First Song you ever sang in Folk Club

Subject: First Song ever sang in Folk Club
From: GUEST,Dick Miles
Date: 18 Jul 19 - 12:57 PM

I am interested in what songs were sung by people as their first song in Folk Clubs

Subject: RE: First Song ever sang in Folk Club
From: GUEST,Wayne
Date: 18 Jul 19 - 01:41 PM

Davy Dodds' I Can Hew at the Grove in Leeds maybe fifteen years ago.

Still love singing it.

Subject: RE: First Song ever sang in Folk Club
From: RTim
Date: 18 Jul 19 - 01:48 PM

At The Cutty Wren, Hythe, Southampton....it was so long ago (1968..) I have been trying to remember...but too much water under the bridge since then!

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: First Song ever sang in Folk Club
From: G-Force
Date: 18 Jul 19 - 02:15 PM

1969. Running running from home.

Subject: RE: First Song ever sang in Folk Club
From: DMcG
Date: 18 Jul 19 - 02:42 PM

Not sure overall, but my first at the Fo'c'sle Southampton was from the Copper family's version of "Charming Molly." I had a long break form anything folk related while the children were growing, so the first I sang after that was not in a club, but out carolling with a dance group around St Albans and it was one of the Sheffield carols - probably "Peace o'er the Earth"

Subject: RE: First Song ever sang in Folk Club
From: Raggytash
Date: 18 Jul 19 - 03:03 PM

'mon like thee' when I was a mere 18 year old!

Subject: RE: First Song ever sang in Folk Club
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Jul 19 - 03:42 PM

Sally Brown at Folk Union One (Watersons club at Ye Olde Bluebell, Hull)
1965. Isobel Sutherland was the guest. I was 18 then as well.

Subject: RE: First Song ever sang in Folk Club
From: GUEST,Guest - Tim Edwards
Date: 18 Jul 19 - 04:04 PM

Lucy Wan at Herga in 1973 (I think) - scary!!

Subject: RE: First Song ever sang in Folk Club
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 18 Jul 19 - 04:23 PM

The Treadmill Gaol song as learned from Steeleye Span. It was at the Bridgwater folk club on 4th December 1984. I also played two tunes, Winster Gallop and Fourhand reel learned from the Old Swan band.
In an attempt to keep learning new material I managed to do 3 items every week for over a year before I repeated anything. I can't learn things that fast now!

Robin

Subject: RE: First Song ever sang in Folk Club
From: GUEST,Jon Bartlett
Date: 18 Jul 19 - 04:27 PM

Solidarity Forever, at the Springfield, Brighton, October 1965

Jon Bartlett

Subject: RE: First Song ever sang in Folk Club
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 18 Jul 19 - 04:50 PM

Really can't remember, but it would have been mid-60s at The London Hospital's own folk club in the Students' Union.

Subject: RE: First Song ever sang in Folk Club
From: Murpholly
Date: 18 Jul 19 - 05:12 PM

Once got told off my an Irish cousin for singing a '98 song in an Irish pub in co. Cork, as it upset the English tourists. I now make it the first song in every new folk club/pub I go to.

Subject: RE: First Song ever sang in Folk Club
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 18 Jul 19 - 05:43 PM

Stan Rogers’ ‘Forty-Five Years’, back around 1989.

Subject: RE: First Song ever sang in Folk Club
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 18 Jul 19 - 05:49 PM

New York Girls at Birtley Folk Club back in 1966; I had just turned 18.

Subject: RE: First Song ever sang in Folk Club
From: Mrrzy
Date: 18 Jul 19 - 06:34 PM

Cool question. I have yet to sing in a folk club. The first folk song I sang in front of people, though, was As I roved out, the sea ballad one. Cynthia Gooding's version.

Subject: RE: First Song ever sang in Folk Club
From: Andy7
Date: 18 Jul 19 - 06:42 PM

The first folk club I started going to was the Broadside in Portsmouth, which a friend introduced me to.

I didn't sing for a time, but when I did, I think 'Scarborough Fair' was my first try.

Subject: RE: First Song ever sang in Folk Club
From: rich-joy
Date: 18 Jul 19 - 06:43 PM

First, (on my own), woulda been "The Furze Field" in 1984 in Darwin.....

Subject: RE: First Song ever sang in Folk Club
From: Andy7
Date: 18 Jul 19 - 07:17 PM

And how about your first song in folk clubs, OP Dick Miles?

Subject: RE: First Song ever sang in Folk Club
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 19 Jul 19 - 03:56 AM

The first folk club that I went to was the BBC folk club in the Langham Hotel in 1965, but I don't remember what I sang there on any occasion, let alone what my first song was.

