Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?

Subject: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: Nicholas Waller
Date: 30 Jan 11 - 09:00 PM

A few days ago I started a thread about The Topic FC in Bradford finding records of gigs it had hosted in the 1960s (previously, due to missing some archives, the information only went back to October 1970).

Most acts we had on in the 60s are well known, but a few are a bit of a mystery, at least to me (who runs the Topic website, and likes to link to an artist's website if possible).

One mystery act is "Tony and Dave", who performed in December 1964. The only thing we know about them, as far as I can see, is that they came from Sheffield and were paid £6.0s.0d.

I've pursued a few avenues and they are not 1) Tony Hooper and Dave Cousins from The Strawbs 2) Tony Wilson and Dave Boardman from the Bothy club in Southport or 3) Dave and Toni Arthur, who did come to the Topic a few years later (Dave Arthur says they were once billed - not at the Topic - as "Dave, Tony and Arthur").

Has anybody got any ideas?

Other mystery acts, some of which may be typos or transcription errors, are:

The Heritage Singers (July 1961 - there are other later setups by that name)
Mark and Sue (Aug 1961)
Thills (Oct 1965)
John Freshwater (1965 - googling gets you hits for an anti-gay creationist school teacher accused of burning crosses into pupils' arms, b. 1956 so not the same bod)
The New Folk (July 1966)
Jimmy and the Sinn Feiners (Sept 1966 - our entry is the only Google hit!)
Harry Hart (Nov 1966)
Haly Hact (May 1967 - possibly a misreading of Harry Hart?? - again, our entry is the only Google hit)
The Broadside (March 1969 - there've been other bands with this name since, such as this one founded 1979).
The Folk Weavers (Aug 1969... there's a pic with some BACCApipes Keighley people here but that's about it for info I can see).
Dave "Baz" Farrar (Nov 1971)

I am not looking for gossip or to expose to scrutiny any well-earned privacy of any of these people, but if individual acts or individual personnel from former bands happen to have a public website that anyone knows the URL for, let me know and I can link to it on out site.

Thanks, Nick

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 31 Jan 11 - 03:10 AM

Can't help you too much with John Freshwater but he was also guest at Birtley around the time you mention which was just before I was a regular there. Was he an American on tour?

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 31 Jan 11 - 03:53 AM

Keith Marsden & Brian Senior were New Heritage, but I guess you knew that?

L in C#

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: GUEST,Frug
Date: 31 Jan 11 - 04:00 AM

Dave and Toni Arthur ??

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Jan 11 - 05:23 AM

There was a singer in the Sheffield area called Tony Irvine - I can ask around on that one.

I would be 80% sure that the Broadside were the Grimsby-based band. They used to lead off Cleethorpes Festival at that time.

http://time-has-told-me.blogspot.com/2009/01/broadside-from-grimsby.html

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: GUEST,flush
Date: 31 Jan 11 - 06:16 AM

The Folk Weavers used to play in Bingley on a regular basis and two of the members along with Paul Keane were Big John Marshall and Charles Parkinson

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 31 Jan 11 - 07:18 AM

Time to 'fess up! Looks like the taxman is on to you...!

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: Sir Roger de Beverley
Date: 31 Jan 11 - 07:37 AM

Certainly The Broadside were John Conolly, Bill Meek etc and were the residents at the Grimsby folk song club during the years 1964 -69 when I went there.However, I'm not sure if they were still using the name in 1979

Roger

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: Nicholas Waller
Date: 31 Jan 11 - 07:50 AM

Thanks for some responses!

Frug: Dave and Toni Arthur have already been eliminated (well, probably) by Dave Arthur himself.

GUEST: Google must index Mudcat quickly or frequently, as the top result using the search string:

"tony irvine" dave sheffield

is your response to this query! But that looks like the right result on The Broadside, so thanks for that. John Conolly still comes to The Topic, 2008 his most recent appearance.

flush: Thanks. The BACCApipes pic I linked to above had Liz Narey from the club, and Paul Kean, and "Steve, Ken and Andy", so presumably they had some personnel changes. Again, searching for Big John Marshall and Charles Parkinson on Google gets you this Mudcat thread as the top result!

