Barry Skinner was one of the pioneers of the Coventry Folk Scene in the 1960's, with sessions at the Coventry Arts Umbrella Club, besides other pioneers like Ben Arnold and Ron Shuttleworth. He formed the Troubadours a group formed by Barry Skinner and consisting of John Allen, Dee Solomon, Pete and Marlene Roberts, Bryan Sutton, and Bob Bruce. Terry Illingworth. although not all at the same time. Barry Skinner was the main driving force behind the formation of Coventry Folk Club. Floor singers became a regular feature of the club, partly because the residents didn't have much material to cover the whole evening every week. Most of the music was traditional folk or skiffle. For well over a year the Binley Oak was the only place in the city where one could go and listen to live folk music on a regular weekly basis although interest spread as more and more people became interested. In 1971 he made an album for Argo Bed Battle and Booze with Martin Jenkins of Dando Shaft on mandolin.
Here's a Bio from https://www.kinemagigz.com/'s'.htm#Barry_Skinner
Barry Skinner started singing Folk Songs in the late 1950's. He formed the Coventry Folk
Club in 1962 and sang full time professionally from 1964 to 1980. In sixteen years on the road he sang in innumerable folk clubs throughout the British Isles as well as at concerts, festivals, colleges etc. He also sang at clubs, concerts and festivals in Holland, Germany, Spain and the USA. Along with over 200 TV and Radio appearances, three solo LPs and various compilation albums, it turned into a very busy and enjoyable sixteen years.
1980 brought a change. Barry had always had a great love, knowledge and interest in the canals and had for many years featured a programme of slides and songs about canals. He joined Coventry Education Waterways Scheme, which ran two narrow boats as “floating classrooms” and for the next five years travelled the length and breadth of the navigable canal and river system in England and Wales. He also appeared on many programmes about canals on radio and TV during this period.
In1985 he moved to Snowdonia, to work as an outdoor instructor, taking early retirement in 1998 as Chief Instructor and Deputy Head of Liverpool Hope University's Outdoor Centre at Plas Caerdeon, near Barmouth in Snowdonia.
Barry sings both Traditional and Contemporary songs, as well as many of his own compositions. He plays guitar and banjo and is accompanied on the keyboard by his partner, Anne. Together they guarantee an entertaining and enjoyable evening.
Barry once had his own 'Barry Skinner Folk Group' and played and recorded with Martin Jenkins in the folk/rock band 'One Day Thomas'.
Below Barry Skinner with Turpin Hero with Martin Jenkins of Dando Shaft on mandolin John McIntosh bass and Andy Smith guitar.
Below Barry Skinner with Turpin Hero with Martin Jenkins on Mandolin and John McIntosh bass and Andy Smith guitar
Below - Barry Skinner with John Barleycorn and 2 sound bites Admiral Benbow and The Sailor and the String.
| Turpin HeroA2The Tailor's BritchesA3Calico Printer's ClerkA4YarrowA5Timothy Winters Lyrics By – Charles Causley Music By – Barry Skinner Lyrics By – Charles Causley Music By – Barry SkinnerA6Gaol SongA7John BarleycornB1Peg And AwlB2The CockfightB3The Hills Of Shiloh Written-By – Friedman*, Silverstein* Written-By – Friedman*, Silverstein*B4The Treble Tailed GypsiesB5Cotton Mill ColicB6Mother Get Up Unbar The Door Lyrics By – Charles Causley Music By – Barry Skinner Lyrics By – Charles Causley Music By – Barry SkinnerB7The Telephone Ring Written-By – Sydney Carter |
This is a tribute on Barry Skinner who pioneered the Coventry Folk scene in the 1960's,from this site https://www.salutlive.com/2012/10/barry-skinner.html
Barry Skinner, who has died from cancer aged 71, was a popular singer and songwriter who made a strong impression on folk club audiences around the UK, also appearing in continental Europe and the United States, between the late 1960s and late 1970s.The end of his touring days coincided with the start of a remarkably varied new professional life that was to embrace instruction in mountaineering and other outdoor activities, canal sailing, the construction of custom-made dolls' houses, photography, painting, camping and writing.
