BOOKS WRITTEN BY FOLK SINGERS
BOOKS WRITTEN BY FOLK SINGERS
I CAN HIGHLY RECOMMEND THESE BOOKS, AS LIFE STORIES OFTEN TURN INTO SONGS
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Dr Paul Davison
Service Child Out of Egypt & Into the NHS
Paul is often seen singing at the Candlelights & Darlington Clubs.
As a fellow 'Military Brat' I bought a copy of this ,(and he signed if for me, oddly legible writing for a Doctor!) and I am looking foward to settling down and readign his story.
"This is my first dip into the world of Facebook but I was persuaded that it was the way to go to help launch my new book. I hope to make a verbal announcement this Wednesday but here are the details. ‘Service Child, out of Egypt and into the NHS’ is a memoir written during the tedious days of Covid Lockdown and now polished up and distributed by Amazon Books. I attempt to define where I actually come from! It details my unusual life being born abroad and moving around every 2/3 years following my dad who was an RAF Chaplain. There were many UK and overseas postings with lots of adventures alongside the broken schooling and friendships. Eventually boarding school in Northern Ireland, Medical school in London followed by junior hospital jobs and finally General Practice. My work as a Police Surgeon adds some pithy experiences along with many case histories and anecdotes.
I hope to have a book launch event on Monday 22nd January in The Copper Beech, Neasham Rd Darlington from about 7 p.m. with some light refreshments, selected readings from the book and back ground live music. It would be great to see some of you during that evening. I will try and remember to bring in a few copies of the book to subsequent open mic evenings for sale and signing (£10.99 on Amazon Books and £10 cash to my Candlelite friends) I will now attempt to add my first Facebook pictures!
Cheers. Paul Davison."
Harvey Andrews
Gold Star to the Ozarks - A Musical Memoir.
I grew up listening to 'Friends of Mine' an album that has been replayed many times in my life and I never get tired of Harvey’s beautiful voice and the stories in the songs.
Reading this, I could imagine where some of his songs were inspired from.
My lovely friend Marie Little read this before me and loved it too.
Harvey is still singing and can be contacted on Facebook
🕸️http://www.harveyandrews.com/
Karen Williamson
Flower of Scotland - Roy Williamson. My Father
I lived in Forres and went to school there, and was alwasy enchanted by the wee museum to the Corries.
My parents had several Corries Albums, so, like harvewery Andrews, their music has followed me through life.
Karen was married to a freind of mine, and sadly, I attended her funeral.
It was her copy that I first read, and eventaull, managed to get my own.
The book’s author, Ailsa MacKenzie
Doc Rower presents Graeme with the English Folk Dance and Song Society’s gold badge in November 2012, just a few months before Graeme died.
Annie Miles with a proof copy of the book
The original Fettlers’ line-up, left to right, John White, Graeme, Ron Angel and John McCoy, with Ken Crawford on banjo
Press Release
NEW BOOK CELEBRATES LEGACY OF A TEESSIDE AND NORTH YORKSHIRE SONGWRITING GREAT
Ailsa MacKenzie
Shadows and Whispers
A tribute to the ‘king of songwriters’
Shadows and Whispers – Graeme Miles Remembered is a biography of a remarkable Middlesbrough man who is believed to have written up to 500 songs, including many about industrial Teesside and rural North Yorkshire.
Graeme Miles has been called “the king of songwriters” and his work is performed all over the world, yet little is known locally about this enigmatic, modest genius who has inspired so many musicians and other songwriters.
This biography redresses that omission. Graeme began writing songs as a schoolboy but took it seriously when he became immersed in the UK folk music revival as a young man in the 1950s.
Folk clubs provided a platform for his songs to be sung all over the country but particularly on Teesside and in the North-East.
Among his best-known creations are Ring of Iron, originally performed by the Fettlers (now the Teesside Fettlers), of which Graeme was a founder member, Along the Guisborough Road, Where Ravens Feed, Over Yonder Banks, My Eldorado and Sea Coal!
Graeme was conscripted into the army, which he hated, and wrote several songs about his 22 months’ service, including the much-loved Shores of Old Blighty, composed to the sound of his troopship’s engine as the vessel left the Kent coast for the continent and his service on the Luneburg Heath.
The author of Shadows and Whispers is Ailsa MacKenzie, who was brought up in East Cleveland and is a retired sub-editor as well as being an accomplished harpist, dulcimer player and folk singer.
Ailsa knew Graeme and performed with him in The Ironopolis Singers, of which she is music director and of which he was such a proud and happy member.
In the book, she discusses Graeme’s ten-year mission to give Middlesbrough its own legacy of song after he discovered that, unlike Tyneside and other areas where traditional music and dance flourished, there were no such established culture on Teesside.
A visit to Middlesbrough’s Central Library confirmed this, when he asked to be directed to the section about local traditions only to be met with a blank stare. This made him even more determined to achieve his goal.
