Sixty years of the legendary record

It is sixty years since the legendary English Country Music album was released as a private pressing, limited to 99 copies, as Record No 1, by Reg Hall and Bob Davenport. The LP was reissued more widely by Topic Records in 1976 (1) and then again, in greatly expanded form, on compact disc in 2000. (2) This situation alone demonstrates the enduring significance and influence of the record, particularly on the revival of interest in English instrumental music and dance tunes. An inauspicious start perhaps for a disc with which Reg Hall was taking chances by releasing a selection of recordings he and Mervyn Plunkett had made with Walter and Daisy Bulwer and Billy Cooper in 1962.

It is difficult to imagine now just how little information and how few recordings were available to enthusiasts sixty years ago, particularly to those of us too young to remember the situation first hand. The ‘renaissance’ of interest in traditional music in the 1970s, on both sides of the Atlantic, leading to the regular and sumptuous issues of traditional material by labels such as Topic and Leader in Britain, and Folkways and Rounder in the United States, not to mention the countless smaller concerns, were in the future. Most of these issues were exemplary in their packaging, with copious notes and photographs, providing a richness that went further than just what was contained in the grooves of the record. More recently, of course, despite the small audience for such music, a great deal has been issued on compact disc, with the same attention to detail and information, and continues to be so. In 1965 there was little available in Britain, a few limited-edition releases by the English Folk Dance and Song Society, and a few EPs of songs. Topic Records had begun to dip their toe into the water, with LPs by Jeannie Robertson, the Willett Family and Joe Heaney, but nobody had considered putting out a disc of traditional instrumental music: as Reg Hall stated in the CD booklet: “Topic was not ready for our sort of music” and wasn’t interested in releasing it.

To go back a few years, Reg Hall and Mervyn Plunkett, as enthusiasts for English traditional music, had started the West Hoathly Band of Music in Sussex, with several local traditional performers, including the formidable Scan Tester (3) in 1957. This band seems to have had a fluid line-up and some riotous nights in various pubs in that county and, as Reg related, “In October 1957 Mervyn arranged a coach trip to London. We entered Pop Maynard, Jean Hopkins, George Spicer, Bill Hawkes (4) and the full band in a competitive festival at Cecil Sharp House, headquarters of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. We shocked many of the people there and confused some of the adjudicators, who were used to genteel settings of folk songs… Very few of the audience had ever heard a country singer before, and even fewer had ever heard country pub music. Some of them, it seemed, were excited about it.” (5)

Mervyn Plunkett’s job as a salesman took him around the country and it was here that he came into contact with Walter Bulwer of Shipdham in Norfolk – the full story is related by Reg Hall in the CD booklet notes. Mervyn visited Walter and Daisy Bulwer several times and recorded Walter’s fiddle and mandolin-banjo playing in March 1959. (6) On 12 April of that year Reg accompanied Mervyn on a visit and “within minutes of the introduction, we were playing some of Walter’s tunes together. To our great amazement and delight, Walter soon left the lead to me and broke loose on some surprising and inventive second parts.” (7) The stage was set, particularly as Walter suggested that Mervyn should approach Billy Cooper, of nearby Hingham. Reg elaborates on this: “I got the impression, when we eventually brought them together, that they didn’t know each other, which now upon reflection seems very unlikely.” (8) In fact, Sam Steele had recorded the Bulwers and Billy Cooper playing together at some point between 1959 and 1962, on which occasion they certainly sound as if they were used to playing together (9).

“The Saturday of the August Bank Holiday weekend in 1962 saw us all back together again; this time with Bill Leader recording for Topic Records.” (11) Mervyn Plunkett urged Russell Wortley to join in with his pipe-and-tabor, “to add tonal quality to the upper register.” On the second day Billy Cooper wasn’t available and “without him the band took on a quite different character.” For the second day, Harry Cox had also been brought along by Mervyn, but he “was, of course, a much rougher musician used to playing in his own time and rhythm and, not being able to make much of our way of playing, soon put his fiddle down. He enjoyed the rest of the day, however, listening to the music and joining in the banter.”

“We opened up the first session with our signature tune, Jenny Lind and The Girl I Left Behind Me.” (12) What followed was a series of polkas, waltzes, schottisches and hornpipes. Reg Hall gives a full account in the CD booklet, and I don’t propose to reproduce all of that here. Suffice to say that enough material had been gathered to consider an LP record, which Bill Leader was happy to edit, Reg having selected the performances with “the best starts and finishes, and the fewest mistakes”. (13) As has already been mentioned, Topic Records wasn’t interested in releasing the material and so Reg Hall and Bob Davenport prepared “a limited-edition long-playing record, which we issued in September 1965 as Record No.1 on our nameless label as the first of a series on a subscription basis. For tax reasons we could only make ninety-nine copies and surprisingly they were sold out in a fortnight.” (14)