Those close to Barry tell the story of his life and times better than I can.
This is from his son Matt's eulogy at the funeral earlier this month (October 18):
Barry was born in 1941 and grew up in the Coventry area. As a youngster, he was a keen sportsman, enjoying both football and cricket. He was apparently always taking up new hobbies, many of which would shape his interests in later life. He had something of the “butterfly” about him in this regard, as he would often abandon one hobby to throw himself wholeheartedly into his next.
As a young adult Barry took up climbing and in 1961, he took part in his first mountain rescue on the Isle of Arran. The following year, another of his great loves – music – led him to form The Troubadours, a folk group based in Coventry but with, at the time, nowhere to perform. Typically, Barry’s solution to this problem was to start the first Coventry Folk Club, thus solving the lack of venue problem, and beginning a phase of his life that would see him performing professionally across Britain, Europe and the US for more than a decade. Many of Barry’s own musical compositions were centred on his love of the inland waterways of Britain, and in 1979 he began to preach the “Gospel of the Canals” by working with the Coventry Education Waterways Scheme, which gave young people a hands-on experience of life on narrow boats, run as floating classrooms.
In the mid-eighties, Barry moved to Snowdonia where he became a freelance Outdoor Instructor and where he also bought Turnpike Cottage with his partner, Orianne. When asked why he moved such a long way from the place of his birth, Barry would usually reply, “There weren’t really many career opportunities for a Mountaineering Instructor in Coventry!” Turnpike provided the perfect setting for another of Barry’s creative activities: the designing and building of scale model dolls’ houses. Along with his love of painting, drawing, photography and wood-turning, the cottage soon became a hive of artistic production.
After the sad loss of Oreanne , Barry remained at Turnpike, shortly afterwards retiring from full time employment as Plas Caerdeon’s Chief Instructor: a decision described by Barry as “the best career move you can make!”
Some years later, he met Anne, in whom he found a fellow artistic spirit and the two of them lived at Turnpike, running a popular and successful Bed & Breakfast business.
Many guests were so impressed with Turnpike’s hospitality that they would book returns on a year by year basis. Indeed, several of Anne and Barry’s personal friends began their acquaintance as B& B guests. When they decided eventually to discontinue the Bed and Breakfast business, Barry and Anne bought a motor-home and enjoyed touring Britain, often writing articles for the national camping and caravanning press.
Motorhoming continued until the beginning of this year when Barry’s illness first manifested itself. The trips became shorter but no less enjoyable, the motorhome proving very useful when making long drives for hospital visits.
His final artistic venture was the Helfa Gelf art festival in September, when his paintings were on display to the general public both at home and in local art galleries.
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“Mother get up, unbar the door, throw wide the window pane ...”
That’s the opening line to one of the best songs I know, of any genre. Beautiful and chilling by turns, it tells of a woman, married and settled with a family, who is visited, “outside in the vicarage lane”, by the ghost of an old lover, killed years before at the Battle of Alamein.
Don’t bother trying to find it on iTunes or YouTube or anywhere else that I can think of. It’s as obscure as Charles Causley, the poet who wrote it, and Barry Skinner, the folksinger/songwriter who put it to music and recorded it on an album, Bed, Battle and Booze, in 1971. Don’t bother trying to find that, either. The only copy I have any more is on a tape cassette, with no means to play it....With three under-appreciated albums under his belt, I don’t know whether he became discouraged by the lack of a breakthrough into a wider audience. But in later years, though he never gave music up altogether, Barry turned away from professional singing and moved to Wales. Always a talented artist, he drew, painted, worked as a wood-turner and built exquisite, individually designed dolls' houses to special order. The closing line to Mother Get Up runs: “I’m had by a dove in the tunnel of love; I can never come home again.”
Barry Skinner has come home. Unbar the door.
Bill Taylor
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Barry Skinner appeared on The World of Folk album with Turpin Hero off his own album
You can hear Barry Skinner singing Turpin Hero on this YouTube -fast forward to side 2 and the 2nd track on side 2.
