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A Man Of No Consequence Bob Copper Coppersongs (Paperback, £15.00)
Nine years after Bob Copper’s death, and 42 years after the publication of his landmark A Song for Every Season: 100 Years in the Life of a Sussex Farming Family, Bob Copper’s per- sonal memoir is a wonderful account of a life defined by a profound love both of books and the English countryside. Early evidence is presented in the recounting of the boyhood acquisition of a treasured copy of Mark Twain’s The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer (a school prize) and how this led to inner reflec- tions on the similarities between his own early life in Sussex and that of Twain’s epony- mous hero in Missouri. Many years later, he would draw similar comparisons between his own repertoire of rural Sussex worksongs, and that of the Mississippi delta blues singers, whose music he adored.
Whilst forever associated with his home village of Rottingdean, Bob Copper was, in every sense, a man of the world, as his navi- gations through the various trades of barber- shop lather-boy, labourer, Life Guard (the cavalry regiment), policeman, life guard (the Brighton corporation seaside variety), publi- can, broadcaster, writer and pivotal figure in the English folk song revival attest. The word used most frequently by Copper about him- self is “gregarious”, a quality that extends to the reader who, drawn by his easygoing prose and “contentment is wealth” philoso- phy, is invited to see his world with a country- man’s eye, and feel it with a poet’s heart. London in the 1930s he describes as a place where “the tiniest patch of naked earth was treated like an open wound…” and “not a single blade of green grass was suffered to live”, while on nearing the end of his police career, he reflects that “laudable as the pre- vention and detection of crime is as a profes- sion, it moves in dark and mirthless circles and inspires little laughter”.
Whilst The Copper Family’s Come Write
Me Down (Topic Records) is a permanent fix- ture on my ipod, it’s been many years since I last read my copies of A Song for Every Sea- son and Early To Rise and this has made me want to re-visit those sooner, rather than later. But reading this has also reminded me that Bob Coppers’ legacy is measured not just in his writings and recordings, but also in the continuing influences, both subtle and overt, that manifest in the work of countless others. It’s impossible to imagine the English folk club movement without those iconic, defini- tive Coppersongs (and my own brief brush with BBC Radio 2 airplay came as a result of Spencer The Rover) but there’s something about “good old Bob Copper” that runs far deeper than the efforts of his many inter- preters and copyists. In June this year, at Leigh Folk Festival, Shirley Collins and Pip Barnes presented their Songs And Southern Breezes – a spoken word show about Bob Copper’s song collecting in southern England. The front pews were packed with musicians rarely associated with pub singaround cul- ture – The Owl Service, United Bible Studies, Alasdair Roberts and many others, all rever- ently seeking a closer walk with Bob.
Reading his account of how, in 1950, he walked the path taken by Hilaire Belloc’s The Four Men, I was irresistibly prompted to listen to the latest Memory Band release, the simi- larly inspired On The Chalk (Our Navigation Of The Line Of The Downs). Lo and behold, the name of Bob Copper is there in the CD booklet, alongside that of Belloc. While there may be little superficial similarity between the music of Bob Copper and that of (The Memory Band’s) Stephen Cracknell, both are imbued with the same references to litera- ture and landscape that characterise the very best English music and art. Bob Copper was himself one of the very best. Generous-spirited and open-hearted throughout his long, gre- garious life, this is his fascinating story.
www.thecopperfamily.com Stephen Hunt
ma that is Nic Jones: his life, his artistry, his family and friends and, significantly, what he means to other musicians.
This isn’t a sob story, despite narrator Cerys Matthews occasionally sounding like she’s voicing a particularly grim episode of Crimewatch. But it’s not without its share of sniffles. Former Halliard bandmate and school pal Nigel Patterson paints a moving portrait of a brave friend, while his daughter Helen’s frank admission as to how her dad’s accident has affected her life will bring a wobble to the lip.
But the family and the man are not ones for dwelling on the past. At the centre of this story is one of Nic’s most recent compositions, a song called Now. In its simple words is the key to his remarkably happy existence. We hear it first in his frailer but still richly soulful vibrato, and then sung by schoolchildren – as a secular hymn.
Those who’ve been present for Nic’s return to the stage will have witnessed the vital contribution to those shows of his son Joe (alongside accompanist and comedy side- kick Belinda O’Hooley). You might be sur- prised to learn just how late in life Jones Jr took up that expressive Fylde guitar. The atoms didn’t fall far from the tree.
The Enigma Of Nic Jones
BBC Four (transmission date t.b.c., set for end of September at time of going to press)
In an effort to get BBC Four to make documen- taries about musical mavericks while they’re still alive, filmmaker Michael Proudfoot some- how interested them in the tale of Nic Jones. Whether it’s because Nic was one of the most unfathomably gifted singers and guitarists in the history of the folk revival, or simply the fact that a man who broke almost every bone in his body but survived makes for great telly, we’ll never know. But this is his story.
Avoiding a chronological narrative,
Michael’s film instead focuses on a number of different aspects of the nurse-obsessed enig-
Nic Jones in 1981
Interspersed with the talking heads (including comedian Stewart Lee, poet John Hegley and our own Ian Anderson) are vignettes of other musicians playing songs they learned from growing up with Nic’s records. It’s the recurring theme of the docu- mentary. Like the traditional material that informed his work, Nic Jones’ songs and ver- sions of songs are part of the canon. They’re being sung… now.
Which is just as well since until this film was made it was thought no footage of the pre-car crash Nic had survived. But we now have a tantalisingly short clip from a 1981 BBC Two documentary called The Other Music, shot during the recording of Penguin Eggs. No one present seems aware they were mak- ing one of the most critically adored and per- sonally cherished albums of all time. If only they’d known to leave the cameras running.
Although he’s frequently described as such, Nic Jones is not a lost folk legend. He just took a little longer to come home.
Tim Chipping
Photo: Ian Anderson
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