Clare Penney's reminiscences

Personal memories of the 1960's folk revival and the evolution of 'Pennymoor Singaround' Pennymoor Singaround has its roots in the 1960's folk revival and since I was part of that this is a personal account of my experience and my introduction to folk. I was born in London but moved to rural Monmouthshire at the age of 12 with my Mother and 2 brothers when we lost our home as a result of the Rent Act. By the act rents were decontrolled and put up beyond my mother's capacity to pay. This happened to many families and the resultant demand for council house accommodation exceeded the houses available. Our cottage in the depths of the countryside had no mains water or electricity supply and the nearest bus route was 2 miles up the hill. We never had a car and my Mother had never learned to drive. Contact with the rest of the world came only through radio, T.V. And the grapevine. At 18 I went to College in Exeter. There was no Severn Bridge or M5 so it felt like a long way. Adulthood didn't begin until 21 so the college was in loco parentis and they put me in lodgings with 2 other girls one of whom was Ingrid. Ingrid was from Loughton in Essex. She had long straight blond hair, blue eyes, a mini skirt, knee length leather boots, she smoked, she drank pints of beer, she had a long queue of boyfriends in waiting. She had a guitar, raved about folk song and someone called Joan Byaz. I was confused. I associated folk song with Miss Pringle at the piano with us singing 'Bobby Shafto' – or rather not singing but mouthing the words silently, one of those children told to pretend to sing so as not to spoil the otherwise tuneful sound. But - - Ingrid was cool! I wanted to have some of what she had! Ingrid took me along to the Exeter Traditional Folk Song Club, by then held at the Jolly Porter pub. It was run primarily by an old man of 25 called Ken Penney.. Ken was born in the East End and came to Exeter University in 1955 as one of the first batch of working class students to get to higher education. He came from a singing culture of cockney songs, music hall, air raid shelter singing, coach outings and pub piano sessions. After Exeter he went to Maryland University on a scholarship for a year. In the States he found the folk revival in full swing. He found his voice, learned lots of Irish rebel songs as well as British folk songs that had made the journey to America with previous generations. He got to know singers like Peter, Paul and Mary, he got hooked and when he came back to Exeter in 1960 started up the folk club initially in a coffee bar called 'The Left Bank'. He formed a group with Tony Rose and Dave Robbins calling themselves 'The Journeymen' after the song which starts 'I'm a roving journeyman and I rove from town to town'. At the same time Cyril Tawney was running a club in Plymouth, The Yetties in Yetminster, there was a club in Exmouth and later, one in Barnstaple, in fact there were clubs springing up all over the country. (but not in my rural corner of Monmouthshire). All this revival song stuff was not welcomed everywhere. Least of all by the Miss Pringle generation of folk dancers and organisers of festivals like Sidmouth. We were turned away from the pubs during the festival and notices were put up saying 'No rucksacks' – that is what back packs were called then. They did start to book some of the young singers but they were very much second class – the Young Tradition for example were put up on the floor of the fire station whilst the dance troops were in the hotels. So why a grass roots revival just then? Were the circumstances unique? I think there were a number of threads that fed into it. My generation, born in the 40's came up through post war Britain. Our parents had lost fathers and uncles in the first world war, went through the depression of the 30's and then lost loved ones from their own generation in the second war. We were brought up with rationing and bombed out buildings and bereaved parents a normal part of life. Having a baby out of wedlock was very shameful – a friend of mine was sent to a home for unmarried mothers and I never saw her again. Divorce didn't happen because most women had no financial independence so unhappy home lives were also normal for lots of children. So maybe we could identify with the themes of many folk songs – love, lust, betrayal, loss, separation from loved ones, death – the songs we sometimes groan about now when we have too many in a row! Then, by the 60's we were in our teens and twenties, the economy had recovered, we had free education, we could walk out of a job one day and into another the next. We had free health care and if our parents had a council house, secure accommodation. It was a time of protest against the war in Vietnam, demand for Civil Rights in the States, support for the anti apartheid movement in South Africa, strong trades unions in an employees market, womens' rights and gay rights. There was also the cold war and the C.N.D. Movement and Flower Power and experiments in communal living. In other words protest was in the air and we were liberated from the hardship that had dogged our parents and grandparents generations. It was natural to express strong feelings and beliefs in song. Songs were gleaned from L.P.'s' old recordings and were collected from the horses mouth with permission from other singers – with recording machines the size of biscuit tins there was no chance of doing it surreptitiously. The singers, almost all of them young, formed and ran the clubs themselves. There was no older generation providing a network of venues or gigs. To spread the music and provide themselves with bookings they simply booked each other. We heard Cyril Tawney and the Yetties of course but also The Watersons, The Young Tradition, Louis Killen, Annie Briggs and countless others, some remembered and some forgotten. Ken believed that since people were paying to listen the standard of floor singers had to be high. You didn't just turn up out of the blue and be given a spot – you had to prove yourself first. You did this in The Long Bar, otherwise known as Hector's Vaults, Saturday lunchtimes, upstairs where the customers were marines and off duty working girls looked after by a motherly but scary Madam, along with students and anyone just there for the booze. Singers like Bill Crawford, Dave Lowry and Barry Lister started in the Long Bar. We would stumble out of the gloom and down the back stairs past the smelly gents toilets at chucking out time, 3.00 pm. Otherwise it was The Queen Vic. Under the iron bridge on a Friday or Saturday night – a real pub sing song with the folk crowd and the men from the doss house across the road. It is from one of them that I learned to play the spoons. Ken and I (we were a couple by then) moved out first to Cadeleigh and then to Pennymoor in 1968/9. From 1970 onwards we sang informally in the Cruwys Arms and in the Ring 'O Bells in Cheriton Fitzpaine. The Cruwys Arms had their own talented locals – story tellers and step dancers, all sadly gone without passing on their skills. We met up with Gerald and Margaret Palmer, Colin and Mary Keenor, Len and Cissy Christopher, Alan Greenslade, our neighbours Hazel and Douglas Nosworthy, the Rice family (from Grandad Jack, Jason as a young lad and Fran and Gordon) and many more. Singers on tour in the area stayed with us between bookings Packie Byrne being one I remember most vividly. Folk friends travelled out from Exeter to join us and from this the sessions became formalised into monthly 3rd Wednesdays when Len and Cissy took over The Cruwys Arms. And so evolved Pennymoor Singaround It will of course go on evolving. With the explosion of recording technology the songs will be preserved in archives and the best of them and most singable will be passed on where people gather to sing and make music.