Bushes and Briars with Geoff Lakeman - Fellside Recordings FE 011 1978
Bass – John McIntosh
Chorus – Paul Adams, Tricia Adams
Concertina, Harmony Vocals – Geoff Lakeman
Harmony Vocals – Linda Adams
Lead Vocals – Geoff Lakeman
Percussion – John Astle
Recorded By, Producer – Paul Adams
Vocals, Guitar – Barry Skinner
A1 The Cheerful 'Arn
A2 Bushes And Briars
A3 The Dancers Of Stanton Drew
A4 The Buxom Lass
A5 Jack In The Green
Written-By – Martin Graebe
A6 Shepton Mallet Hornpipe/Dorset Four-Hand Reel
B1 Admiral Benbow
B2 Bread And Fishes
Written-By – Alan Bell
B3 Richard Of Taunton Dene
B4 Stone-Cracker John
Written-By – Martin Graebe
B5 The Sailor And The String
B6 Bonaparte's Lamentation
B7 Wassail Song
ABROAD AS I WAS WORKING
Musicians
Barry Skinner: vocals, guitar
Tracks
Side 1Side 2
Lord of the Dance (2.00)
Peace-Egging (Roud 614; TYG 53) (1.50)
Joseph Baker (3.20)
Knocker-Up Woman (2.20)
Ratcliffe Highway (Roud 598) (2.10)
The Deserter (Roud 493; G/D 1:83) (3.50)
Honiton Lace (3.10)
Peter's Private Army (2.35)
Arthur McBride (Roud 2355; G/D 1:78) (2.05)
John Blunt (Roud 115; Child 275; G/D 2:321) (2.10)
High Germany (Roud 904; G/D 1:96) (2.30)
Edwin in the Lowlands Low (Roud 182; Laws M34; G/D 2:189; Henry H113) (4.40)
Nottingham Ale (Roud V16327) (2.35)
Twa Corbies (Roud 5; Child 26) (3.30)
Totie (1.15)
Abroad As I Was Working
Barry Skinner (1941-2012)
Stoof Records MU 7417 (LP, Netherlands, 1975)Produced by Job Zomer;
Recorded by Jan Kranendonk at Fendal Sound Recording Studio, Loenen, in October 1975;
Photography by Job Zomer;
Layout by Bert Schinkel
Other records with Barry Skinner
The World of Folk (Argo SPA-A 132) Various Artists, The World of Folk, LP, Argo SPA-A 132, 1971
The World of the Countryside (Argo SPA 304) John Arlott and singers, The World of the Countryside, LP, Argo SPA 304, 1974 - Barry Skinner track 15 John Barleycorn.
Jolly Jack & Friends: Rolling Down to Old Maui (Fellside FECD140) Jolly Jack & Friends, Rolling Down to Old Maui: Shanties and Songs of the Sea, CD, Fellside FECD140, 1999. Track 7 Barry Skinner Admiral Benbow. Track 10 The Sailor And The String
Landmarks (Fellside FECD203) Various Artists, Landmarks: 25 Years of a Leading Folk Music Label, 3 CD, Fellside FECD203, 2006
The Journey Continues (Fellside FECD272) Various Artists, The Journey Continues: Fellside at 40, 3 CD, Fellside FECD272, 2016 Barry Skinner Devilish Mary (Below)
Destination: Fellside Recordings 1976-2018 (Fellside FECD282) Various Artists, Destination: The End of an Era for a Leading Folk Music Label, 3 CD, Fellside FECD282, 2018
" I met Barry in Coventry in 1963/4 and he took me round the folk clubs before finally persuading me to get up from the floor at the Troubadours I think it was, I have a photo of Barry and myself performing there. We did this and a few other clubs before I decided I liked singing and wanted to join a group which I did, the Kerries who ran the Cofas Tree Folk club in Coventry. I turned professional whilst living in London and owe it all to Barry . I remember him fondly and talk about his friendship and influence quite often.
Thank you Barry. Gil McWilliams (nee Sowter).
Posted by: Gil McWilliams | January 19, 2017 at 11:50 PM
(Gill was a singer with the Kerries and also the wife of David McWilliams who sand Days of Pearly Spencer.)