Since I arrived in Britain I’ve had a very friendly reception everywhere I’ve sung—and everyone’s sung along with me.
One of the nicest compliments I had was when someone said: “We never heard an Edinburgh audience sing like that.”
Then, of course, at this little pub in Wellingborough it was just like we say in the States: old Joe’s bar-room on a Saturday night.
It was part of a trade union festival organised by Arnold Wesker. Everyone was feeling very mellow and friendly. No, I couldn’t ask for nicer audiences than the English and Scottish.
I’ve heard some fine singing in your clubs—at the Spinners Club in Liverpool, at the Troubadour and the Singers Club in London, in Glasgow, and at the Howff in Edinburgh.
SOURCE Melody Maker (England), November 18, 1961, 14.
In all these places I heard beautiful music. I wish I could sing it all myself, but, you know, I haven’t learned how to speak your language, yet.
One thing I notice since I was here last: a wonderful appreciation of English songs has developed. Two years ago clubs were just getting out from under a surfeit of American material.
Take this group, the Folklanders, who sang with me in Wellingborough. Two years ago they might have been singing mostly American material.
Now they’re 90 percent English and 10 percent American. They’ve got a honey of a version of the “Derby Ram.” It really swings.
Perhaps American songs would sound best if they were treated not as American, but just as any old songs to be sung in a normal, home-town accent.
I’ve always felt that if you try to sing in someone else’s dialect you had better be pretty doggone good at it or you had better not try it at all.
You have to appreciate your own home before you can appreciate someone else’s.
This problem of being yourself occurs in every revival. There are always two schools of thought—those who want to preserve the “purity” of the original, and others who don’t mind what changes they make. I feel there are twin dangers.
On the one hand, you could get a mechanical and sterile imitation of the original. They’re not really being themselves, but trying to be someone else.
That’s what happened to some of the jazz revivalists. Some of their music is fine—for instance, I love the energy and vigour of Turk Murphy’s trombone. But in attempting to recreate traditional jazz note for note, others miss the free and improvisational spirit of the whole idiom.
On the other hand, if you change too much, you may lose the very thing you like about the original.
From what I see and hear, few of your British singers are making that mistake.