evening session involved a high level of participation from those present, and even where there were invited performers local members often performed too as ‘floor singers’. The general atmosphere was relaxed, with people sitting around tables drinking as they listened or joined in the songs, but there were elements of formality too. Starting and finishing times were fairly strictly kept to, there were accepted conventions about introducing and applauding performers, and the organisers tried to stop too much moving around during the performance of a song – in contrast to some other musical performances in pubs. Since finance was always a problem the evening often included a fund-raising raffle, sometimes with a recording by the visiting performer as the prize.
The clubs were run by local organisers and committees (with the partial exception of the Folk-at-the-Stables, backed by the professional organisation of WAP – though even there the artistic side was organised by a local teacher and folk musician). The work involved was extensive – arranging with the local pub, booking guests, ensuring a supply of floor singers, organising publicity, and entertaining visiting artists. Above all the organisers had to worry about funding – and for most folk clubs this was precarious. True, a certain amount came in from club fees, entrance charges, and raffles, but against this there were the constant expenses: rent of the hall, publicity, entertaining, and guest artists’ fees. Most clubs just could not afford high fees. This was probably one reason why they had few professional artists – in the sense, that is, of full-time musicians; for in the other sense of accepted standards many folk performers were regarded as ‘professional’, combining full-time jobs with regular appearances in the clubs. The fees remained low from the performers’ viewpoint, but clubs still found it hard to make ends meet and for this reason local guests often agreed to take minimal fees or to perform ‘free’. They might still be entertained to food and drinks, and a token of, say, £10 might be pressed on them in the form of a gift. The organisers usually found they were ‘dipping into their own pockets’ for stamps, phone calls, petrol, entertaining guests, providing the tickets or prizes for the raffle, having visiting artists to stay or just putting money ‘into the kitty’. Regular members too joined in, not least through the pressure to make generous contributions via the fund-raising raffles. Given these constraints, it is scarcely surprising that some clubs were ephemeral, rather that there were always some folk clubs flourishing, several having lasted for years.
Folk clubs were to be found not only in the immediate area, but also in a circle around it. There were folk clubs at, for example, Nether Heyford, Daventry, Aylesbury, Luton and Dunstable, all on occasion patronised by Milton Keynes residents. How far people were prepared to travel depended on both commitment and mode of transport (most in fact had access to cars). Some devotees spent just about every night of the week at some folk club or other in what they classified as the vicinity, up to twenty-five miles or so away. One husband-and-wife pair, for example, keen folk enthusiasts and performers, regularly spent their evenings (after work) as follows: Sundays, Daventry Folk Club (the oldest in the area, going since 1965); Mondays, Hogsty Folk Club, Aspley Guise; Tuesdays, either the Nether Heyford Club or the Black Horse Folk Club at Great Linford; Wednesdays and Thursdays, ‘not so good because people had no money’, but sometimes playing at home; Fridays, alternately the Cock at Stony Stratford or the Whittlebury Folk Club; Saturdays, Folk-at-the-Stables, Wavendon. This weekly cycle was not unique. Another example, typical of several, was someone in a demanding, full-time job who nevertheless ‘lived for folk’: Sundays, Daventry; Mondays, Hogsty; Tuesdays, Old Sun Folk Club at Nether Heyford; Wednesdays, teaching German (his one non-folk evening); Thursdays, practising; Fridays, the Cock, Stony Stratford or Whittlebury; Saturdays, live performance locally or further afield.
There was also the wider network of folk clubs that had been growing up throughout the country from the late 1950s, each with their own local cycles. Folk enthusiasts who had to travel to other parts of the UK could (and did) consult the English Folk Dance and Song Society directory of clubs and made a point of attending them. As one much-travelled folk participant put it, ‘they’re all the same – and, different. You can go into any and know they’ll be friendly.’ Women might feel self-conscious in a strange pub, but in a folk club ‘you feel quite comfortable’. It was accepted form to walk into an unfamiliar club anywhere, perhaps asking ‘Any chance to sing?’ or perhaps waiting to be persuaded the first time, but then recognised in later visits; names and personal contacts were not needed, for the system was open and familiar. One experienced folk attender summed it up: ‘you just feel at home straight away – a home from home’.
The folk club world was thus country-wide, and in contrast to some other forms of music the national network of clubs was known and accessible to all enthusiasts. This wide perspective among folk music devotees also came out in the regional or national folk festivals, and Loughborough, Reading, Norwich and Cambridge were among large folk events attended by local enthusiasts and performers. Folk news-sheets (like Shire Folk and Unicorn) were also springing up in certain regions, and these too encouraged wider awareness of the folk music world, as did the English Folk Dance and Song Society and Perform (a national society to encourage live music, with strong links to the Milton Keynes folk world), and the established practice of folk performers circulating as guest artists among folk clubs and festivals up and down the country. For Milton Keynes dwellers their local clubs were what they were most regularly involved in, but they were also very aware of the country-wide ‘folk world’ of which they were a part.
Many of those who attended the folk clubs went as receptive and participating audience or provided ‘floor’ performance from time to time. The clubs also thus rested on a pool of informal local talent in the form of floor singers or instrumentalists and – not least – chorus participants, apparently so readily available in Milton Keynes folk settings. But there were also the actively performing groups, together with a few individuals who themselves travelled the ‘folk club circuit’. Of these categories, the most important locally were the bands, for though some well-known performers (like Matt Armour or Beryl Marriott) lived locally, they made relatively few local solo appearances and even then mostly performed in virtue of their membership of a local band or club.
In the early 1980s, there were about a dozen folk bands of one kind or another in and around Milton Keynes. Some were ephemeral, but all had put on at least some performances. They included the Cock and Bull Band (mixed amateur and professional); the Boodlum Jug Stompers; the Hogstymen; the Hole in the Head Gang; Merlin’s Isle; Pennyroyal; the Whittlebury Residents; the Green Grass Band; Streets Ahead (folk rock); Threepenny Bit (a school group); the short-lived and part classical England’s Lane; and various school and church groups. In addition there were the barn dance or ‘ceilidh’ bands: Music Folk; the Gaberlunzies (and its stretched version, the Gaberlunzies Elastic Band); the Banana Barn Dance Band; and Sunday Suits and Muddy Boots.
These bands performed in the local folk clubs just described, and for local fêtes, weddings or dances. Some also appeared on an occasional or regular basis at pubs and social clubs. Outdoor events and local folk festivals were also popular occasions for performance. Some of these, like the Cock and Bull Festival, were short-lived only, but there were also annual events like the one-day Black Horse Folk Festival. The largest regular gathering was the ‘Folk on the Green’ festival in Stony Stratford (figure 12). This had taken place yearly in June since 1973 and by the early 1980s was attracting 2,000–3,000 people a time, having become accepted, as a local newspaper rightly expressed it, ‘as one of the great family events of the year, now an established tradition’. It was the brain-child of a local primary teacher and a low-cost event dependent on local performers rather than imported professionals. The 1982 ‘Folk on the Green’, for example, included seven named local artists performing as individuals, plus the local groups Pennyroyal, the Hole in the Head Gang, the Stony Stratford Morris Men, Old Mother Redcaps and Mentil and the Lentils, and other years followed the same pattern – a magnificent show-piece of local folk talent.
The dance or ‘ceilidh’ bands (as they were usually referred to) formed another category, specialising in playing for country-type dancing. Such bands had been