For this limited release LP, thirteen tracks were selected from the sessions. A mixture of polka tunes, both obscure and un-named and well-known, such as Bluebell Polka, the jig Off She Goes (with an unusual second strain), two sets of medleys of waltz tunes, schottisches and well-known standard country dance tunes such as Jenny Lind Polka / Girl I Left Behind Me and The Four Hand Reel / Soldier’s Joy. In short, a good sample of the stock-in-trade of a southern English country musician, all with an infectious ready-to-dance jauntiness and loose ‘down-home’ feel. The LP concluded with an example of a tune Walter picked up when playing briefly for a morris side locally, Shepherd’s Hey. (15) Walter (fiddle and mandolin-banjo) and Daisy Bulwer (piano) and Billy Cooper (dulcimer), of the older generation, were joined by Reg Hall (melodeon and fiddle), Mervyn Plunkett (drums) and Russell Wortley (pipe-and-tabor) for what became an iconic sound and an inspiration for countless musicians later on.

This influence was not immediately apparent, however, and Reg Hall continues in the notes to point out that “Our exposure of Walter, Daisy and Billy to a larger world did not bring much interest to their doorsteps. Billy was dead by the time the record came out, but Walter and Daisy were pleased to receive visits from some younger musicians.” (16) However in 1974 Topic did use a couple of tracks from the sessions on their Boscastle Breakdown LP of southern English instrumental music and in 1976 the same label reissued Record No.1 as English Country Music. (17) Reg points out that the record had become a model for a new generation of musicians all over England, a couple of untitled polkas becoming particular favourites (18), much to his surprise, as being “too far removed from modern taste – even modern taste in traditional music.” (19)

In fact, it was just these polkas that attracted some musicians in the burgeoning English country music scene (of instrumentalists wishing to explore the range of traditional English country dance music), as Rod Stradling, leading light in that scene as a member of Oak and the The Old Swan Band, recalls: “I think that something I wrote in a review of Record No 1 English Country Music, when it was re-released on Topic in 2000, rather sums up the way I, and perhaps others, felt about our discovery of traditional English dance music back in the late-Sixties. In the Notes to the Topic release Reg Hall wrote that he was surprised that Walter Bulwer’s Untitled Polka should have become a favourite of the young English country music revival, since he felt that it was ‘so far removed from modern taste – even modern taste in traditional music’.

“My response was that: its appeal, apart from being a great tune, was precisely that it was ‘so far removed from modern taste’. We were, I think, unconsciously looking for ways to reclaim some sort of identity and cultural heritage in the face of the increasing Americanisation of our world – and the rising tide of badly-played Irish music amongst our English contemporaries. And it was precisely because it wasn’t one of the pop-song
tunes of our parents’ generation, who had left us a legacy of world wars, the Holocaust, rationing, austerity, nuclear threat, sexual repression (the list seemed endless) that caused it to appeal so strongly to us. We picked on that tune particularly, for the same set of complicated reasons that we preferred (say) Fred Jordan to Martin Carthy or – more apposite – Bampton to Headington.

“But the fact that the music and the players were available to us provided a focus for the undefined yearnings for a music we could call our own. Almost uniquely, at that time, it was something we could fight for – whereas our adult experience of the world prior to that had been defined by our fighting against things.” (20)

So, influential and important indeed! It is certainly true that several of the tunes have endured well in the folk revival, particularly when a few more tracks were issued on the Topic LP Boscastle Breakdown in 1974 (as well as the reissue of Record No 1 in 1976). (21) A couple of untitled polkas in particular have become favourites, as alluded to by Rod Stradling above, although not always played in the style – or the keys – of Walter, et al. (22)

Katie Howson, co-founder of EATMT, had this to say: “Right from the opening bars of the first track I have always found this recording very exciting, and it still gives me goosebumps! Jenny Lind in one key led by Reg Hall on melodeon, Billy Cooper on dulcimer and Walter Bulwer on fiddle: simple and direct music that gets you in the guts and makes your feet move. I can remember how the scratchy fiddle playing, background coughing and slightly random accompaniment all added to the charm and seemed to make it somehow exotic, whilst at the same time being totally rooted in the locality.

“I would have heard this LP in 1977 or 78, before I moved to Suffolk, and this album (“the black album”) and English Country Music from East Anglia on the Topic label (“the white album”) were two things that made me want to move here and hear similar music in situ. Of course, by that time Walter Bulwer and Billy Cooper had died, but I was able to meet Billy Bennington, Oscar Woods and Harold Covill from “the white album” in person, and indeed become pals with Billy and Oscar.

“I also count myself exceptionally privileged to have spent much time with Reg Hall, one of the leading lights behind this recording. Over the course of five decades I have spent hours playing music with Reg – both English and Irish – and have had many long conversations with him about musical (and other) matters. He is known for his profound knowledge, writings and CD compilations for the Topic label and others, but his influence as a musician sometimes goes unrecognised and I would like to put on record here the huge inspiration he has been to me musically.

