Coventry's First Folk Club - at the Umbrella Club

According to an article in FOLKS magazine (edited by Pete Willow c 1979) and written by Ben Arnold, the Coventry Arts Umbrella Club hosted Coventry's very first folk club.


Ben Arnold

Ben Arnold

" It wasn't until 1962 that moves were made to organise a folk music venue where people who did want to hear folk singing could go in peace. The venue was the Coventry Arts Umbrella Club, which existed for the benefit of those who enjoyed art and music in general. It provided an opportunity for the pioneers of Coventry Folk including Ron Shutttleworth ( http://www.folkplay.info/Ron/Biography.htm) and Barry Skinner to generate an interest in folk music.

The regular get together's at the Umbrella Club only catered for a minority interest but it did serve as a starting point for dedicated individuals to plan Coventry's very first folk club. This was opened one Thursday in May 1963 at the Binley Oak, Paynes Lane and was called, suitably enough, the Coventry Folk Club.

Ron Shuttleworth

To quote Ben Arnold, "Coventry's first folk club was formed out of a common love of what at that time was an esoteric form of expression and desire to bring to the public at large something which had been theirs for hundreds of years." The hosts were the Troubadours, a group formed by Barry Skinner and consisting of John Allen, Lee Soloman, Pete and Marlene Roberts, Terry Illingworth, Brian Sutton and Bob Bruce, although not all at the same time. Also involved with the band were Brian Curtiss and Dick Newton who later joined the Down Country Boys."

Although the folk club went on to develop further at the Binley Oak in 1963, followed on by a range of clubs in the city in the 60's and 70's and beyond, a tradition Saturday club was still active at the Umbrella until 1970.

Of course up until the Umbrella closed at Queen Victoria Road back end of 1972, there were various combinations of folk and poetry sessions at the Umbrella blogged about in the post entitled Humpoesic Happening on this site.

Read more about the Coventry Arts Umbrella Club here http://coventryartsumbrella.blogspot.co.uk/

Poems from Folks Magazine - 1978

Poems from Folks Magazine
Coventry folk magazine edited by Pete Willow 78 / 79

Q OF Q'S by Pete Rigg

The Qizzard of Quixel has mislaid his quill
In a delinquent moment of thought!
He suspect that he left it just here on the sill
but he isn't as young as he ought.

Profounding the purpose he ponders his choice:
To confess himself victim of fate?
Or retreat to a corner and practice his voice -
And hope he's not left it too late!

........................

Preparation for Progress - by Pete Willow

See the waterfall give way
hear the sudden cease of sound
feel the humid beast of day
pray upon the crumbling ground.

Smell the roses taste the fungus
don't stop there - there's more to come
use the senses dropped among us
cosmic anatomic bomb

there's more to this than meets the eye
the nose the tongue the nerve the ear
we've many more in store set by
for revelation when it's near

for evolution now its here.

.........................

HYPOTHESIS - by Pete Willow

the telephone voice is in the mind
the speaker is not really there
the misty source you cannot find
between your ears beneath the hair

A personality to sell
without the visual technique
commended by a ringing bell
you sit and listen to him speak

he imitates your every friend
beyond perception of the eye
and also strangers with no end
of proposition's to imply

a telephone is tangible
obtained by those who wish to show
that though life is material
they do believe in GPO
..........................

OFFSEASON by Nick Lawrence

The last crisp packet flutters slowly to the ground,
The streets all lie deserted, devoid of human sounds;
Soon the winter winds come rushing through
all these untidy tired ports we knew;
summer months of wear and tear
Leave paths for only sheep to stand and stare;
Rocks crumbled by the dust of hurried feet
are washed down again by driving sleet
chilled by the icy northern blasts
tearing down man's futile summer tasks;
I see the land that used to be
washed down again by rain and sea.

I breath sharp air with salty tang
as all around me blow lazy summer sands
soon jagged cliffs and sheltered caves
are set free in autumnal green and mauve;
once again the fulmar flies
on stiff-winged swoops and lofty glides;
cliff-tops bare and gullies harsh
sweep rain from moorland into marsh

And suddenly I know I've been shown
all such beauty is not for my eyes alone;
If like me you'd stayed and seen
The winter moon on wet sands gleam
and heard the thundering of the waves
whistling with the wind through Merlin's cave,
You'd see that man is just a passing phase
that time and patience will erase
for the wave that sweeps the human race
out of time and out of place
will leave the rocky cliffs and sandy bays
for only the eyes of sheep to gaze;

Forever with the changing tides.....

Two Songs by Al Godwin (from Folks Magazine)

TWO SONGS BY AL GOODWIN - ALWAYS YOU AND ONCE IN MY LIFE

The Folk at the Pitts club held a songwriting competition. Al Goodwin's Always You was the winner and the music / tabs were published in Folks Issue 7 May / June 1979. According to Folks  - "Al Goodwin - a talented singer and writer of ballads, was a regular visitor to Folk at the Pitts. His most popular songs include Golden Fleece, Mr Watt and Humphrey the Spider - written to prevent children being scared of spiders."

