Once again Lost Folk Tapes is returning to Derbyshire, courtesy of another of John Terry’s live recordings. This time it’s a short set by Paul Richardson, formerly of Saga, whose first two albums are highly prized by record collectors. The recording we’re featuring was made in 1979 at the Priesthouse Folk Club, which Paul was running at the time, and features versions of The Jolly Beggar, The Drowned Sailor, The Lancashire Lads and The Seeds of Love. Paul is still living in Derbyshire, so we tracked him down and he kindly agreed to give us an interview.

LFT: Could you begin by telling us how you first came to be involved in playing music? 

PR: I’ve always been someone who’s fallen into things. When I was about sixteen a vacancy came up for a rhythm guitarist in a rock band, the Trekkas Beat Group. As I knew four chords, including importantly, a minor chord, I was in. I had my first practice on the Wednesday, and by Saturday I was supporting Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band at the Matlock Pavilion, which was a pretty big venue. It’s the only time I’ve ever mimed with an electric guitar strapped round my neck, because I only knew how to play about half of the songs. I’d been with the band for about two months when I was invited to take over on lead vocals after the singer went to jail – not for anything serious, I should add! We were gigging regularly, and on one occasion played at the Tower Ballroom in Blackpool supporting The Ashes, who were the remnants of Wayne Fontana's and the Mindbenders. We ended up splitting up for all the normal reasons – jealousy, basically. Most of the band members had girlfriends by this point and there was a lot of unhappiness about other women ‘looking at my boy’ on stage. The bass player was first to go and it all fell apart from there.

LFT: So how did you get involved with folk music?

PR: My first musical heroes were Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran. Around the time the Trekkas fell apart, I cottoned on to Bob Dylan, who was my first major folk influence. He still is – as far as I was concerned he was the  one to drag folk music into the 20th century. Then my friend Chris Mordey  introduced me to the Boathouse Folk Club found between Matlock and Matlock Bath. The Halliard – Nic Jones, Dave Moran and John Raven - were playing that night, and the amount of energy, skill and personality they had was simply grand – I was completely knocked out. Their album was the first folk LP I ever bought. Nic has remained one of my folk music heroes, along with Martin Carthy and Sandy Denny.

The upshot of this was that Chris and I formed our first folk group, the Quarrytown Four, with two blokes called Dave Wright – known as Flash and Texas Ben to tell them apart. At the time, I was known as Richo or Gun and Chris was JH Crint – don’t ask! There are still people about who know us by these names locally. Our set was made up of songs like The Sinking of the Reuben James and All Off to Dublin in the Green – we'd sing anything for a pint! We ended up splitting up due to work commitments. The photo was taken when we entered a talent contest at a Nottingham night club. We were voted last. The winner was Big Chief Silver Cloud, a fat bloke in silver trunks and silver cape who ate razor blades and walked on broken light bulbs - a huge talent!

LFT: Your next group was Saga. How did that come about?

PR: At that time I was living in Derby where I had attended and got kicked out of art college for being a rebel without a clue. Chris joined me in Derby, and we teamed up with Roger Warren and John Gibson - we were all lived in the same house - as an early version of Saga. John played double bass, but didn’t play with us for long, as he wanted to do his own thing and in any case, was often working away. Sadly, he died about five years ago. After that, we met John Squires, who was a hugely talented fiddle player. When he joined we started getting more serious about what we played and how we played it, where we sourced material and how we thought about arrangements. John was coming up with fiddle tunes and I began to write songs. Basically we started with traditional music but were soon adding our own material to the mix.

LFT: Can you tell us about the albums you recorded?

PR: Out of the blue we got offered a record deal. I was playing a pedal harmonium, which came from an old Methodist chapel, and weighed half a ton, which gave us an incentive to get a van. The harmonium rattled, squeaked and groaned and proved very hard to record – I think when we recorded we tested the limits of the sound engineer’s ability! The label we recorded two albums for was called Westwood and was based somewhere near Manchester. I can’t remember how we came to sign with them – someone from the label must have seen one us play. We were starting to make a bit of a name for ourselves as a live act – we were a bit different and we had a lot of fun when we were playing. 

I think the first album, which was just called Saga, sold fairly well. I designed the cover, by the way. The label was keen for a follow up, so we arrived in the studio to record what became Sweet Peg O’ Derby.  We went through the stuff we had for the album, and the engineer said, ‘is that it?’ It turned out we were two songs short. That’s why there ended up being a couple of tracks on the album I’m not so proud of. Nonetheless it was well received.

LFT: Were you mainly playing around Derbyshire or did you venture further afield?

PR: Saga played at folk clubs all over the north of England, including Jacqui & Bridie’s club in Liverpool. We also started to play a fair few University gigs. We never ventured very far south – I think the furthest south we got was Worcester, and I remember playing at the college there with Boys of the Lough and Shirley & Dolly Collins. We may have played at Stainsby Folk Festival one year, but I’m afraid my memories of that one are somewhat conveniently vague!

LFT: Can you tell us about the album Saga made with Mike Raven and Joan Mills?

