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of tangents. Being a proper writer, it’s liter- ate, very readable and not too dense on the sort of esoteric anorak detail that might well drive away those who weren’t on the bus. So as well as being entertaining, it’s a good across-the-board primer for the history of folk and roots music in (mainly) England.
As part of the thumbs up, I can say that I spotted hardly any errors – unusual for books on this subject. No, Peter Bellamy didn’t invent his Elmer P Bleaty persona – it was, as any fule kno, a creation of our very own ana- gram-laden Borfolk cartoon back in the early ’80s and eagerly seized on by the man him- self – and if that’s the only howler, then it’s definitely a book you can trust. Or just enjoy.
www.scratchingshedpublishing.co.uk Ian Anderson
The Savoy Kitchen: A Family History Of Cajun Food
Sarah Savoy Kitchen Press (ISBN 978-0- 9570373-3-5)
Current crop of one of Louisiana’s most renowned musical families, Sarah Savoy explores her family’s recipes alongside anec- dotes and memories of her musical and culi- nary upbringing. The symbiosis of food and music (one that Womad have explored with their Taste The World stage for some years – Sarah’s demonstrations included) is particular- ly pertinent in Cajun tradition, where tunes, dancing and cooking are natural partners.
The recipes featured here (an appetising array of gumbo, crayfish and cornbread and beyond) would do well to be accompanied by a soundtrack to get you in the mood, but the book would definitely make a great gift for a Cajun aficionado.
Infused with warmth and generosity of spirit, the kitchen is clearly the heart of the action in the Savoy home. A word of caution though, I wouldn't mess with Marc Savoy's gumbo!
www.kitchenpress.co.uk Sarah Coxson
Finding The One: The Strange & Parallel Lives Of The West African Kora & The Welsh Harp Andy Morgan Theatr Mwldan
The beautiful interplay of Catrin Finch's Welsh harp and Seckou Keita’s kora have seduced and captivated many of us over the past year. The technical intricacy and spider web delicacy of their playing is matched by a timeless, otherworldly quality that is less easy to nail… akin to Welsh hiraeth or Portuguese saudade, those notions of melancholy or pin- ing that only make sense in a mother tongue.
Andy Morgan, who wrote an fRoots cover feature in July 2013 on Catrin Finch and Seck- ou Keita, felt their story was still not fully told. With his natural instinct to ‘go deep’, this bilin- gual Cymraeg/Saesneg book not only explores the back-story to the collaboration, but also offers a worthy introduction to the broader contexts of the two bardic traditions, the play- ers themselves and even the instrument mak- ers. As well as pointing out the parallels, he seeks the mystery of the union: “Separately: musical emblems of entire peoples, cultures, even nations. Together, united in the One, they express something deeper and older…”
In some ways it’s a no-brainer that the two harp-based bardic traditions should con- verge in such a serendipitous alliance. Both Welsh and Manding ‘harp’ traditions share
A Blues For Annie
Anne Elizabeth Matthews CreateSpace/ Amazon (ISBN 9781492736998). Paperback.
Annie Matthews! I knew her briefly in the late 1960s when she used to hang out with the gang in Les Cousins, Bunjies and the after-hours As You Like It café in Covent Gar- den. In the Cousins, she’d occasionally, shyly, get up on stage and accompany people on blues harmonica, gaining her the nickname ‘Harmonica Annie’. One night she opened her mouth and sang, and out of this tiny seven- teen-year-old came an extraordinary blues voice: I promptly asked her to guest sing a track on my debut country blues band album. And then we lost touch. It was only very much later that I discovered she’d joined the Panama Limited for one of their Harvest albums and briefly was in Victor Brox’s band.
A Blues For Annie is only partly about music, but brings back that era of UFO, the post-beats and hippies, the second blues boom, and the Soho folk scene and its major names and many now almost forgotten char- acters – Mox, Divinity, Old Meg, Paris Nat – very vividly.
It’s also about a troubled teenager grow- ing up in 1960s London with an abusive mother, and then a young adult who found a partial solution in spiritualism and joined the community at Findhorn in Scotland. She leaves that in 1978 where the book ends, heading for America.
