[peel] Shirley Collins 1969 Top Gear

[MARK LUETCHFORD]

Dave

I knew Steve a little when he worked as a graphic designer in the 80s/90s - he was very good at that too but good to see he is performing again. He knew my wife a lot better as she worked with him on various direct mail campaigns for War on Want and the Blue Cross. That's her bday pressie sorted!

How do you know so definitely that they are lost tapes ... presume Ken has been asked? I think it would be good to capture this on a new page about the session as Tinderbox currently aren't on the list of sessions in their own right even though Ken records that five of the songs were played by Tinderbox alone but as info belongs to you thought I should check ... would you mind if I set up a page that lifted this extract from your book?

Mark


________________________________
 From: Dave Thompson <davethompsonbooks@...>
To: "peel@yahoogroups.com" <peel@yahoogroups.com> 
Sent: Sunday, 22 December 2013, 14:04
Subject: [peel] Shirley Collins 1969 Top Gear
 


  
There's no surviving recording of it that I'm aware of, but here are some memories of the joint Shirley Collins/Tinderbox session from March 1969. (Taken from the Steve Ashley "Fire & Wine" book that I wrote earlier this year)

When Shirley Collins was booked for a BBC Radio session, Tinderbox - Steve Ashley and Dave Menday - were called up alongside her, both as accompanists and performers in their own right.
Shirley: “I liked Steve’s ‘English’ quality in both his singing and song-writing—at a time when most people were trying to sound as American as they could. And there was an intelligence and integrity there too, which has, of course, lasted throughout his life. So that would have been why [producer] John Marshall and I asked Steve to sing both for the broadcast and on Anthems [although] I’m sorry to say I have no recollection of the John Peel session at all!”

Strangely, neither does Dave Menday.  “Apart from being honoured, flattered and scared at being asked to accompany Shirley, when her last accompanist had been Davy Graham, the only other thing I remember is being in the lift with John Walters, Peel’s producer, when at one of the floors in Broadcasting House in stepped Victor Sylvester the 30s/40s dance band leader in full white tie and dinner jacket gear. “  Dave, already in thrall to the sound of those bands, was thrilled. “I’d always been a bit of a fan, although it wasn’t something to admit at the time!”
Compounding the broadcast’s obscurity in the minds of its participants,the broadcast tapes of this session were lost long ago. Dave laughs, “ I hope I did Shirley justice, but can’t remember what we did. I do remember listening to it on our little transistor radio at home, and being pleased it had gone out on air.”
Recording at the BBC’s Maida Vale studios on January 28, for broadcast on March 5, Tinderbox performed eight songs in total, three with Collins (”Nelly The Milkmaid,” “Ramble Away” and “Lowlands,” the first and last taken from the still gestating Anthems in Eden), and five in their own right—”Fire And Wine,” “Oliver Woodworm,” “Dreamsong,” “The Finite Time” and a brand new addition to the songbook, “The Spirit Of Christmas.”
"It was shortly before Christmas 1968, as I was wandering through Rochester.. As I remember, the tune came into my head and I had no instrument to help me keep it there. So I just kept singing it to myself and it became very mesmeric. It took all day to write the words and my obsession with these left me no time for food, so I was high as a kite on hunger by the end of the day. 

“It still carries that spirit for me on the rare occasions that I perform it today. Dave worked out a great guitar part and I played the whistle. We’ve recorded it three times; the first for John Peel’s Nightride in 1969, the second time was during the first Stroll On LP sessions in 1971 and the third, a live version thirty-five years later at my sixtieth birthday concert. Apart from that, I usually sing it on Christmas Eve.”
“The Christmas Song is one of the best songs Steve’s ever written,” Dave Menday agrees. “It is the only song of his that I still sing myself, and I’m pleased to have contributed something to the arrangement. It’s tricky to play in that 2/4 time signature and those others who have tried to do it in a straight 4/4 lose the essence of the song. 
“There’s not a word I would quibble with or change. It evokes the emotional and social coming together of that time of year like no other song does and presents those ideas through stunningly precise visual imagery. Its universality is secured because it is uncoloured by the ignorance and superstition of religion, or the greed and exploitation of commercial frenzy that usually accompany Christmas festivities. A gem.”
This particular version, the first recording, Steve remembers as being “particularly special. Sometimes you can get the rhythm and pitch right, but not quite catch the spirit of a song, but with that recording of ‘Spirit of Christmas,’ I remember it being just right. I had a copy of it for a while but it disappeared, so I have nothing to go by except my memory of it—and an appreciative comment from John Curl, who took over from Peel after midnight. 
“’Fire and Wine’ was good too. In those days, Dave played the guitar part and I sang it and played a tambourine. ‘That was quite pleasant really’ said John Peel afterwards. 
“We also played a daft song called ‘Oliver Woodworm.’ I played autoharp on this one and it was all about the woodworm that was in the instrument. ‘Nasty little mole working in the dark, trying to make a hole in my autoharp, hoping that my autoharp will fall apart’. That was the general gist of it. The chorus was: 

Oliver Woodworm boring all the day
Please be good worm and bore yourself away.

“It got faster and faster until it became impossible to keep playing. We should have recorded it really. Dave had a nice one too called ‘Dream Song’ and we did ‘Finite Time’ as well. We backed Shirley on ‘Nellie the Milkmaid,’ with Dave on guitar and me playing whistle, and we also sang ‘Lowlands Away’ with her. Then Dave accompanied Shirley on guitar for ‘Ramble Away’”