being a suitable accompaniment to the Tyneside music hall songs……
This newsletter also listed the Committee:
Johnny Handle (Jesmond); Ken Crawford (Faceby); Dave Manship (Ormsby);
Graeme Miles (No fixed abode!); John White (Marske)
Treasurer & Secretary John McCoy Middlesbrough
[There were two John McCoys. One is pictured below in the early Fettlers playing
left-handed guitar, usually known as Johnny or occasionally "Irish John". The other,
listed in the archives as "Gonk", had earlier started a Ballad and Blues Club at the
Leviathan Hotel in Middlesbrough and went on to lead successful R & B groups The
Crawdaddies, The Real McCoy etc. I'm told that the treasurer and secretary was Irish
John.]
For years there has been a question mark over exactly when the Folk Club started.
The 20th anniversary was celebrated on 22nd March with a visit from the Elliots and
the Birtley Club (which started in March 1962), and the 21st and 25th anniversaries,
too, were marked in March. A recent scan through the small ads in the Evening
Gazette for March-April 1962, however, revealed a series of ads for "The Folk Song
Club starting this Tuesday / tomorrow night / tonight King's Head, Stockton", where
"tonight" was Tuesday 3rd April. By the following February, when the record books
start, it was meeting on a Monday night, the slot it has occupied ever since.
[Incidentally, the club which met on Fridays in Newman's Coffee bar (fortnightly
according to Melody Maker) later moved to the Black Lion and became the Song
Swap Club. So far, I've been unable to find exactly when it started or what happened
to it after about June '62.]
2. Growth
Ron Angel continues the story (from his Introduction to "Sitting in the Sun", a
collection of songs and tunes written by members, 1992)
We were fortunate from the very beginning of the Club we had fine original songs
appearing. One of the founder members, Graeme Miles, single handedly started what
has become the Teesside Tradition; songs like "The Guisborough Road", "Greatham
Marshes", "Ring of Iron" and "The Baltic Taverners" (also known as "The
Procession") were just the forerunners of a phenomenal output of songs about urban
and rural Cleveland. The man who actually organised the Club, Johnny Handle, was
also producing original songs … in addition to making herculean efforts towards
keeping the fledgling club going. At one time he was learning three new songs a
week, and doing the first half-hour himself whilst hoping to be relieved by Dave
Manship, Graeme Miles, Ken Crawford and John White (known as the gang), who
used to come rolling in after about 45 minutes. Johnny Handle set the standards for
the new club, insisting on good order when someone was singing, urging people to
have a go, and giving praise and encouragement when they did so. He also started off
the instrumental tradition of the Club, learning to play traditional jigs and reels on the
melodeon, an instrument which most of us had never even seen before. It was a sad
day for the Club when he became redundant at ICI and had to go back up to Tyneside.
Deprived of its leading light and main driving force, the Club waned visibly, and
numbers dropped week by week until we were left with eleven members, two of
whom had just started.
After much discussion, we accepted the theory that part of the trouble was that no-one
would take responsibility for starting the night, so it was decided to form a Group
(wonderful new word for the 60s) for that express purpose. The group was named The
Fettlers (local iron-making tradition and also the general Northern English meaning of
[fettle] "to put something right") and had the duty of starting off the evening with
half-a-dozen songs and rounding off the night with a few resounding choruses, as well
as keeping order generally and leading any choruses that happened to come along in
the course of the evening.
Left to right: John White; Graeme Miles; Ken Crawford; Ron Angel; Johnny McCoy
(photo probably taken by Dave Manship who was also in the group, briefly, before he left to
go to sea)
This had the desired effect and attendances rapidly improved with remarkable
consistency, week after week, until the place (The King's Head) became so crowded
that we had to move to the Stork & Castle, a couple of streets away. This was a much
bigger place, with the bar curtained off in a recess in the back corner and a fine, big
stage. The audience continued to grow apace until it became quite normal to see a
queue of people 30 yards long waiting to get in at the beginning of the night.
At this time instrumentals were still very few and a fair proportion of Country and
Western songs were still being sung. We had become aware, however, of the English
Folk Song and Dance Society by this time, and that most of the fine traditional songs
we were hearing and singing had been made available courtesy of the EFDSS. We
also became aware of an attitude of mind known nowadays as Political Correctness.
Members argued interminably over what was allowable as "Folk Song" and what was
not: heated discussions and furious arguments became so common that the Society
was referred to familiarly as the "English Folk and Ding-dong". (And the years rolled
on and nothing changed.) Some of us joined, however, and remained fee-paying
members for nearly 30 years. [And some of us still are]