On a personal note, of the bands promoting Norfolk’s traditional music I’ve been involved with, the 2020 CD Foundlings by the band Hushwing was an attempt to bring together and record a selection of obscure tunes from Norfolk, very much in the spirit of the original record, as mentioned in the booklet notes: “Our model has been the group of musicians gathered together by Mervyn Plunkett and Reg Hall for the recordings by Bill Leader made in 1962 at the home of Walter and Daisy Bulwer in Shipdham” (24) and perhaps the spirit of “these were not spotless performances in terms of recording studio multi-take perfection…these were lively, ready-for-dancing performances” (25) was very much present with our recording and the finished result. Certainly the original record was a great influence on proceedings in every respect.

So, it is fitting that the original Record No 1 of sixty years ago continues with its iconic status amongst musicians who are aficionados and proponents of English country dance music with a very traditional basis. Fitting too that the expanded CD version of English Country Music is still readily available, to continue to delight, inform and inspire. In fact, the CD version, vastly expanded in tracks as it is, gives a much wider sampling of what made these sessions so magical, providing more music by the older generation musicians in the sessions. In both versions, the album continues to play its part to ensure that the vernacular, traditional music of this area continues to thrive, albeit under different social circumstances from those when the Bulwers and Billy Cooper were active community musicians. To quote Lily Codling, the last surviving member of the Bulwers’ Time and Rhythm band of earlier in the Twentieth Century, about Walter’s probable reaction, “What would he feel now, he knew this all come about?” (26)

Chris Holderness November 2025

Notes:

1. English Country Music Topic 12T296
2. TSCD607
3. Scan Tester’s music was released extensively on the Topic 2 LP set: I
   Never Played to Many Posh Dances – 2-12T455/6 – in 1990. A
   slightly expanded CD version – TSCD581D – was released in 2009.
4. An EP featuring three of these singers was released on Collector
   Records in 1961: 4 Sussex Singers – JEB 7. It included songs by Jim
   Wilson, Pop Maynard, George Spicer and Jean Hopkins.
5. Reg Hall: I Never Played to Many Posh Dances: Scan Tester, Sussex
   Musician 1887-1972 Musical Traditions supplement no. 2 (1990)
   p. 60. The LP set (Note 3, above) was released to accompany this
   publication.
6. Booklet notes by Reg Hall for the CD version of English Country
   Music p. 2
7. Ibid. Hall ECM p.3
8. Ibid. Hall ECM p.4
9. Heel and Toe Veteran VT150CD (2005). The tracks are: Yarmouth /
   Sailor’s / Yarmouth Hornpipes; Whistling Rufus and Unidentified
   Polka (Cromarty Polka March). Walter and Daisy Bulwer also play an
   Unidentified Jig (Warbler’s Serenade) and Billy Cooper plays Dulcie
   Bell.
10. Ibid. Hall ECM p. 5 & 6
11. Ibid. Hall ECM p. 7
12. Ibid. Hall ECM p.8
13. Rod Stradling, in his review of the Hushwing CD Foundlings:
    Musical Traditions 28.03.20
14. Ibid. Hall ECM p. 10
15. The track was not included on the CD version.
16. Ibid. Hall ECM p. 11
17. 12T296, as above.
18. Now known popularly as Walter Bulwer’s Polka No 1 and Walter
    Bulwer’s Polka No 2. The first is track 3 on side 1. The second wasn’t
    included on the original LP but did appear on Topic’s LP Boscastle
    Breakdown: Southern English Country Music: 12T240, 1974, and is
    included in the CD edition. (The other Untitled Polka on the original
    LP – side 1, track 7 – is a version of the Helston Furry Dance.)
19. Ibid. Hall ECM p. 11
20. Rod Stradling, correspondence: 01.09.25. The review alluded to
    was published in Musical Traditions on 10.10.00.
21. 12T196, as above. The first reissue in 1976 was housed in a
    gatefold sleeve. Later pressings were presented in a single sleeve.
22. In particular Walter’s No 2 Polka, which has three parts, the third
    of which is rarely played, unfortunately. He played the parts in F, C
    and B flat, again not as played usually today.
23. Katie Howson, correspondence: 19.11.25.
24. From the booklet notes by Alan Helsdon for the Hushwing
    Foundlings CD (Quanting QCD 20.03) 2020, p. 2.
25. Ibid. Helsdon p. 2.
26. Chris Holderness: Walter and Daisy Bulwer: Recollections of the
    Shipdham musicians by members of the community published in
    Musical Traditions: MT185, 25.08.06. This quote was used to
    conclude that article, but seems equally apposite here. A similar
    article with details of Billy Cooper’s life can be found at the same site:
    Billy Cooper: the Hingham dulcimer player remembered by his family:
    MT211, 16.07.07.