Subject: RE: First Song ever sang in Folk Club
From: Ged Fox
Date: 19 Jul 19 - 09:45 AM

I'm a bath & camp-fire singer, migrated to Folk Clubs in old age.
I went to my first folk club, NNNP-D, and sang Campion's "I care not for these ladies." There was some lovely singing in the club, but all deeply melancholy. Their most cheerful song was the "final rousing chorus" that might have been "The fields of Athenry."
It was several years before I went to a folk club again, and found that smiling was not actually forbidden.

Subject: RE: First Song ever sang in Folk Club
From: Joe Offer
Date: 19 Jul 19 - 09:48 AM

Long, Long Ago (tell me the tales that to me were so dear...)

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: Bugsy
Date: 19 Jul 19 - 10:16 AM

Tha lyon's Den Folk Club in Stevenage.1963. I was 15. I think it might have been Barbara Allan.

Cheers

Bugsy

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: Capo da Monty
Date: 19 Jul 19 - 10:31 AM

"The Last Thing On My Mind"..Free Xpress Folk Club in Bournemouth 1969..took me 6 months to find the courage to get up on stage! All the resident performers were so good!

CdM

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: JHW
Date: 19 Jul 19 - 11:15 AM

Lots of interest here. Surely this topic's been done before?
Mine I know was Peggy Seeger's Springhill Disaster at the Oak Tree in Richmond (North Riding of Yorkshire) late sixties. Most folks sat on wooden beer crates supping John Smith's when it really was smooth; before fizzy was imposed.

The pub has long been houses. Richmond is now in North Yorkshire. (and I don't ride a scooter)

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Jul 19 - 11:40 AM

Having checked, my previous post was quite inaccurate, out by nearly 2 years. It was Sally Brown and Isobel Sutherland was the guest, but it was 5th February 1967, not 65 and I was 20 not 18. In 65 I was at the American Folk Blues Festival in London but certainly not singing in public by then.

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: Anne Lister
Date: 19 Jul 19 - 11:44 AM

At the Locomotive, on Broadway, Cardiff, in 1967 (I was too young to be in a pub but no one asked). I sang one of my own songs (and I can't remember which one) as well as my version of "Fennario". And the guy who gave me a lift to the club, who I fancied hugely, said it was "bloody great", and so I kept singing. Never did go out with him, mind, and only discovered in recent years that he had also fancied me. Such is life.

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 19 Jul 19 - 12:44 PM

The Songsmiths FC, Fitter's Arms, Walsall around 1969. First one was Phil Ochs' Draft Dodger Rag (on the strength of Ochs' first UK gig being at the Fitter's). Second one (floorsingers got two) was I Love You by The Goons.

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: GUEST,LynnH
Date: 19 Jul 19 - 01:28 PM

196?, Derby Peasmouldia, something by Bob Dylan

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: Vic Smith
Date: 19 Jul 19 - 02:22 PM

The Jute Mill Song by Mary Brooksbank at a folk club in the strange location of Beckenham Ballrooms, just by Beckenham station, probably 1964 or 5. John Foreman was the guest. My student flat was just around the corner.
The club closed a couple of weeks later; I don't know if my singing was a cause of this.

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Jul 19 - 08:25 PM

Well not a song, as I'm no singer (though at times I think I am...), but my very first effort, at the Tree Inn Folk Club in Bude, was the tune Star Of The County Down with me on harmonica, my 13-year-old daughter on flute and my 11-year-old son on bodhran. We did that as a medley with another tune that none of the three of us can remember. That was in 1992 when I was 41. I never looked back....

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 19 Jul 19 - 10:21 PM

The Scotsman. Or maybe it was Barrett's Privateers.

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: Daniel Kelly
Date: 20 Jul 19 - 02:27 AM

The first song I remember singing was 'My Little Son', written by Ewan McColl to tune of 'England's Motorway'. Someone who was there came up to me ten years later and said they still remembered me singing.

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: GUEST,Cujimmy
Date: 20 Jul 19 - 06:01 AM

Around 1981 I was in a pub in Leitrim Ireland called Drurys, just about everyone in the room sang in turn as in a sing-around, then it came to me, I was dying to sing but had never sang in public before, anyway I closed my eyes and took a breath and sang "The Green Fields of France", at the end of which I received a lot of praise from people present, and so that was me hooked. A wonderful memory

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: beachcomber
Date: 20 Jul 19 - 06:42 AM

The first time I tried singing , in public, was at the club sing around in Cecil Sharpe House. It must have been 1963 or 4 and I sang "Bainne na mBo" to wild acclaim. Well, I insist that it was acclaim !