Available via
amazon.co.uk Ian Anderson
Fred Wedlock: Funnyman Of Folk
John Hudson Bristol Books (ISBN 978-1- 909446-02-1)
Once upon a time, way back in the last centu- ry, the citizens of Britain thronged to the nation’s folk clubs. While many were afi- cionados of musical traditions, many more attended merely in expectation of afford- able, top-quality entertainment, and demanded more than a few belly-laughs alongside the ballads and blues. Eventually it all got a bit much, as legions of piss-poor floor singers attempted to compensate for their lack of musical ability by attempting comedy (recycled gags from The Wheeltap- pers & Shunters Social Club and shouts of “right up your kilt!” in the chorus of The Wild Rover do not a laugh-riot make). But the scene did produce a goodly number of sub- stantial performers, including Billy Connolly, Jasper Carrott, Hamish Imlach, Mike Harding and, of course, Fred Wedlock whose Oldest Swinger In Town (and the enthusiastic endorsement of Noel ‘Crinkly Bottom’ Edmonds) established him as a permanent fixture on TV nostalgia shows about novelty records and ‘one-hit-wonders’.
Annie Matthews
Fred’s biographer, John Hudson specialis- es in books of social history and regional interest in the Bristol area and the book is published by Bristol Books. Funnyman Of Folk is very much a portrait of Fred as a product of his home city, a boy chorister with parents who ran a dockside pub, and a grandfather who played for Bristol City FC. Fred enjoyed a career as a teacher and youth leader and was a folk club stalwart long before his brief brush with pop stardom and his subsequent successes as an actor and TV presenter. The thriving Bristol folk club scene of the late ’60s and early ’70s is particularly well-documented (see also Bristol Folk by Mark Jones) and sev- eral of the prime movers and shakers (includ- ing Fred’s record producer for the Village Thing label, Ian A Anderson) offer their insights into Fred’s life and times. Among the many photographs, those from this period are particularly evocative, not least the won- derful shot of Fred and his bride Sue emerg- ing from the church at their wedding, to a guard of honour comprised of guitar wield- ing folkies (including the excellently named Messrs Mudge & Clutterbuck).
I only met Fred in his later years, but my recollections of him very much tally with the testimonies of the friends and colleagues interviewed through the book, including Sherrie Eugene (Fred’s co-presenter on HTV’s The Good Neighbour Show) who says: “he was so down-to-earth it was untrue; he had no airs and graces yet he could mix with roy- alty and working people at the same time and charm both equally.”
This book, while not offering (or claim- ing) anything in the way of earth-shattering revelation or deep, academic scholarship is a well-written, warm-hearted biography of a very talented man who was, in modern par- lance, ‘a people person’, and a damn good folksinger too, lest we forget. Reading it prompted me to listen again to Fred’s record- ings (on which he was often accompanied by guitarist Chris Newman), and the laughs and lyrics flowed easily once again, along with the thought that Fred’s generation of folk club comedians might be due a little re- appraisal at a time when musicianship is high, but audience dialogue rarely amounts to much more than: “this next song was collect- ed from/ recorded by (insert name here) and is on our last/ current/ forthcoming album…” John Hudson pays due respect to one of the very best of the folk club entertainers.
[Also contains classic mis-heard folk song title, given Fred’s support for Bristol football. No, he didn’t sing a song called Spence Of The Rovers… Ed.]
www.bristolbooks.org Steve Hunt
complex, webbed cultural histories – conven- tions, mysteries, power, praise, patronage and colonial legacy. But the divergences are just as intriguing: the aristocratic pencerdd tradition versus the ‘mitigated’, marginal sta- tus of the griot.
Morgan brings a complex subject to life with his vivid prose, the subject galvanised by his own curiosity and insight. With an insid- er’s view, he explores the complicated and frustrating tale of his old friend Toumani Dia- bate’s initial planned collaboration with Catrin that eventually lead to ‘finding the one’ in Seckou. In his writing, he mirrors some of the magic that is created by the music.
www.mwldan.co.uk Sarah Coxson
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