Appendix
The tracks on Record No 1 (and the Topic LP reissue) are:
Side 1: 01: The Bluebell Polka 02: Waltzes: The Foggy Dew / The Young
Sailor Cut Down in His Prime 03: Untitled Polka 04: Jig: Off She Goes
05: Polka: Red Wing 06: Waltzes: Believe Me If Those Endearing Young
Charms / Johnny’s So Long at the Fair 07: Untitled Polka (Helston Furry
Dance)
Side 2: 01: Polkas: Jenny Lind / The Girl I Left Behind Me 02: Peggy Wood
/ When There Isn’t a Girl About 03: Schottisches: Washing Day / Old Mrs
Huddledee / The Cat’s Got the Measles 04: The Waltz Vienna
05: Hornpipes: The Four Hand Reel / Soldier’s Joy 06: Polka: Shepherd’s
Hey

An appraisal of the Norfolk singer in “Ethnic” magazine, 1959

“There’s people making money out of these hare old songs, but it’s not us.” – Harry Cox

In the late 1950s, as the post-war revival of interest in traditional music and song was
gaining momentum, there were considerably fewer opportunities or forums available for those wishing to read, write or find out about the subject, than there are today. One
short-lived magazine, which ran to just four issues, was Ethnic magazine, edited by
Peter Grant, Reg Hall and Mervyn Plunkett. Later, Reg Hall wrote: “Mervyn Plunkett
(1920-86) tape recorded many singers and musicians in Sussex, Norfolk, Dorset,
Cornwall, Oxfordshire and Hampshire. He and I jointly produced four issues of Ethnic: A
Quarterly Survey of English Folk Music, Dance and Drama in 1959 and an EP 4 Sussex
Singers (Collector Records JEB7) in 1961, featuring George Spicer, Pop Maynard, Jean
Hopkins and Jim Wilson.” (1) Both men were involved in the West Hoathly Band of
Music, playing with the older pub musicians of that part of Sussex and, amongst other
things, brought the music of Norfolk’s Walter and Daisy Bulwer and Billy Cooper to a
wider audience. (2)

Ethnic magazine was a crude, basic affair by many standards. It contained no
photographs and comprised typed pages, with only the occasional drawing or diagram
amongst the text. The editorial policy statement read: “This Magazine is concerned with
traditional English song, instrumental music, dance, drama, and related activity and
custom. We hope to provide a common platform for singers, players, critics, collectors
and commentators who have the good of the tradition at heart.” In this respect, it
undoubtedly fulfilled a need in its short life. With this in mind, and given the rarity of
existing copies today, what follows is the article about Harry Cox, in the first issue, (3)
with the title given above, complete and without editing or abridging, including retaining
the occasional rendering of dialect speech, such as “hare” for “here”, as in the quote
above, also taken from the magazine, in a section entitled “Things They Say.” Unlike the
other articles in the rest of the magazine, no actual authorship is given.

———————————————————————————

Harry Cox – The Catfield Wonder

No English folksinger has been more publicised than Harry Cox of Catfield, Norfolk. At
73 Harry is an almost legendary figure who for twenty years has been presented to us
as a relic miraculously preserved from a bygone age. Casual readers of the literature
during the thirties and forties might well have imagined that – apart from Philip Tanner of the Gower – Harry was the last of the Mohicans, and that with him would die the last
flicker of a fire that had burned throughout English history. Of course, people know
better now, and recognise that there are in fact several ancient English singers still
alive, or rather, lingering on.

While most field collectors would agree that there are still thousands of good traditional
singers in the countryside, Harry is widely regarded as the doyen of them all and the
post-War revival has brought him renewed recognition in the shape of BBC recording
sessions, television with Alan Lomax, and more recently a visit to the heart of
Revisionist Revivalism – the Hootingnanny. “The rummest do I bin to lately.”
Harry was born at Barton Turf on Barton Broad, one of a family of thirteen, of whom four
died in infancy. His grandfather was well known locally as a step-dancer and as a singer
with a very large repertoire. Harry learned many of his songs from him and will cite this
as evidence that some of his songs are more than a century old. In Harry’s childhood
his family had a bitter struggle to make ends meet, yet he is able to say of his
grandfather “he was in the hard times.” Harry’s father was a noted singer and fiddle
player – his fiddle was always in demand at festive occasions and in the local pubs –
and when money was short he could often earn as much as a day’s pay for an
evening’s playing, with beer thrown in. He would bring in as much as a shilling a night
when Harry was “a little old tot.” Unlike his father, who was a fisherman and wherryman, Harry has spent most of his life on land “doing everything I should think round about the farming way.” He has often been referred to as a blacksmith, but doesn’t know how the idea got about, “except maybe that I’m black enough.”

