Singing from the Floor: A History of British Folk Clubs by Bean JP

Author:Bean, JP [Bean, JP]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571305469
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2014-03-03T22:00:00+00:00

JOHN TAMS

Because there were no microphones in the folk clubs in the sixties, you had to have a voice. Margaret Barry was a street singer, she’d got a voice. She could clear a room with it. Bob Davenport had. If you were blessed with a rather beautiful voice but it was quiet, you didn’t get on so well. So it developed voices like Peter Bellamy, like Nic Jones, who put a slight crackle in his voice so it would edge, so it would carry, and the actual scene was developed out of acoustic singing before microphones turned up.

A lot of songs which would have been tender couldn’t be, because you hadn’t got the way of expressing the dynamic until microphones turned up. The folk singing style was developed out of scabby carpeted, smoky rooms, which required a muscular delivery.

So you get the likes of the great Bob Davenport, who taught me that you can join things together. He’d sometimes get up at the beginning of a night and start singing, and he never stopped. He just joined things together. It didn’t matter if it was ‘Delilah’ and some songs from Durham, then ‘Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out’, then another ballad and then he’d do a monologue. And it was great. I like to talk in between songs, but sometimes I’ll put four together. There’ll be a theme, but it’s thanks to Bob because he blazed that trail for us.

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