THE FIRST PROFESSIONAL GIG
The first time anyone paid me to perform was at St Benet’s Club in Monkwearmouth, Sunderland. Our school band of Ray Jenkins, Terry Kelly and I were joined by a drummer called Chris and accompanied Ray’s sister Marge on two or three songs. I remember that ‘A Little Bitty Tear’ was one. This was currently a hit for Burl Ives the American folk singer and actor. Brian Hyland’s ‘Sealed with a Kiss’ was another.
We were paid seven shillings and sixpence each which was the same amount I had each week for my pocket money. 7/6d for 15 minutes or 7/6d for a week? No contest! The music business was for me.
I hereby tend my apologies to the Taxman for not mentioning this fee before. I was very green and I didn’t know, your Honour.
Sealed with a Kiss was the first song I remember accompanying with a finger style arpeggio pattern and here’s me over 50 years later still doing that. It was the starting point of my own style. I could describe my style, with difficulty, but I would much rather that you went off to iTunes and downloaded a few bits so that you can hear for yourself.
Burl Ives, of the Little Bitty Tear above, was important at the time to people like me. His Burl Ives Songbook (60 cents at all good booksellers) was one of the few collections of folk songs available, even if it was an American repertoire, and it gave me a leg up.
In a way, I was quite a bit ahead of the game. There weren’t too many folk performers yet and I had an older brother who was into Blues and American social folk music so I heard Big Bill Broonzy, Huddie Leadbetter and Woody Guthrie because of him. I heard his recordings too of Mahalia Jackson and Howling Wolf.
In a way, I was quite a bit ahead of the game. There weren’t too many folk performers yet but my older brother John was into Blues and American social folk music so I heard Big Bill Broonzy, Huddie Leadbetter, Woody Guthrie and the like, because of him. He had recordings of Mahalia Jackson and Howling Wolf. They were all influences especially Broonzy.
There was very little generally available published British folk song and so my awareness of that was thin. Accidentally, finding the American seam of gold through Sing Out magazine kept my repertoire me out of the common run: I could sing songs that no one else knew. I have always tried to do that. In the College years it was very fashionable for boy-girl duos to perform Joan Baez and Dylan songs. Normally each one in the duo looked like they needed a good meal (as did I), each had long, long, long hair (as did I) and usually one was dark haired and the other blond. As there was only one of me, I had to be the blond. They mostly had the same repertoire although some people cheated as they had enough money to buy the folk albums that were now coming in from the States and could lift material from there. There wasn’t much point in my doing that as it wouldn’t have helped me to keep my repertoire different.