During the first World War Harry served on a minelayer in the North Sea, based on
Rosyth and Scapa Flow. Apart from this period and occasional trips to Norwich and
London, he has never been more than a few miles away from his home. He recalls one
visit to London on which he was pressed into playing the ‘house’ melodeon and came
home with full skin and pockets. In his experience strange musicians generally did
better than local men, and some of the travelling fiddle players at that time were
comparatively wealthy men. The dancing in the pubs was step and clog mixed in with
four-hand reels and other country dances.

“Polkas? I never was in that. These hare old women they used to like what they called a
jig – a jig-step they called it. These hare old girls they used to come in the pubs and
have a spree – used to kind of skip and mess about. The ‘Ship’ at Sutton was never a
real dancing house – not like some of the others – although we used to have our
meetings there and Moeran used to come. I never did know him before, myself. I think
his father was a clergyman over at Bacton. Then he was in the first World War – he
began collecting these songs before – then he had to pack up. After the War he began
again – he used to come to Sutton. Come that way I first met him. He put me in those
books. They never were all in there though. He did well, he did a lot of writing. You used
to sing for him – he used to get the music – take the tune down you see, a little in this
line, a little in that. He got the “Ploughboy.” I don’t know what happened to that – he sold that or something or other. He got ten pound for that. We went halves. Well, they can’t do what they like with these hare songs, really, can they? That was mine – or that was how he got it. We had five pound apiece. I don’t know what I done with it – where it went. Now I’m blessed. He was a good chap.

Harry is a modest and warm-hearted man of many skills. It is nearly fifty years now
since he made his “little old dancing doll.” This doll accompanied him on his recent trip
to London, but he didn’t unpack it. The doll is carved out of wood, blackened and
burnished by long years of handling. The body is supported by a horizontal peg which
projects from its back and is held rigidly in one hand. The arms and legs are freely
articulated in puppet fashion. The operator sits on one end of a thin three-foot board,
the other end projecting between the knees and free to vibrate vertically. The doll is held in position just above the free end of the board which is rapped with the knuckles of the free hand. The result is a spectacular quick-fire clog dance by the doll to a diddled accompaniment.

Harry plays the fiddle, but unlike his father he is very shy of playing it in public –
preferring to tune up in the afternoons when he is alone in the house. His main
instrument is the melodeon, which he plays with a fierce open four-in-a-bar left hand
and a jagged right – a rough and typically Southern style of great drive and punch. His
tune repertoire includes many old EFDS stalwarts and it is an eye-opener to hear these
tunes played in this earthy style. Although his playing gives the impression that he has
never been a player at formal dances, Harry does not regard his instrument as a vocal
prop – indeed he never accompanies himself when singing. This apparent dissociation
of instrumental music from song and organised dance is common amongst country
musicians.

Of the fifty-odd songs I have heard him sing, almost all are in the major mode. Even the
exotic-sounding “Georgie” which starts off in the Dorian owes much of its attraction to a
late switch to the major. Few of his tunes show any marked tendency towards
hexatonism and he is no more disposed to sing in the Mixolydian than are other
traditional singers. He pitches mainly in the middle to lower register and would perhaps
sing a tone or so higher if his voice permitted him nowadays. Like that of every other
great country singer his style sounds deceptively simple and has little decoration. He
makes little use of the shake and decorates sparingly. His pitching is subtle, decorative
figures often being sharpened and line-endings flattened slightly, the effect being to give greater lift to the performance. While he does not slur to any marked extent, a
noticeable feature of Harry’s style is the quite artificial quality of many of his vowels and
most of his consonants.

Harry’s unnatural singing pronunciation is quite deliberate and is by now means unique.
It tends to give his words a curiously exaggerated clarity and to give added emphasis to
the beat. As he says himself, he likes a tune to have a swing to it. Many of his tunes are
very fine, but the impression given by the BBC recordings is misleading as these are
highly selected. Harry singing in the flesh and swapping songs as they come into his
head is not the rare and exotic flower of the fens – a great many of his songs are
common amongst my Sussex friends – but rather a homely and familiar figure as we
argue the toss as to whether Maria Martin and William Corder belong in the same song
as Maria Back and Switzerland John of “The Folkestone Murder.”

Harry is no orchid; nor a daisy for that matter. Perhaps his badge should be one of his
own beautiful corn-dollies, draped with a twist of duck-weed.