(Unfortunately, searching for "Big John Marshall" alone gets you to a marginally NSFW blow-up doll by that name, I kid you not! But I see from more subtle searching that the real John Marshall was from Ilkley).

Dave Sutherland: John Freshwater could have been an American on tour. There seem to have been quite a few in the early days of The Topic, including Joe and Eddie. There were unproven legends that both Paul Simon and Bob Dylan showed up at one time or another as floor singers.

Les in Chorlton: actually, I didn't have a link to New Heritage or their members on our Contacts and Links page, so now I can add that, thanks.

There are 510+ links on that page, many probably now broken... time I went through again and updated it.

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: Nicholas Waller
Date: 31 Jan 11 - 07:56 AM

Sir Roger de B: The 1979 Broadside Band is definitely a different outfit, founded 1979 by Jeremy Barlow and specialising in English popular and dance music from 1550-1750.

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 31 Jan 11 - 08:24 AM

No misprints with Dave "Baz" Farrar (Nov 1971).
He plays fiddle and banjo and has been known around the Bradford/Keighley folk scene for a long while. If I remember correctly, he was one of the early membership of Boar's Head Morrismen.
Quack!
Geoff Gilday (Topic committee 1981-85ish)

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: Nicholas Waller
Date: 31 Jan 11 - 09:25 AM

Geoff the Duck:

There's a pic of a poster on the BACCApipes site with Dave Farrar's name on it.

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: Sir Roger de Beverley
Date: 31 Jan 11 - 02:40 PM

My post was slightly inaccurate - The Broadside (Grimsby) were originally known as The Meggies but I'm not too sure when one became the other

Roger

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Jan 11 - 06:12 PM

Well they were the broadside at all the CLeethorpes Festivals I remember. On the other hand it was the sixties..........

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: Sir Roger de Beverley
Date: 01 Feb 11 - 10:03 AM

This was before the folk festivals got going. See this from the club website:

The original idea for the Grimsby Folk Club came from Bob and Helen Blair who moved to Cleethorpes from Fife in 1963. They had been running a folk club in Fife and when looking for information on the local folk scene they met John Connolly behind the counter of the Grimsby Music Library. Bemoaning the fact that the nearest club was across the Humber in Hull, the idea of a Grimsby club was born.


After an article in the Grimsby Evening Telegraph inviting others of a like mind to get in touch, Bill Meek, a local biology teacher, joined the group. These four began meeting at the Blair's flat and after putting together a repertoire of songs they formed The Meggies.

R

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: Cath
Date: 02 Feb 11 - 09:39 AM

To add to what Geoff the Duck says - Baz Farrar (as he was known in those days) was a regular attender and singer at the Topic but I remember him as guitarist rather than fiddle and banjo.
Cath

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: GUEST,FLUSH
Date: 02 Feb 11 - 11:07 AM

Baz played with Steve Outram if I remember correctly, Steve played the banjo

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: Nicholas Waller
Date: 06 Feb 11 - 03:58 PM

Aha, it seems - from Mark Newman - that "Mark and Sue" from August 1961 were Mark Newman and Sue Rock. Mark Newman says that he first went to The Topic in 1958!

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Feb 11 - 04:55 PM

I notice Mark Newman uses as one of his tunings DADDAE which is similiar to the 3 top strings of tenor banjo tuning.

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: Folknacious
Date: 06 Feb 11 - 05:20 PM

Long shot, but The Strawberry Hill Boys - Dave Cousins & Tony Hooper? (later aka The Strawbs)

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: Nicholas Waller
Date: 06 Feb 11 - 06:39 PM

Tony and Dave are not The Strawberry Hill Boys - I contacted a chap who runs Strawbsweb and he got in touch with them... they were never "Tony and Dave", though once upon a time in Blackpool they were "David and Anthony".

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: bradfordian
Date: 07 Feb 11 - 06:40 PM

Baz, a genial, tall bearded chap at that time also frequented the Bradford Folk Club and was at one time reputed to be a grave digger!

