Jacqui and Bridie

Apologies for the brief hiatus, I was up a mountain in Morocco and blogging at 13,000 feet is no mean task.

I remember as a child being fascinated by the turntable on my parent hi-fi system.  We didn't actually have many LP discs (my dad being an ultra cool trendy 1980s guy had ditched them all in favour of tapes) but my mum had a small collection of folk music.

One disc in particular was a favourite of mine, had a cover of two ladies standing by the famous Peter Pan statue in Sefton Park, Liverpool (a copy of the one in London).  Their names were Jacqui and Bridie and they were Britains first female folk duo.


They ran a Folk Club in Liverpool in the 1960s, no mean feat considering the male dominated folk and pub scene at the time.

Sadly, Bridie passed away a few years ago and last year after 50 years Jacquie held the final Folk Club.

Whatever you think of their style and music they were a formidable presence in the Liverpool folk revival.  A two part documentary 'Pink and Pleasant Land' was filmed as part of the final Folk Club and I think it paints a fitting tribute to two figures that broke the mould.

The album is now quite rare, it was called 'Hello Friend' and if anyone has it i'd love to get a copy.

Liverpool - An Altered Town

 One familiar with the city cannot help but look around Liverpool today and be astounded by the changes of the past decade.  The transformation of the city centre from the damp, drab and disintegrated (or perhaps disintegrating) concrete wasteland to the vibrant flowing modern city is a lesson in how to do town planning right!

However, you will always get people who yearn for yesterday.  People who think that the grass was always greener before (even if that grass was was the 1970s Pier Head *shudder*).

Regardless of whether these decisions have been seen out to be right or wrong, they have always acted as a catalyst for commemoration - often through the medium of folksong.

Liverpools latest transformation is just one of a series of massive changes that have altered the city - the first major change was the building of the Old Dock in the 1710s, without that we would not have Bold Street and the ropewalks area for they were built on the old wasteland heath over 'the pool' (below).

Map of location of the Old Pool on a mid-victorian town plan.

The Old Dock itself succumbed to the progress of commerce and civility and was filled in and by 1828 was the site of John Foster's magnificent Customs House (below).

This magnificent building stood until the actions of the Luftwaffe left it a burnt-out ruin, it was pulled down shortly after the war.

We look at it as a beautiful symbol of neoclassical grandeur at the hight of the Georgian period.
The people of Liverpool in the 1830s didn't necessarily see it that way.

This song; 'Liverpool's an Altered Town' seems astounding to us today but it really shows how the town changed between the 1700s and the 1800s.  It lists a number of churches that have been erected, how the old dock was filled in, how St Thomas's church spire was pulled down (neglecting to mention it was so high and jerry-built that it used to visibly sway in high winds!).

St Thomas's Church, before and after it's spire

What is even more fascinating is that this same tune was adapted to form a song that had the exact opposite sentiments, compare these two stanzas.

Liverpool is an Altered Town - 1830

"The spire of famed St Thomas's"      

"That long had stood the weather"

"Although it was so very high, they've downed it all together"

"And the Old Dock the poor Old Dock"

"The Theme of many a sonnet"

"They've pulled it up and now have built a customs house upon it"

Liverpool is Improving Daily - 1828

"Once Old Dock was so strangely fixt"

"The streets seemed not connecte'd"

"There ships and houses oddly mix'd, now a grand Customs House erected"

"What glorious sights on Kings Birthday"

"The ladies gay and music play"

"With all the Clubs so fine array'd, and Mr Mayor the first stone laid."

One song seems mired in misplaced nostalgia (the old dock the theme of sonnets?) and the other mired by jingoism and blatant civic boasting.

These songs, although in the folk tradition are not really folk songs.  The first one 'Liverpool is Improving Daily' was written in 1828 specifically for the grand procession to lay the foundation of the Customs House. It is basically a piece of spin, PR and propaganda.

The second song 'Liverpool is an Altered Town' was printed by John Harkness of Preston as a 'Broadside Ballad'.  These were printed in their hundreds, they were very popular and were often sold by pedlars and street-hawkers throughout the country.  There were not about collecting and preserving folk songs, but rather selling cheap-diversionary ephemera. 

 It is telling of where Mr Harkness's priorities lie that in his catalogue he also had ballad such as: "Preston is an Altered Town" and "Manchester is an Altered Town".

Wishing it was a Sunday - Seth Davy

The picture below is a fascinating thing for me.  At first glance it seems to be one of those Victorian street urchin pictures of Liverpool which seem to be ten-a-penny.  It was discovered by Matthew Edwards and posted on the 'Liverpool Folk Song a Week Blog'.

In it, a group of children gather around an old black man.  If you look closely you can see that the man is sitting with a thin plank of wood sticking out in front of him.  On the plank are three 'jig-dolls', dancing.

The year is sometime before 1902, the place is a long-since altered area of Liverpool known as Bevington Bush.  The cobbled streets and brick walls seem as far removed from a 'bush' as one can imagine, but for hundreds of years this was a small but well known hamlet of Liverpool.

So often these types of pictures are anonymous faces, but the old man with the dolls can be easily identified.  His name was Seth Davy and he has a remarkable musical legacy.

In the 1960s Glyn Hughes wrote a beautiful lilting tune called The Ballad of Seth Davy.

You can hear a lovely version of the song here:

The Dubliners, also did a version which replaced the 'Bevington Bush' with the area of Dublin 'Beggars Bush'. Such things often happen in folk music, which I think is great in showing the universality of the themes covered. 

On a personal note, my grandmother, a Scottie Road girl used to tell me about Seth Davy.  She didn't remember him but her father did.  He told her that as good as the Ballad was, it was wrong.  Seth Davy more likely drank whiskey all the week and buttermilk on a Sunday!

There may be some truth in this, Seth Davy used to sing the old minstrel songs from American south.  One of them, "Massa Am Old Stingey Man" includes the lyrics: - 

"Come day, go day,

I wish in my heart 'twas Monday;

I drink good whiskey all de week,

And butter-milk on Sunday."

Who was Seth Davy? A black street-artist who knew the old American minstrel songs?  He was a star of Liverpool in his day, known and photographed.  Yet we know nothing of him, West Indian, West African, Jamaican have all been proposed as origins.  Was he an escaped slave, fled 'cross the Atlantic?  History remains silent - as silent as his dolls are now.