The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #25825   Message #4205838
Posted By: GUEST,Liz Veal
21-Jul-24 - 12:53 PM
Thread Name: Help: Where is Trevor Crozier
Subject: RE: Help: Where is Trevor Crozier
I knew Trevor when he was a student at Trinity College, Dublin, in the mid 1960s, He was part of a rich folk music scene. I learned so much from him, and I also from many other superb Dublin singers of that time. Trev visited me in Cambridge and occasionally I saw him in London,. Years went by and I was working in Malawi, when someone on the ex-pat network alerted me to an Englishman called Crozier living on a tobacco plantation a day’s drive from Blantyre. It was indeed Trev so I drove out to meet him. The tobacco farm was truly extraordinary, run by two very elderly and wildly eccentric relatives. Nothing seemed to have changed since they built the wooden farmhouse (rather like a rather grand African hut) sometime around 1900 . It might have been earlier. The old people were irascible and probably certifiable. Trev ran the farm. He had some interesting friends out there. I particularly remember being introduced to the local Magistrate and being taken to the ex-pat Club by him and Trev. The Magistrate was a young black Malawian and he visited the Club regularly to enforce the law that it should be open to people of any colour. He (and we) got a chilly welcome. The white « Old Guard » were downright offensive. But there was nothing they could do. The Magistrate had the power of life and death in that area. I have so many great memories of singing with Trevor and some of his songs are still in my repertoire. I’m getting on now, and next week I shall be in a recording studio laying down a few tracks while I’ve still got a voice. Looking at the list, I realise that I’ve been singing songs learned from Trevor for over sixty years.