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: GUEST,dave spalding
Date: 18 Feb 11 - 09:57 PM

Yes, Tony Irvine is right. Tony was an Irish guy from Iniskillen who worked in Sheffield at Viners, and sang in his spare time. He continued to sing in the Sheffield area with a vaiety of groups, but he's been dead a few years now.
Dave is me, Dave Spalding. I started singing as a student at Sheffield University, and led a skiffle group during that short lived phenomenon. After some years away from Sheffield I moved back to Sheffield where I was was Deputy Director at the Sheffield Museum until 1967, when I moved to western Canada, where I still live.
Tony and I paired up about 1964, and ended up running a folk club in Chesterfield with 6 foot 8 inches or so Frank Sutton — I can't remember which pub, now. We had a lot of the top singers there in the sixties (Martin Carthy, Shirley Collins, Alex Campbell, Nigel Denver, Jacquie and Bridie et al, and did a broadcast of the BBCs Folkweave from there, for which they let us bring in The Spinners.
Tony and I performed extensively within easy driving reach of Sheffield (as we both had full time jobs), going to Manchester, Coventry, Rotherham, Bradford, Barnsley. We had a wide repertoire of Irish, English, Scottish and American songs, and some original material; Tony sang lead and I did harmonies and played (usually) the guitar.
I was also involved in collecting and publishing songs — Tony and I did a song book published by the Museum, in conjunction with Paul Smith, then a Rotherham singer. Paul got me into traditional drama (T'Owd Tup), helped me put together a folklore exhibit at Western Park, and went on to become an academic folklorist. He is now on faculty at Memorial University in St Johns, Newfoundland, and we reconnected a number of years ago.
In Canada I began singing with my wife Andrea, under the name of Brandywine, and we ended up pioneering folk songs for kids, with a national TV show for 10 years in the 80s, and many school, library and festival gigs in Alberta and adjacent provinces. We pioneered the use of Canadian Folk Songs in schools, and have written many original songs in traditional style. I was active with the Canadian Folk Music Society, serving on the board and contributing to its publications. We were also pioneer traditional storytellers, travelling down to Tennessee and North Carolina to study with the revival there, and had a mummers troupe (google The Mummers and the Paupers). We made two recordings, Breakfast with Brandywine, and The Most Beautiful Kite in the World, and many broadcasts.
We've moved on to the west coast in 1990, where we becme writers, and Andrea and I have now written 30+ books between us. We still host the odd house concert, and now my voice is fading I am playing keyboard with a jazz big band.
Glad we are still not totally forgotten after all these years.

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: Nicholas Waller
Date: 19 Feb 11 - 09:14 PM

Ah, thanks, and good to hear from you Dave Spalding! Nice to be able to get some details, so thanks for answering.

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: GUEST,Clive Pownceby
Date: 20 Feb 11 - 04:08 AM

Glad the Tony & Dave mystery has been resolved Nick! (We had a private emailing on this a week or two back)
John Mumby was a member of the Meggies - he lives now in Parbold near Wigan. Despite some physical disabilities, he gets along to Southport's Bothy FSC. Rae Croft was their fiddle player, she's now resident in New Zealand. They were still Meggies in '66, when they supported the Dubliners in concert.

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: Sir Roger de Beverley
Date: 20 Feb 11 - 05:33 AM

I can remember one occasion when John Mumby played Jesu Joy of Man's desiring on the autoharp and didn't Rae go off to London to join a classical orchestra (BBC?)

R

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Feb 11 - 07:04 AM

Roger de B, Rae is now a leading violinist in the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra. John Mumby jokes that she was never quite good enough for the Meggies!

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: GUEST,Clive Pownceby
Date: 20 Feb 11 - 08:34 AM

That last post from me again! Forgot to sign in!

Subject: RE: Who were 1960s act 'Tony and Dave'?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 06 Apr 14 - 07:01 AM

Baz [ Dave Farrar ] still plays guitar and banjo but mostly fiddle, he plays [ nearly ] every Tuesday night at the session at New Inn at Denholme, between Keighley and Halifax.

Dave H