The following are comments transferred from the original Hobo site on Vox.

1. Martin from Al's band Nic Lightnin (early 80's) would love to hear any news about Al.

2. If anybody knows where Al Goodwin is now - Martin who used to be in his Coventry band Nic Lightening would be pleased to hear of / from him. If you have any info - leave comment or message Hobo and we'll pass it on.

Ed - Note the connection with Martin has been lost owing  to Vox blogs closing down.

3. Hello again, Martin here - You mentioned that you are able to add more details to my post regarding

information about Al, I was a bit silly not to provide more info at the time. As there is no edit button, I would be grateful if you could do that for me. 

Al had wrote a couple of rock operas, I think the first one was a learning process, and I didn't hear too many of the songs from that, but the latter, we gigged a lot of the songs, it was about time travel and featured a "Dr W. Downs" who had a "mirrored sphere" . The band was called Nic Light'nin after another character

from the opera.  Al's vocals were amazing.. people would look up and do a double take when he started to sing as his voice was spot on and very powerful.  We were very much the backing for Al, and looking back, I think the idea of the band was to take the songs out of the folk arena and into the more contemporary rock audience, which on a very small scale, we did do around the Coventry bars of 1981/2 . I think we made some good music and I would be very interested in hearing from anyone who knows of Al and his music and can enlighten me as to what he got up to later on, as I moved out of Cov and back up to North Wales and lost touch.

Broadgate Gnome

4. Ah1 , now a bit  of a distant bell rings there. I heard about this and may have even met him. Around that time I was auditioning in Coventry (in an old theatre place, up the road behind the Odeon)  One of the people was called I think Mark?, who was a singer but wanted to move into acting.  ( he actually got the leading role, and after touring with us( a dubious experience)  had his own review slot on a channel 4 music show.) he told me about something very similar and may have been involved in it. More may come to me.

Dave

Posted by: Broadgate Gnome | 04/30/2007 at 07:37 PM

FLOORSINGER'S BLUES - Dave Parker

FLOORSINGER'S BLUES - Dave Parker

Another gem from Coventry's Folks magazine of  1978. The Floorsinger's Blues by Dave Parker. I remember seeing this one performed - I also remember doing a lot of floorspots - you got in free as the song says!!

Come on in My Kitchen - Blues Tablature by Dave Garelick - Robert Johnson classic

Come on in My Kitchen - Blues Tablature

Yet another from Coventry's Folks magazine contributed by Dave Garelick - Robert Johnson classic

From Folks magazine - Coventry folk magazine 1978 - Ed Pete Willow

How to Write A Folk Song - from Folks magazine.

How to Write A Folk Song

Two flow charts from Folks magazine (Coventry Folk magazine 1978) Ed Pete Willow

JACKSON C.FRANK - By Dave Coburn - Folks Magazine

This article was written by Coventry folk singer DAVE COBURN (now living in Suffolk) but who, in the early 70's, co-ran the Rude Bear Folk Club with Rod Felton, for FOLKS magazine issue No 4 Nov / Dec 1978 - the Coventry Folkies Magazine, put together by Pete Willow and Arol and others. I remember Dave Coburn telling me all about Jackson C. Franks when giving me a lift home to Willenhall sometimes after a session at the Rude Bear Folk Club.

JACKSON C. FRANKS - The Spirit of Soho ' 65 - by DAVE COBURN (From FOLKS magazine No 4 Nov / Dec 1978)

Les Cousins in Greek St. is now a disco; Paul Simon is now a millionaire, Al Stewart is far removed from his bedsitter images but Jackson C. Franks (Wiki link) seems to have realised his ultimate wish - he is alone.

For many people it was Paul Simon, the archetypal poet and one man band, for others the eclectic hybrid style of Bert Jansch or Davy Graham and for many more Al Stewart's bedsitters, that epitomise Soho in 1965, but for me Jackson C. Frank IS Soho 1965.


I only have to pick up my guitar and play Frank's Blues Run the Game and I'm back in those back-breaking Cousins' seats, listening to this tortured young man cutting to the quick the neurosis that ran through those Soho nights in 65.

Les Cousins Folk Club, Greek Street, 

1965 was a big year for Les Cousins; they opened its doors at 7.30pm every night of the week and there were late night sessions every Friday and Saturday until the early hours and sometimes even dawn. I've often stumbled out into the crisp and silent Sunday morning before London awoke, my heart pounding and my head still full of music. It's an experience I've never been able to recapture and  that I can't begin to describe here. The residents of the Cousins that year included Gerry Lockran and Noel Murphy and on Thursday evenings Jansch and Renbourn held court. So why was I so impressed with Jackson C Frank?


Jackson was so different from the rest of us. At a time when even the Jansch's and  the Stewart's were lucky to have one workable beaten up  piece of rubbish to play on, his collection of  guitars was legendary. I saw some of them in Twickenham; there were two old Gibson's, a Martin and what seemed like half a dozen more. I remember someone saying something about one of his 'boxes'. Jackson looked more pained than usual and said "Look, your instrument  may be a box but these are guitars!".