Schottische

I had a little horse
He was such a kick-er
I stuck a plaster to his arse
And made him kick the quicker
It was all done with sheepskin
Beeswax
Tons of pitch and plaster
The more you tried to pull it off
By God it stuck the faster

I had a little cat
He was such a thief Sir
Stuck a plaster on his arse
And pulled out all his teeth Sir
It was all done…etc

I had a little wife
She was very civ-il
Stuck a plaster to her arse
And drew her to the dev-il
It was all done with beeswax
Sheepskin
Tons of pitch and plaster
The more you tried to pull it off
By God it stuck the faster
The tune is close to “The Ball of Kirriemuir”

There Was an Old Woman in Yorkshire

There was an old man in Yorkshire she did dwell
She lov’d ‘er old husband dearly and the lodger twice as well
Tiddle dee whack rye diddle um day
Toora looral day

She went to the doctor’s and asked him all so kind
Which was the nearest way to send ‘er old husband blind

He told ‘er to get some marra bone an’ scrape it fine and small
Rubber it into the old man’s eyes till he can’t see at all

The old man said I’ll go ‘n’ drown myself for I can’t see one mite
The old woman said I’ll go with you ‘fraid you shouldn’t go right

Arm and arm they went on until they came to the brim
The old man ‘is foot to one side and plump’d the old woman in

She swam about and swam about until she came to the brim
The old man got the linen prompt and pushed ‘er further in

How the old woman did scream how the old woman did bawl
The old man said I can’t help you for I can’t see at all

So now my song is ended and I can’t sing no more
My old woman is drownded and I am safe on shore
Toora looral day

This song is sometimes known as “Johnny Sands.” It seems to be well known in Ireland
and in the States, and has been referred to as well-known in England. It does not,
however, appear to have been printed in any of the collections or in the EFDS Journal,
although it has appeared on broadsides.

Bold Archer

It was all in the month of June
Just as the flowers were in full bloom
A cas’ ‘e was built on Kansa’ Green
For to put Bold Archer in

So now our brother in prison do lay
Condemn’d for to die is he
If I ‘ad eleven such brothers as me
So soon a prisoner I’d set free

Oh eleven said Richard that’s little enow
For forty there must be
The chains and the bars will have to be broke
Before Bold Archer we can set free

Now ten for to stand by our horses rein
Ten for to guard us round about
Ten for to stand by the cas’le wall
And ten for to bring Bold Archer out

So Dickey broke locks and Dickey broke bars
Dickey broke everything he could see
He took Bold Archer under his arm
And carried him out most manfully

They mounted their horses away they did ride
Bold Archer he mounted so ‘appy and free
They rode till they came to a far waterside
Where they dismounted s’ manfully

And then they order’d the music to play
It played so sweet and joyfully
And the ver’ best dancer amongst them all
Was Bold Archer who they set free

Oh look back look back Bold Archer he cried
Look back look back cried he
Here comes the High Sh’reeve o’ Honny Dundee
With a hundred men in his company

Oh come back come back now cried the High Sh’reeve
Come back come back cried he
If you down retorn my irons to me
Bold Archer a prisoner still must be

Oh no nay no nay that never can be
No that never can be
The iron will do our horses to shoe
And the smith he’ll a-ride in our company

So ‘e wrote a letter home to ‘is wife
And to his children three
Say’ng my ‘orse is lame and I cannot swim
So condemn’d this day shall be

Note. We make no apologies for the printing of Harry’s “Bold Archer.” Verses 1- 7 of this
ballad were published by Francis Collinson and Francis Dillon in their collection of
songs from “Country Magazine” – (Songs From The Countryside, book 1, W. Paxton &
Co.) without acknowledgement of the source. Our version of Harry’s text differs
substantially in Verse 6, and we print the whole in order to do justice to a very fine and
otherwise unknown ballad.

Note. In spite of the association of Harry’s name with that of the late E J Moeran, the
latter included hardly any of his songs in his two contributions to the Folk Song Journal
(Vol. VII No. 26, 1922, & Vol. VIII No. 35, 1931). In those collections it will be seen that
Moeran relied almost entirely on material from other Norfolk and Suffolk singers. Very
few of Harry’s songs are available in print, but about fifty are available on disc
recordings in the Sound Library at Cecil Sharp House (BBC recordings). One master of
his “Foggy Dew” has been released twice by HMV in two different settings – one on LP
and one on EP (“The Barley Mow”).
Songs not listed in the EFDS Journal Vol. VIII No. 3 include –
Wreck of the Ramilles Rigs of the Time
Barbara Allen Box upon her Head
Outlandish Knight Lord Bateman
Jolly Cobbler I wish they’d do it now
Folkestone Murder Cruel Ship’s Carpenter
Miss Doxy Johnny used to grind the coffee mill
Hungry Fox One man to mow me down my meadow
———————————————————————————-
As mentioned previously, the above text has been given verbatim and complete, with no amendments made, to preserve fully the article in its original form. Fuller details of Harry Cox’s life and music are available in a variety of articles, including on this site, where can also be found a full discography of his recordings. Highly recommended too is the
Bonny Labouring Boy CD set released by Topic Records (TSCD512D) with its
accompanying booklet, and on which Bold Archer can be heard. Harry’s version of
There Was an Old Woman in Yorkshire (Marrowbones) was released on the English
Love Songs LP.

