ing A.L. Loyd on The Tradition: What Is It?, Peter Kennedy on The EFDSS In The Post-War Revival, and Bob Davenport on The Importance Of The Club Scene. Sing magazine editor Eric Winter looked at Some Post-War Pioneers.
I
Once upon a time there were only two clubs and only three people on the folk scene… Well, it seemed like that anyway. Lots of things were going on in isolated pockets all over Britain and the English Folk Dance and Song Society was doing a lot of collecting and recording. In the east of London at Theatre Workshop’s old premises in Stratford atte Bowe, Ewan MacColl and A. L. Lloyd were busily collab- orating with Ken Colyer and others (Isla Cameron, for instance) in the venture that gave its name – Ballads & Blues – to a club which is still running in London’s West End.
Parallel to this development, John Hasted formed a small ensemble called the London Youth Choir. Anything less like a choir it was hard to imagine. The members could perform as a choral ensemble about thirty-six strong, and indeed once walked off with the London Musical Festival’s first prize for youth choirs, performing a Vaughan Williams arrangement and a Pete Seeger arrangement to show that there was room for different styles on the folk
n the 1965 Keele Folk Festival pro- gramme, as well as notes on the traditional performers appearing at the event, various authorities con- tributed short think pieces, includ-
scene. But the LYC’s strong point was its flexibility. It could divide and recombine easily and provided duos, trios, quartets and small choirs for all sorts of occasions.
One of the earliest folk groups (that is, a group of a type that would be recognis- able to those who are used to the Camp- bells, the Spinners and the Dubliners) was made up basically of John Hasted, myself, Judith Silver (well known in 1962 and 1963
as the Tuesday resident at the Troubadour) and Hylda Sims (later of the City Ramblers and now at the Elizabethan Room in Kens- ington, when she isn’t singing round the clubs). We considered it a ‘normal’ week- end to do three or four shows in different parts of greater London on a Saturday, fol- lowed by three on a Sunday. In 1954, the Youth Choir set up Sing, for years Britain’s only folk song magazine. About 1954, Hasted opened the 44 Club in Gerrard Street, Soho, and Redd Sullivan, Henry Morris, Martin Winsor, Judith Silver and Marian Gray all made their names there.
In Chelsea, the City Ramblers opened the Studio Skiffle Club, which later moved to the Princess Louise in High Holborn. There, Hylda Sims, Russell Quaye and Steve Benbow became very popular. MacColl and Lloyd, joined by Peggy Seeger and Fitzroy Coleman, took over the Louise as the Ballads & Blues Club when Studio Skif- fle moved to Greek Street, Soho, to become the Cellar – a club in which Jimmie MacGregor, Shirley Bland and many, many others cut their folk teeth. Another off- shoot of the London Youth Choir was the Southerners Club in Hampstead where Leon Rosselson, his sister Tina and Ron and Marlene Fielder (later two-fourths of the Fielders Group) were part of the six-strong line-up, and where Robin Hall was a fre- quent guest. At Unity Theatre, London, John Foreman (The Broadsheet King) and Jack Firestein started the Wednesday night club that still runs ten years later.
1965 programme courtesy Derek Schofield