New Orleans Jazz and the Trad and Folk Music Revivals: Pt 2 of A Draughtsman’s Journey

So what happened to all these young Cartographers, surveyors and draughtsmen/women? A great many chose to leave soon after completing training, because of course, with all the development that the country required to heal the wounds caused by the war, local government offices, public utilities, construction companies etc were also desperately seeking people with cartographic skills. The words, Ordnance Survey, inserted in the 'Previous Experience' box on an application form, seemed to almost guarantee an interview at least, and perhaps the offer of a job closer to home. But for those of us who stayed, the O.S., like so many other large institutions of that time, gathered us in like a huge enveloping family.

To find accommodation for all these young people arriving from all over the country, many leaving home for the first time, was the job of a small but efficient welfare department who would search Southampton for suitable lodgings. Recreation was catered for by a sports and social club which could provide facilities, for most popular sports, and a long list of hobbies like photography and stamp collecting. One of the welfare department's main competitors for accommodation was of course the rapidly expanding Southampton University. Many of us found ourselves sharing digs with University students and, with their help, it was not difficult to 'acquire' a Student Union Card which opened up a wealth of other recreational possibilities.

The popular music of the early sixties was all around us in the pubs and coffee bars, but so also was jazz. Both traditional and mainstream were enjoying a revival and the bands of Alex Welsh, Chris Barber and Monty Sunshine were frequent visitors to The Concorde Club, then housed in an annex of the Basset Hotel. Across town in rather less salubrious surroundings, was the infamous Yellow Dog Jazz Club. Housed in a cellar under a pub, and accessed by one narrow staircase, this establishment was considered by most respectable citizens to be a hell hole, a den of sex, drugs and alcohol. This was to greatly malign it, for while all those three commodities were as available there, as they were in other similar venues, The Yellow Dog provided the opportunity to hear some of the finest exponents of New Orleans style jazz then working in Britain. The bands of Alan Elsdon, Keith Smith and Kid Martyn were regular visitors on a Friday evening, with occasional visits from The 'Guvner' himself, Ken Collier. During the interval Long John Baldry would sing and play the blues of Muddy Waters, Rev Garry Davis, Leadbelly and all the other musical legends of Chicago and the southern states. One evening we all flocked to the Gaumont Theatre where a festival of American Blues and Gospel artists had rolled into town. Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry, Browny McGee, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Bo Didley to name but a few. To warm up there was a British blues band, that no one had heard of, called The Rolling Stones. Actually they were quite good.

Following blues singers like Gerry Loughran and Long John Baldry led me from the jazz clubs to the folk clubs (often the same pub on a different night) and my musical education which had started in the southern states of America completed a full circle and brought me back home to the folk music heritage of the British Isles. For several years 'The Concorde' hosted The Balladeer Folk Club once a week with resident singers, Dave Williams, Vic Wilton and Pete Mills along with fellow O.S. cartographer, author and folk music historian, John 'Paddy' Browne. There were regular performances by national and international stars of folk music including Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, Martin Carthy, Bob Davenport, The Watersons, the list goes on. I was a sponge soaking up all this music which spoke so eloquently, and often with exquisite poetry, of the human condition, past and present.

Flute

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To be continued.

A Herefordshire Wassail Experience: Old Twelfth Night, 17th January 2011, at the Yew Tree Inn, Preston on Wye, Herefordshire.

I have often thought that with the one life we have there is not enough time. For most of us it is a struggle to keep up with the demands of the modern work place, its conveyor belt routine and the frustrations it brings, often making the daily commute a depressing time. So it is a great privilege and joy to have escaped the restrictions of the workplace, albeit as pensioners, at a time when our generation may well be the last of the modestly superannuated classes.

As a result Sian and I found ourselves with both the opportunity and energy to attend our first Wassail. Instead of working late into the night to meet the next deadline as we used to, we were now spending the evening with a hundred or so other people encircling an old apple tree.

A great deal of hard work goes into producing a good harvest of any kind, and of course, more specifically, the apples and pears which make good Cider and Perry. In Herefordshire it is not the culinary apple which is at the centre of attention, although the county produces some of the best desert apples such a Garden of Eden deserves. No, it is the cider apple, with its bitter and sweet flavours, its tannin and its golden and quickly oxidized juice.

Good husbandry, careful processing and a large measure of good fortune go into producing these most sustainable beverages. As April and May approach the fear of late frosts threatening the newly formed buds is the first anxiety. Once that is over the next concern is the right combination of rain, warmth and sunshine during the summer and finally the hope that early autumn gales do not strip the trees of the immature fruit.Is it any wonder that our forebears hedged their bets by appealing to both the old and new religions?

Having gathered our strength in the pub we joined the crowd which had gathered in the car park armed with flaming torches. Led by the Foxwhelp Morris musicians, who were suitably protected from the rain by an umbrella and plastic sheets, we set off into the darkness to the sound of trumpet, fiddle and accordion. Somewhere among the throng were two men carrying shotguns still in their cases.

Looking back at the procession from the van of the parade was an unexpected shock. With no street lighting to lessen the impact, the sight of this snake of flickering light making its way in the darkness sent a shiver down the spine. We could have been in any century since the people of these islands depended for their survival on a meagre harvest produced by their own communal labour.