Chris Holderness August 2025

Notes:

(1) Reg Hall: “I Never Played to Many Posh Dances”: Scan Tester, Sussex Musician
1887-1972 Musical Traditions supplement no. 2 1990 p.69

(2) The English Country Music album, originally released as Record No.1 in 1965.
This will be considered in detail in a future article.

(3) Vol.1 No.1 January 1959

Step-dancing in and around Essex in ancient times: a not-so-personal memoir

By Phil Heath-Coleman

Illustration of ‘admirable specimens of the Essex labourer’ step dancing at Purleigh Bell (from ‘The Essex Labourer’, Benham: Essex Review [n.d.]) 

During the great storm of 1987 – which some folk will think of as being a long time ago, but will always be just another of my yesterdays to me – the Woolpack at Chipping Hill in Witham was without power for days on end, and we regulars (I lived opposite at the time) migrated to the White Horse at the top of Church Street or even further afield. It was at the George in the High Street on one of those days that I ran into Colin Smith, – another of those regulars of far longer standing than myself and something of a local character – , and found him, to my surprise, ‘tap-dancing’ in the bar. I told him I didn’t know he could dance, to which he replied in the broad Essex accent which could still be heard locally:  “I’ve been Jack the Ladding all my life …”.  

That wasn’t the first time I’d heard the expression used of what I thought of as step-dancing, but it was the first time I’d heard it used in the wild (rather than as in ‘They used to call it Jack the Ladding …’ or some such): I don’t recall any of the old steppers I met in those days referring to what they did in that way, whether ‘Herbie’ at the Tower Arms in South Weald, ‘Cubby’ at the Stag on Hatfield Heath (who’d learnt to step in the RAF), or – last but not least – Johnny ‘Scuffer’ Smith, who sometimes couldn’t resist the odd step at one of the many pubs where he was a familiar face, despite his ‘dicky ticker’.  

In those days they’d dance to anything, often covering much more ground than would be considered the rule nowadays. It was the Bluebell Polka which I recall being asked for, and which could long still be found on the ancient jukebox at Mashbury Fox – where it had once presumably served the same purpose.  

I have always taken it for granted that ‘Jack the Ladding’ took its name from the tune known popularly as Jack’s the Lad (otherwise the College/Sailor’s Hornpipe), which was also known in Essex as Jacky Robinson, Vaughan Williams having come across a version involving a ditty referring to someone of that name, which he described as a ‘dancing song’, in the Dog at East Horndon (oddly enough Beatrice Hill referred to her version of the ubiquitous stepping tune known elsewhere as the Yarmouth or Manchester Hornpipe as Jacko Robinson). The versions which the steppers knew were simpler than the Jack’s the Lad of the Last Night at the Proms, which was once universally familiar as the Sailor’s Hornpipe, of course. This is how Billy French had sung it for Neil Lanham by the roadside somewhere near Sudbury in the 1950s: 

Billy French: Jack’s the Lad 

As well as a highly step-worthy version of Old Joe the Boat is going over, Billy French also diddled a stepping tune which married a simplified first strain of the Harvest Home with a second strain of Fisher’s Hornpipe which resembled William Kimber’s. Neil told me that many of the steppers in the area preferred to step to ‘tuning’ (mouth music) rather than to a musician: 

Billy French: Medley [Harvest Home /Fisher’s Hornpipe] 

Over at Thaxted, in 1911, the opera singer Clive Carey, who lived nearby in Hedingham, noted a number of familiar country dance tunes, including the King of the Cannibal Islands, Haste to the Wedding, Trip to the Cottage, and The Triumph from the fiddler Alf Bishop, a travelling showman (and latterly photographer) who had settled in Thaxted, from whom he also noted a couple of hornpipes, which were conceivably used for step dancing: the Fisherman’s Hornpipe (which I, at least, suspect might ultimately be a version of Fisher’s Hornpipe), and the Gypsy’s Hornpipe – possibly a reference to his source – which combines the first strain of the Flowers of Edinburgh and the second strain of the now less familiar but once popular Miss Baker’s Hornpipe (and it’s easy to see how the first few notes of the second strain of Miss Baker’s Hornpipe might be confused with those of the Flowers of Edinburgh) [for those who can’t read (music) I offer my own – partly transposed – take]:  

Alf Bishop’s ‘Gypsy’s Hornpipe’ [Flowers of Edinburgh/Miss Baker’s Hornpipe] 

Alf Bishop in 1905

 Also at Thaxted, on the same occasion, Carey noted a few tunes from Harry Smith, including a ‘Hornpipe’, which resembles the ‘vernacular’ version of the Wonder Hornpipe (as recorded, for example, from such notables as ‘Scan’ Tester in Sussex and Dolly Curtis – and others – in Suffolk: again, and for the same reason, I offer my own take – with some re-imagination of the second strain on the lines of other field recordings.