PR: After we’d done out own two albums we were approached by Mike Raven who asked if we were interested in doing a collaboration based on The Jolly Machine, a collection of Black Country songs. Saga recorded eight songs, which made up one side of the album, with Mike Raven and Joan Mills on the other side. It’s been reissued on CD with along with tracks by the Halliard and the Black Country Three, so in a funny way things have come full circle. The songs on the Jolly Machine were very much a reflection of the hard times from whence they originated and were the laments and grievances of Black Country working people.

LFT: So do you still look back fondly on this era?

PR: We had a lot of fun with Saga. We weren’t exactly straight-laced - we had a bit of a rock and roll attitude. For instance, we used to do quite a bit of stuff for Jack King’s folk show on Radio Derby. There was one time we somehow ended up at a farewell champagne punch party for one of the guys from the show who was leaving. We ended up imbibing quite a bit more than we should have, considering we had a gig that night at a folk club in Nottingham. We turned up rather the worse for wear and the place was packed to the rafters. Some how we survived it – I think it’s fair to say we were never stressed when we were playing live! It helped that we had two outstanding musicians in Chris and John, who could play anything in any state. Our practice sessions tended to be fairly short affairs – we got so we understood as a unit what we wanted. The two Saga albums are pretty representative of us as a band. 

LFT: What happened next?

PR: We carried on playing, but by the late 70s things started to drift apart both musically and in terms of friendship. I got married in 1977, for instance. We were all that bit older and other relationships were starting to become more important than the group. John had started playing with John Leonard and that was brewing up nicely for them. We played our last ever gig at Peasmouldia Folk Club in 1978. We played as a trio – Roger Warren couldn’t be there for some reason. I remember the place was packed and we went down a storm. There is actually a bootleg around of this gig - I only found out about it a few years ago. Someone contacted me to ask about the band and he mentioned it, so I made him send me a copy and it looks quite authentic, even down to the Westwood Records logo.

LFT: What did you do once Saga split?

PR: I went solo for a while and signed up with an agency called Snatchaband, which was run by the then wife of Steve from the Lonesome Travellers, who were quite big on the Derby and Nottingham scene at the time. Playing solo was generally good, apart from when I ended up working a strolling minstrel for medieval banquets! I also played for two or three years with Dave Perkins, who’d previously been part of The Travelling People and who is now a canon at Derby Cathedral. Tony Clarke also played with us for a while – we went out as Rich Perks. Some recordings of us exist; including one of our last ever gig, which was at Winster Folk Club in the  late eighties.

Inevitably, as time when by family and work commitments meant that music began to slip into the background. I was self-employed by then, making a living as an illustrator. I used to do a few illustrations for the folk scene, as it happens – for a magazine called Singabout that Mick Peat’s then wife ran and some work for Free Reed. 

Around the time of the recording you have here, I was running the Priesthouse Folk Club – I ran it from about 1979 to 1982 after Dave Perkins. We put on the Battlefield Band, Derek and Dorothy Elliott, Nic Jones, Jake Thackeray, Cosmotheka –it was one of those clubs that always had a good calibre of guests combined with a discerning audience.  In the end the pressure of having a young family meant it wasn’t possible to keep running it, though, so I passed it on. Saga had been involved in running clubs, too. In the early days we ran the Uttoxeter Folk Club, probably for about five or six years. We also ran the Over Haddon Folk Club at the Lathkill Dale Hotel in the White Peak.

LFT: Any final thoughts?

PR: I’m still proud of some of the Saga recordings, particularly Adieu Sweet Lovely Nancy, The Lark in The Morning, Arthur McBride, The Wizard of Alderley Edge and King Cotton. Amazingly, I saw a copy of the first album for sale on the internet a few months back for £127…  and me, I just have the one copy, darn it! I still regard Chris Mordey as the one of the best folk vocalists of our time and he was no mean guitar player either. John Squire on fiddle could bend his elbow to anything.  And Roger Warren always kept us on task. No regrets.

The next recording we’re featuring at Lost Folk Tapes is Manchester-based singer Geoff Higginbottom’s first and only vinyl album, Flowers Tomorrow, released on the independent Dragon Records in 1987. This is a studio album, but it provides a representative snapshot of Geoff’s live performances at the time, featuring traditional and contemporary material alongside his own compositions. The selections we’ve put on the music player were chosen to reflect the broad scope of the album and of Geoff’s repertoire: we start with the traditional song A Week Before Easter, move onto Dominic Williams' Tommy's Lot, then the traditional Battle of Sowerby Bridge,  and finish with the title track, Geoff's own Flowers Tomorrow. Geoff tells the story of his formative years as a folk singer below.

I first went to a folk club at Christmas 1975 with my big sister Judith, who had been active on the local folk scene before going to University. We went to the Heaton Moor Rugby Club Folk Club, where the guests that night were the McCalmans. After this I became a regular visitor to the Deanwater Folk Club, which rose from the remains of the Rugby Club in 1976. In November 1978, when I’d been playing guitar for about a year, I decided to pluck up the courage to do a floor spot at the club. It was always a big club, and that night the guests were Telephone Bill and the Smooth Operators supported by Johnny Coppin. Talk about being thrown in at the deep end - there were about 250 people there! Anyway, several more floor spots followed at the Deanwater. 

