The singers club and proscription

Subject: RE: The singers club and proscription
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 10 Jan 16 - 12:59 PM

Jim,

Are you suggesting that Ewan and Peggy did not receive and financial recompense for their Saturday evening performances at The Ballads & Blues Club?

I find Ewan's idea of rescuing a large number of young people quite amusing. Also his reference to the Tonight Programme. The Tonight Programme was NOT a folk music programme but a current affairs/magazine type show. At the end of each week-night programme there would be a musical item. Sometimes it was classical mandolin player Hugo D'Alton (excuse me if I have the name mis-spelt), sometimes it was calypsonian and guitarist Cy Grant who was often a guest at the Ballads & Blues during Ewan's tenure. Others that appeared were Rory & Alex McEwen also guests at the Ballads & Blues during Ewan's period, Robin Hall & Jimmie MacGregor and another whose name at the moment I cannot recall. Their material was often a calypso type number commenting on items in the day's news.

The number of musicians making a living solely from "Folk Music" then was probably about the same as it is now. Very small indeed

I hope you don't consider this to be sniping at anyone living or dead.

I should also declare an interest in the subject having taken over the bookings for the Ballads and Blues Association Club when it re-opened after the Summer break in September 1961 a few yards around the corner from the ACTT at 2 Soho Square, We were at 7 Carlisle Street in premises which were previously The Partisan Coffee Bar.

Subject: RE: The singers club and proscription
From: GUEST,ada the cadre
Date: 10 Jan 16 - 11:34 AM

I was taken there a few times as a child & visited once or twice as an adult too. My recollection is of the childhood visits that both Ewan & Bert Lloyd were pretty scary, and that you would need to be a pretty good musician to offer to perform at all. The problem with the proscription was that many of us grew up in cities where the folk tradition had been gone for a century. The number of songs originating from the London boroughs of Camden & Haringey are small and there are only so many times you can sing The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington. In my mind the proscription is linked with the Anti American feelings that a lot of adults on the Left had at the height of the Cold War. If you think they were harsh on American songs you should have heard people from those political circles on chewing-gum and what were then known as blue-jeans.

Subject: RE: The singers club and proscription
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 10 Jan 16 - 11:29 AM

I doubt the word "tolerate" ever comes up in most folk clubs. Words such as "entertain" and "enjoyment" seem to be far preferable.

Subject: RE: The singers club and proscription
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Jan 16 - 10:38 AM

"would there be any one who would give up their time and do it for nothing, "
Virtually all involved in the revival in those days were non-professional; making a living from the Folk Clubs was a rarity.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: The singers club and proscription
From: The Sandman
Date: 10 Jan 16 - 10:21 AM

would there be any one who would give up their time and do it for nothing, which was what Ewan and Peggy did?

Subject: RE: The singers club and proscription
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Jan 16 - 09:54 AM

"Not sure what degree of continuity there might have been."
This is Ewan's statement of intent when he and Peggy launched the
Singers Club in 1961 in conjunction with Eric Winters' Sing Magazine.
Jim Carroll

"Why I am Opening a New Club
Ewan Maccoll and Peggy Seeger have set up their own folk song club, the Singers' club, in the heart of London. Run jointly with the magazine SING. it opened on 25 June at 2 Soho Square.
Maccoll and Seeger are not strangers to this building. For many months they sang there with the Ballads and Blues Association, until they broke with manager Malcolm Nixon after disagreements on artistic policy. Here Maccoll explains what led him to start the new club.