I still cringe when I hear people describing really good guitars such as the ones Rob Armstrong produces, as 'boxes', and I still think of that Aladdin's Cave of musical instruments down there in Twickenham.

I was never close enough to ask how he got scarred or why he limped. "No bottle of pill, babe, can kill the pain" he wrote in Here Comes the Blues, and looking at him you felt sympathy for a pain threshold long breached and passed, but he did not want sympathy, it was communication that he craved.

Prior to coming to London, he had been a journalist in the States and was obsessed with words. He said of one song 'Don't tell me whether you like the song, just tell me as one writer to another, does the imagery work?'  Actually he was probably at his best taking old clichés of the blues and splitting and twisting them into something new and exciting rather than spinning poetic images Paul Simon style.

His songs spoke for the whole crowd of already weary-eyed innocents. Most of us much younger than him, who gathered on those smoky nights at Cousins nd the Wednesday night sessions at the Marquee in Wardour St. His lifestyle of taking boats here and there and renting hotel rooms to drink away the blues was far in the future for us, but we understood the anguish and in Soho we had a common backdrop. Jackson's songs were non political and it was this aspect that I had taken to heart. We expected Americans to be East Coast lefties or alternatively to write without bitterness (like Simon).


Jackson's songs were bitter sweet and I found myself latering my own writing to eliminate the political elements, but to follow his pattern of cynicism rather than the purity of Paul Simon.

Jackson C Franks at Les Cousins 1965

I had one of my songs accepted by "Folk Scene" magazine and was  waiting for its publication when Blues Run the Game was published by the magazine in late 1965. My song Smoke in the Wind (which thankfully I have never performed since) was my last political effort and although it had strong lyrics they paled to insignificance besides Jackson's song. I was changed forever and have never recovered, thank Christ!

I believe that Jackson had discovered the inner world has its conflicts every bit as shattering s the political imbalance of the real world, but whereas this was no new discovery, he was able to convey this lyrically in a way that his contempories could not. He sang for that whole generation of kids who crowded into Soho clubs and coffee cellars in 65, 66 and abandoned all hope before the flame was ever kindled. We were later to look on in amused cynicism at the naïve aspirations of the flower generation of the late 60's who aped our life style but never came within miles of our state of mind.

Jackson once said "I want to share with you some of the incredible blinds I have seen myself walk into and crawl away from, more from knowing instinctively that each of us does the  same thing than for any particular pride in the manner I personally have or have not survived.

"To sing is a state of mind that can include all ' frames of mind' and there lies the danger in communicating through song alone. I cannot defend and will not, your or my judgement of them, for they are only a passing opinion, statements given in absence."

"To this end I write songs, to this end only they can stand. If my songs communicate to yu any measure of something valued, remembered or recognised in the streets that you have walked, then they are success within very limited qualifications. That is, you and I have met once more."

The quotations above encapsulates my own feelings and my own motivations as a songwriter. The words belong to Jackson C. Frank but the spirit is also mine though I freely admit that it is easy to dismiss this type of commentary as pretentious hogwash, derivative of all the self-analysis stemming from the Beatnik fifties thorugh the intellectual atmosphere of Soho 65, because that is exactly what it is! But doesn't the fact that the statement is true state a case for the pretensions to be excused or forgiven?

Many of us tried to become notable songwriters or poets but it was not our lot to become Ginsberg or Kerouac, for times had already changed and we had become labeled and bagged. Many self tortured souls were to arise and claim the position of singer-songwriter but the position as an outsider, dissecting his own psyche was already obsolescent and the inner working of the head was of interest only when the state of mind of the performer and the audience coincided. This is perhaps why the recorded work of singer songwriters has continued to sell whilst their live presence is treated now more often with politeness than enthusiasm.

Lacking media approval which would allow a Bob Dylan or Paul Simon to continue to sing without becoming the pet creature of his audience, Jackson C Frank took a more honest way out than the rest of us. Many struggled on with a sort of 'cult' status which allowed us to continue playing our own material, others moved into Rock, but Jackson cashed in all his chips and quit the game.

Jackson C Frank has stopped singing and has reportedly retreated into himself. There have been many attempts to get him to make a comeback over the years but so far he has refused. I hope that he is wise enough to stay in retirement. I loved what he did and am thankful for his influence, but the world has changed and it seems sometimes that the lyrics just don't matter anymore. The re release of Jackson C Franks (first on Columbia 335X 1788 in November 1965) must be regarded with suspicion. What are the motives behind it? Jackson contributed more and deserves more than to be treated as an antique, a curiosity who represented that generation of children of Sigmund Freud. I hope that the  re release does more good than ill. I hope that people listen to the songs and don't try to enter some sort of time warp. The songs are good enough to stand on their own.

I leave you with the song Blues Run the Game itself, one of the great songs of Soho 65, if not the great song. Many people do fine versions of this, but this is the transcription of the original..(lyrics added later!)