(Harry Smith’s) ‘Hornpipe’  [Wonder Hornpipe]

To round of the recordings, we must obviously go back to the real thing in the shape of Neil Lanham’s recording of Charlie Cutmore – formerly the landlord of the Plough at Belchamp St. Paul, where a board with a cross on it had been kept for stepping – playing his father Joby’s version of the familiar Yarmouth/Manchester Hornpipe:.

Charlie Cutmore: Joby Cutmore’s stepdance [aka the Yarmouth/Manchester Hornpipe, Pigeon on the Gate]

Following on from the recent death of retired horseman and consummate entertainer Ray Hubbard, it seems apposite to review the CD which was made of his music by John Howson and released by Veteran (1) in 2007, a wonderful selection of the songs, tunes, tales and jokes which made him such a beloved performer for so many years.

Ray was born in 1933 in Langmere, a hamlet of Dickleburgh in south Norfolk. Aside from music, his main love was working with horses, and he spent most of his life doing so, following a family tradition, as he commented: “You can trace my family working with horses back to the 1700s.” (2) He started working with horses alongside farmer Albert Saunders at Langmere Hall Farm when he was eight and a half, on being taken on for a Saturday job. “I used to lead in the harvest field and take the wagons home when I was just nine or ten; we’d work late into the night if there was light. I’d lead the middle wagon when it was dusk, the farmer would be in front with one wagon, the horseman would be behind me with the last one. We always used three.” Once he had finished school, Ray was taken on full-time at the farm, becoming head horseman at 17 and then took over the running of the farm at 21. He continued in this capacity until 1966, and the advent of mechanisation, when he retired from the farm and spent the rest of his working life in the building trade.

At home, Ray was born into a house with music. Both parents played the mouth organ, his father playing accordion and mandolin too. Other family members were musical and the youthful Ray seems to have soaked it all up. After his marriage to Pamela in 1954, the couple started a concert party called “Norfolk Bred”. This was a variety show with a changing cast and a wide variety of acts, and was busy for a great many years. In addition, Ray was organist for Rushall church and would also play regularly in pubs in the area around Dickleburgh. More recently, Ray was a regular attender – the life and soul to a great extent perhaps – at many local events dedicated to local traditional music, where his contribution will certainly not be forgotten.

In 2006 and 2007, John Howson recorded Ray for his Veteran label. Some tracks were recorded live at Stradbroke Queen’s Head on 26th October 2006, and the rest was recorded at Ray’s home in Diss in 2007. Taken all together, they present a wonderful selection of his music making that was the staple repertoire at the time of recording. There is a wide variety of songs, the majority of them comic, such as The Muck Spreader, Over the Garden Wall and Sarah. Almost all are of relatively recent vintage and with known composers, rather than traditional fare, a good example being Has Ya
Fa’r Got a Dickey, Bor? by Allan Smethurst. (3) Ray seems to have picked his material up from a wide variety of sources: fellow concert party members (Over the Garden Wall), and the East Anglian magazine (You Can’t Tell Them Nothing,They Know) for example. An unusual item is Good King George the Farmer, published in 1929 in Five Songs from Essex, although that may not have been Ray’s source. In all, it’s a selection for entertainment, mostly light and comic in a very memorable way. Whatever the provenance, Ray sings them with a surety born of the experience of having performed them in front of audiences for years before the recording. Equally comfortable are the tunes played on melodeon, a medley of waltzes and the East Anglian perennial favourites Oh, Joe, the Boat is Going Over, Heel and Toe Polka and Waltz for the Veleta. Sprinkled amongst all of this are a couple of recitations, comments and the hilarious set of jokes presented as “My Life Story”. This last still makes me laugh out loud, even though I’ve heard the material countless times. All delivered in Ray’s rich Norfolk brogue, it’s a great evocation of times gone by but also, by virtue of its sturdy existence, equally relevant to the present day. After all, who could fail to be moved to grin, if not actually laugh, at Ray’s sly, witty and sometimes self-deprecating humour, as presented here, no matter how far removed from the social circumstances which nurtured it?

In all, this is a wonderful recording in its entirety. A historical document in that it preserves a portion of home-spun entertainment, by an exemplary practitioner, from a time when such music-making was commonplace, but it’s much more than that – I highly entertaining record and a valuable addition to the considerable accumulation of recordings of traditional East Anglian traditional music making. It stands as a fitting testament to a much-loved and greatly-missed entertainer. Furthermore, it has to be mentioned that the sound quality is excellent and the CD is housed in handsome packaging, including a 14 page booklet with much information about Ray’s life and the tracks, as well as many photographs. It is highly recommended.

Chris Holderness April 2025

Notes

1. Veteran VT155CD, released in 2007. Now available only as a download. veteran.co.uk
2. Eastern Daily Press, 17 September, 2022.
3. “The Singing Postman”.