At a time when there are a great many folk clubs on the London scene, people may wonder why I have plunged in at the centre, in a season when attendances tend to fall off.
1.        It is necessary to rescue a large number of young people, all of whom have the right instincts, from those influences that have appeared on the folk scene during the past two or three years; influences that are doing their best to debase the meaning of folk song. The only notes that some people care about are the banknotes.
2.        Some top-liners in the folk song world; Bert Lloyd, Dominic Behan, for instance; have done little public singing in the past two or three years. Peggy and I have sung to live audiences more in the States and Canada than in Britain. Our new club will provide a platform for singers of this calibre who, like all folk singers, draw strength from live audiences.
3.        Our experiences during our US tour and at the Newport Festival have shown us the danger of singing down to an audience. It is the danger that the folk song revival can get so far away from its traditional basis that in the end it is impossible to distinguish it from pop music and cabaret.
It has happened in the States at clubs like the "Gate of Horn" in San Francisco where the cover charge and a meal are likely to run to about £5 a head for an evening. True bawdiness is reduced to mere suggestiveness. The songs, sapped of their vigour, become "quaint". It's happening here too in the "Tonight" programme. I was scared when I saw what's going on in some of the clubs. But it's not too late to retrieve the position.
4.        The position in Britain is relatively healthy. It's easy to bring Harry Cox and Sam Lamer to London and other centres and to bring fine Gaelic singers into Edinburgh, for instance. There's no tendency for them to be snapped up and commercialised. But we are determined to give top traditional singers a platform where they will be protected from the ravages of the commercial machine.
5. Finally, we need standards. Already the race for the quick pound note is on in the folk song world. "Quaint" songs, risque songs, poor instrumentation and no - better - then - average voices; coupled with a lack of respect for the material: against these we will fight.
Sing August 1961."

Subject: RE: The singers club and proscription
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Jan 16 - 08:33 AM

I never actually went to The Singers Club, which happened, I believe, after I left London for Cambridge, after my late wife won her Mature State Scholarship and I dropped out of the folk scene for several years. My recollections re Ewan & Isla &c are of the earlier incarnation, the late 1950s Ballads & Blues Club at the Princess Louise. Not sure what degree of continuity there might have been.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: The singers club and proscription
From: Mr Red
Date: 10 Jan 16 - 08:25 AM

As far as I am concerned it is up to the club organisers and what they want it to be. They put the effort in and they stand or fall on the popularity of their decisions. We vote with our feet, or seat. It can defeat some clubs particularly ones that no longer exist, though there may be many other reasons for their demise.

I have and do avoid anything that is too draconian. I may choose to tolerate things, my choice.

The digital revolution has moved things on, some of our consumption, and participation is as an archive. I include myself in this, and if C# was here today he would sport a pocket recorder and a website.

Subject: RE: The singers club and proscription
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Jan 16 - 07:59 AM

"(Up to a point: I don't think that either the pro- or the pre-scription was rigorously or unreasonably enforced"
It wasn't - it was an something expected from and by the residents (the policy came from an audience committee) and was based on a desire to open up the national repertoires on Britain and Ireland rather than allowing them to be swamped by the U.s. as had happened previously.
"Isla Cameron"
I hope no-one ever approaches me with my indiscretions committed in my pre-teen days Mike (that's how old the revival was when that particular incident happened).
The Singers Club was no more rigid than most folk Clubs in terms of what was performed there, and it was far less than many 'purist' clubs that denied the use of instruments and rejected contemporary or political songs.
If there is no place for clubs where people can be guaranteed to go to hear folk songs, then the "Folk revival" is over and the future of folk songs lies in archives and libraries.
Is there a need for it - having viewed what has happened in the UK and comparing it to the massive influx of youngsters becoming involved in traditional music - very much so.
I will be happy to contribute to this thread until it degenerates into a personalised slanging match (against anybody, living or dead)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: The singers club and proscription
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 10 Jan 16 - 07:29 AM

There used to be a few clubs hereabouts with "rules."

My point centres around the "used to be" part of the sentence.

Subject: RE: The singers club and proscription
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Jan 16 - 06:52 AM

It was both proscriptive and prescriptive.

It prescribed the performance of work from one's own tradition;

and proscribed that from those of others.

(Up to a point: I don't think that either the pro- or the pre-scription was rigorously or unreasonably enforced. Tho, as I have related before, I recall Ewan threatening Isla Cameron with 50 lashes next time she sang an American song.)

≈M≈

Subject: The singers club and proscription
From: The Sandman
Date: 10 Jan 16 - 06:43 AM

As les in chorlton asked and to prevent thread drift. I started a new thread.
according to the dictionary, proscription is the imposing of restraint and restriction.The Singers club HAD RULES RELATING TO THE PERFORMANCE OF MUSIC, therefore it was proscriptive.
That suited some people but not everybody.
Would such a club would work now, and is there a need for it?