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: GUEST,Andiliqueur
Date: 20 Jul 19 - 10:01 AM

Wild Mountain Thyme at the Town Arms Folk Club Leicester 1969. I had learnt it from listening too a Joan Baez record and apparently had made some very inaccurate interpretations of the words. Needless to say I was corrected and suitably mortified. It had taken such courage to get up and sing.....

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 21 Jul 19 - 06:03 AM

Grantchester Meadows (Pink Floyd!!!) at the High Brooms Tavern, Tunbridge Wells, in about 2009/2010.

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: GUEST,Dtm
Date: 21 Jul 19 - 03:03 PM

Probably, "The Last Thing On My Mind"- Tom Paxton

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: Mysha
Date: 21 Jul 19 - 05:17 PM

Well, being a foreigner at the English folk scene, the first song I sang there wasn't actually at a club, but rather at a festival: Depending on the order of events it was either De Noordzee, or Our Son Jack.

Later, the actual first time I sang in a British Folk Club was in York, where I think I sang Our Son Jack as well.

The first song I wrote at a Folk Festival was The Village : Two days after having sung Our Son Jack.

Bye,
                                                                  Mysha

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: Richard Hardaker
Date: 22 Jul 19 - 05:09 AM

If memory serves me rightly, my debut was Donovan's "Catch the wind", accompanied by my friend, Richard Bell on guitar, at the Mitre folk club in Knaresborough in 1969. In the following 50 years I've moved on a bit and now specialise in Border ballads.

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: Tony Rees
Date: 23 Jul 19 - 06:27 AM

Most likely something off a Ralph McTell record - my first serious influence! - circa 1970-71, at a folk/coffee place (no alcohol served!) run as an outreach operation by a religious group (Seventh Day Adventists) in Coventry... Nick Pilley help me out here! I never did become converted to the religion in question but definitely was hooked on the music - mainly folk of a contemporary nature at that time. Some time after that I encountered a wider range of both trad and contemporary, plus a fair degree of resident Irish, on moving to Leeds to go to University. All downhill from there!

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 23 Jul 19 - 07:59 AM

I can't remember the first song I sang in a folk club - the memories are blurred, but I can remember the first in a folk session (about a month before first time in a club).

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: Waddon Pete
Date: 23 Jul 19 - 02:26 PM

The first song I ever sung in a folk club on my own* was Cecil Sharp House Folk Cellar in November 1968. I sang "Rambling Soldier". I had been in a group before that but we mainly did youth clubs and local open air concerts, so I guess that doesn't count!

* When I say on my own, I don't mean that everyone left to get a beer when my turn came!

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: vectis
Date: 23 Jul 19 - 09:29 PM

Good King Arthur's Day at the Croydon Folk Club when it was at The Swan and Sugarloaf, must have been late 1872 or early 1973. Got some polite applause so went back next week and did Whip Jamboree to more polite applause.
I got better after a decade or two when I finally discovered the joys of unaccompanied singing.

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: Ebbie
Date: 23 Jul 19 - 11:56 PM

Buddy Tabor was the musician who first got me to sing in a crowd. It was a Hank Williams song: Dear Brother (Mama left us this morning...) Can't believe how nervous I was. Mind you, I was a good 60 years old.

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: GUEST,Wayne
Date: 24 Jul 19 - 08:53 AM

Vectis, you are older than you seem!

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: vectis
Date: 25 Jul 19 - 06:41 AM

Oops 1972, close but no cigar. aye?

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: GUEST,Jerry
Date: 25 Jul 19 - 01:33 PM

I suspect that if you can remember what the song was, it was either a very impressive performance or a very embarrassing one, in either case seared in the memory. In my case, it was a daring memory challenged abridged version of Where Have All the Flowers Gone? - daring in that ending with ‘where have all the young men gone?’ marked you out as a bit alternative.

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 25 Jul 19 - 01:39 PM

In my case, very embarrassing! Each verse went up a tone on the previous one. Good job there weren't dozens of verses!

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: RTim
Date: 25 Jul 19 - 02:51 PM

Steve - I remember that happening to me once when I was trying to record a version of The Rambling Sailor (for Forest Tracks and Folk Songs from Dorset)........every verse I went up a half tone - and could NOT stop doing it. We had to abandon in the end, and I have never sung the song since!!!

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: The Sandman
Date: 26 Jul 19 - 02:09 AM

The Cunning Cobbler from the singing of George Spicer.

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 26 Jul 19 - 05:40 AM

“The Finding of Moses” - in Athlone Folk Club, one winter’s night in the mid-70’s, when almost nobody had made it through the snow!

Regards

Subject: RE: First Song you ever sang in Folk Club
From: GUEST,Some bloke
Date: 26 Jul 19 - 07:35 AM

“Pleasant and delightful” at The Boundary, Worksop Folk Club circa 1978