He wrote dozens of songs about industrial Middlesbrough – its iron and steel foundries, forges, rolling mills, its docks, its pubs and its people, and about Cleveland ironstone mining from the 1850s to the 1960s.
In doing so he was conserving in music the history of the old town and its surroundings and its role in national manufacturing, largely forgotten today.
Many of his songs are light-hearted and funny, others are more serious, depicting lost love, real disasters, particularly at sea, and other subjects.
His pastoral songs are especially beautiful, set as they are on the North York Moors, which he knew intimately, with memorable melodies and outstandingly lovely lyrics.
Graeme died in 2013 at the age of 77 but his songs are still sung as far away as Alaska and New Zealand and all over the British Isles.
They have been performed by dozens of artists including the Teesside songwriter Vin Garbutt (1947-2017), The Spinners, world-travelled Martyn Wyndham-Read, who calls Graeme “the king of songwriters”, The Ironopolis Singers, The Wilson Family and The Young’uns. Hundreds of recordings of the songs can be found on YouTube.
A trust set up in Graeme’s name after his death gave money to Joe Hammill, of Thornaby group Cattle and Cane, among others, to help them to further establish themselves as musicians.
Ailsa said: “People who have heard Graeme’s music may not know the full story of this modest, complex man. Even to his friends he remained an enigma, but he is widely admired in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK and Ireland. His songs are especially loved locally because they are relatable.
“This book will preserve some of his wonderful music for future generations and also ensure that his unique contribution to our culture becomes more widely known, especially locally. “It was his wife Annie’s express wish that the town be seen in a better light than it so often is. I hope I have achieved this as well.”
One of Graeme’s first jobs was as an assistant curator at Middlesbrough’s Dorman Museum (he slept for a time on a bench in adjacent Albert Park). After two years, he deliberately went into heavy industry, becoming an iron-moulder’s labourer in Anderston’s foundry at Port Clarence so he could experience the tough conditions in such places to give his songs authenticity.
Ailsa said: “To write with some authority, he took on the trades and jobs of the industries he wanted to write about. He knew the old town was dying and felt it needed to be preserved in music and song.
“His work included plate-laying on the railways at the docks, breaking boulders at a moorland quarry, and being a deputy warden at Westerdale Hall youth hostel, even working on a local refuse tip for a time. All of them provided him with material for his songs.
“But as well as being one of the most prolific songwriters of the 20th century, Graeme was a talented artist. A large selection of his drawings is included in Shadows and Whispers. They show his outstanding draughtsmanship.”
One chapter is devoted to his fine prose work and another commemorates his important partnership with Teesside photographer and friend Robin Dale.
They produced Songscapes, a book of Graeme’s songs and sketches together with Robin’s photographs of the dying old town. Importantly, they created three slide-studies of industrial Middlesbrough, the Cleveland coast and the North York Moors, documenting in doing so the region in the 1970s.
Ailsa said: “Graeme was totally uninterested in money or status and only ever wanted his songs to be sung, particularly locally. It was a bonus that singers took them to the other side of the world and elsewhere outside Teesside and the North East. His reputation is such that royalties come in from many countries, including Russia, the USA and Canada.
“Middlesbrough’s industrial past has given the town an unenvied reputation for deprivation and all that that brings, but he never saw it like that.
“By writing songs about its proud iron and steel industry, Graeme laid the groundwork for others, including Vin Garbutt, to write about Teesside, with its rich though relatively modern heritage.
“This old way of life is preserved in a history of Graeme’s own making – the mining, the manufacturing, life on the docks, the importance of the river Tees, the people and the jobs they had and the lives they led. His rich tradition of song, prose and drawings illustrates a way of life that had once existed here.
“Not long before he died, Graeme was awarded the English Folk Dance and Song Society’s prestigious gold award given for contribution to English culture. This accolade was long overdue, but it was a reward for his dedication to the town he loved and hated to see disparaged, and to Teesside and North Yorkshire.”
Shadows and Whispers – Graeme Miles Remembered is published by McGeary Media of Middlesbrough. Advance orders are being taken now, price £24.55 including postage and packing (UK orders) via mcgearymedia.co.uk/books. All pre-orders will come with a free 11-track MP3 of Graeme singing some of his best-loved songs.
The book runs to 437 pages and includes 156 of Graeme’s songs, 70 of them with music notation. It is lavishly illustrated with many examples of Graeme’s drawings and proses, as well as photographs.
Ailsa was assisted in her research by Graeme’s wife Annie and his friends Robin Dale, Albert Elliott, Stan Croft, the renowned Tyneside singer/songwriter Johnny Handle, Dave Manship and Colin and Heather Mather, as well as many other artists who have performed his songs. It was important to Annie that the book should be designed and edited locally.
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