One day at work, listening to the radio, I heard an advert for the Wellgreen Folk Club in Hale. That night the club featured a man I'd seen and enjoyed before called Nigel Mazlyn Jones. I decided to pay the club a visit and an interesting thought entered my head. If I took my guitar and offered to do a floor spot, I might get in for nowt! I was welcomed with open arms at the Wellgreen. Apart from the residents - The Cheshire Folk and Pete Wilmott - they were very short of floor singers. I began to visit and play at The Wellgreen virtually every week and was elected official club idiot. My first residency, I suppose. Sadly, the Wellgreen closed in 1982 but a few weeks later I found another club on my doorstep, The White Swan at Fallowfield. After a couple of visits, I was invited to become a resident and it was here that my folk education began in earnest. I got to see most of the folk greats at that time and saw them work at very close quarters. I was always particularly drawn to Vin Garbutt, who seemed to be able to perform a wide variety of material and keep the audience amused at the same time. 

In 1985, I entered a folk ‘talent’ competition organised by Warwick Folk festival. I won the Manchester heat and came third in the final at Warwick Festival, where so many people congratulated me on my performance, I began to believe that maybe I could make a career of it. In my case, the word ‘career’ seems to have meant hurtling out of control ever since! 1985 also saw the release of my debut album, Songs From The Levenshulme Triangle, a cassette produced by my old mate Dave Howard. It was also around this time that I became friends with the late great Johnny Collins. Many times we would start an impromptu session at the Poynton Easter Festival and I learned so much from him. On one occasion he said he really liked singing with me. When I asked him why, he said I was the only person he could sing at full tilt with without fear of drowning me out. To this day I've never been quite sure if this was a compliment!

Early in 1986 I embarked on my first tour. Ian Bembridge, who at the time was organising tours in the Hertfordshire area for the Unicorn group of folk clubs, arranged it for me. I took a week off work and enjoyed nearly every minute of it. The one dodgy bit was when a wheel fell off my van on the way to Leighton Buzzard, but Ian bailed me out and managed to get me to the club only a little bit late! 1986 also brought an invitation to the Sidmouth Folk Festival, a great honour for little me. Two things of note happened that week. Firstly, I realised that the day job, which had been getting on my nerves for some time, was actually driving me mental. With encouragement from many friends, it was decided that I would quit the day job and have a stab at being a full time musician. On returning from Sidmouth, I handed in my notice and joined the ranks of the self-unemployed. Secondly, I met up with John Heydon from Dragon Records, who expressed an interest in recording me. This duly came to fruition in 1987 with the release of Flowers Tomorrow, my only vinyl album. 

When I look at the cover of that album I can't believe that I used to be that young. My old mate Mike Billington took the photos. The front cover shows the remains of Openshaw Technical College in East Manchester. The shots of a wasteland seemed to fit in with the theme of the title track, which I had written the previous year. Most people have never realised that the window frame I sat in for the front cover had a thirty foot drop behind it - it took me all my time not to look terrified for the photo! The content of the album was a mixture of material because that's what I do live. I've always enjoyed music from the full spectrum of the folk genre and my live performances have always reflected this. I also wanted people who bought the album to find that it mirrored what they heard from the stage, so I tried to keep overdubs and guest musicians to a minimum. If they bought the album at a gig they should expect it to sound like me when they got it home. 

When it comes to choosing material, lyrics have always been important to me. I've always been drawn to the story telling aspect of folk music and when it comes to writing songs, I tell stories the way I see them. For centuries folk song has been the means of expression for the masses: an alternative history from that in the history books written by the intelligentsia of the day. I see my own songs as carrying on that tradition and believe that writing songs in that tradition is almost as important as the preservation of the old songs. And when I say preservation, I mean by usage – that is, by singing them - and not simply by locking them away, museum like, for people to look at. This is how I end up with such a mixture of material both ancient and modern.

 My career has continued ever since that fateful day in 1986 and I can honestly say I have lost count of the number of gigs I have done. Highlights include trips to Guernsey, Jersey, France, Belgium and Holland as well as the many folk clubs and festivals throughout the British Isles. As well as performing solo, I also work with a couple of bands. Three Sheets To The Wind comprise myself, Keith Kendrick and Derek Gifford, singing mainly maritime material. The Phatt-B’Stards are myself George Wilson and John Scott-Cree - we can be found at Broadstairs Folk Week every year for our annual get together.

As well as Flowers Tomorrow, Geoff has released a cassette-only album, Songs From The Levenshulme Triangle and numerous CDs: More Than Pounds and Pence; Island In The Sun; The Flowers Of Manchester; Peterloo; Live at Gregson Lane and Full Circular Pies (surely one of the best album titles ever!). He has also released All Tide Up with Three Sheets to the Wind and a live album with the Phatt B’Stards. You can contact Geoff or find out about his current activities via Facebook.