The traditional ceremony involved the wassailers forming a large circle round an old tree. We stood outside a circle of small unlit fires constructed of wood and straw while the Morris team took up position under the tree itself. There was much talk and song of the spirit of the tree, its guardian Old Meg and the general wish for plenty after a hard winter. At some point the fires were lit and the scene was transformed into one of a swirling confusion of smoke and flames with figures looming and fading as the wind changed. At another point, the end of a wassail song or recitation was met by a great noise of shouting, ringing bells and the reports of the two shotguns being used to fire blanks into the night air.

All of this would have been, and still is for some, intended to frighten off any evil spirits which might be lurking in the orchards. For others the evil is now represented by the intensification of production aided and abetted by the agro-chemical industry and the uniformity demanded by the profit obsessed supermarkets. In spite of cider apple prices being quite good last year, there is a sense that a more general malevolent spirit of rural betrayal is stalking our country lanes.
As we stood outside the circle of fires, each representing a month of the year and being warmed by these and the tree’s very own fire invoking Old Meg, our thoughts were of the New Year to come, not the past.

However, with the tree having been offered toast and been given a liberal dousing of cider, the crowd started to move off back down the lane. But one further act remained to be performed, almost without any witnesses and with no ceremony. One, and only one, of the encircling fires was trampled into extinction, leaving the others shining into the darkness. Of the twelve, this fire represented Judas and his betrayal, while the other ‘Apostles’ were left to bring the light of a new day. Strong stuff indeed, but it prompted in us the thought that although electric light has long since come to these rural communities, enlightenment as to modern rural affairs on the part of distant others, is yet to be gained.

We were now among the very last to leave the orchard and so we slowly made our way back through the rain and the gloom. The dark thoughts of a few minutes earlier were soon dispelled by the light, warmth, and good company of a well run public house, and, once the singing started, as an old miner friend of ours would have said across the other side of the Black Hill from here, ‘... well, boys bach, we ‘ad a triffic time’.

‘So You Like Maps?’: Pt 1 of A Draughtsman’s Journey

This article is the first of a series from a new contributor. The series arose out of a discussion we had at a FolkWorkshops session about how some of us finished up being folk music enthusiasts. Much of it is to do with either where we grew up or where we went to earn a living after leaving school. My own discovery of folk music is revealed in the earlier article entitled, Memories of the Troubadour, while here you will see that this particular musical journey starts with the drawing of a map.

Dacier.

‘So You Like Maps?'

Following the end of World War 2, Great Britain was a shambles, with an economy almost bankrupted by the cost of war, huge social problems, much of it's urban housing destroyed by bombing and an industry and workforce geared entirely to a war effort. With so many problems requiring immediate attention, it was not until the early fifties that any real growth and redevelopment of towns and cities, and transport infrastructures could be contemplated. It was then realised that before you can build anything, you need accurate and up to date maps and plans of the existing topography, and that the mapping of Great Britain was hugely out of date. Britain's mapping agency, The Ordnance Survey, was, after the war only just ticking over and obviously the first thing to be done was to increase it's capability and it's output. A massive increase in staff was required.

And so it was that the beginning of the 60s found me, fresh from leaving school at the age of seventeen, travelling from my home in Hereford to Southampton, where the O.S. had it's headquarters, to begin my training as a cartographic draughtsman. I had gained (by the skin of my teeth) the necessary five O levels, which had to include maths, english and geography, and undergone a fairly rudimentary school careers interview. Q." What is your favourite subject ?" A." Geography." Q." Why ?" A." I like maps "..."Well ,you should join the Ordnance Survey." Of course there were still hurdles to be negotiated, Civil Service Commission exams and interviews, and tests to ensure that I was not colour blind, but eventually I was Southampton bound.

At that time the O.S. was housed in a variety of locations around Southampton. The Surveyor School was in a large town house in University territory at the top of The Avenue, Small and Medium Scale Mapping was in an old barracks at Crabwood on the Romsey side of the city and Large Scale Mapping, Photo, Printing and The Drawing School were housed at the edge of the city centre on London Road in a range of elegant victorian buildings that had once been a lunatic asylum. Some said that we were maintaining continuity with the the original purpose of the premises.

The throughput of the Drawing School was incredible. Trainee draughtsmen and women arrived from all over Great Britain, mostly straight from school, though a few had tried other jobs. A new course, containing between twenty and thirty students, started every two to three months. The basic course lasted for nine months, and to graduate at the end of this 'gestation', your final piece of work had to be of a standard suitable for publication. Failing to meet the required standards meant being asked to find another career, but in fact the assessments carried out at intervals during the course ensured that very few 'no hopers' got this far. Much later in my career I became an instructor in the training department and experienced for myself the agony of having to tell a young person that they really were not cut out for the job that they had chosen.

We were taught all aspects of Cartography, it's early history, projection theory, scales, typography and basic design, but the bulk of the course was taken up with learning to draw with consistent accuracy to exacting standards. Line work was produced at a standard thickness of seven thousandths of an inch, we had a graduated microscope to check this so no variation was tolerated. Pecks (broken lines) were produced at eight to the centimetre, that meant eight pecks and eight spaces, each peck being twice the length of a space. This was no place for an impressionist !

Flute

Follow on twitter @Flute66

To be continued.