My father was my original musical inspiration. He loved to sing, and he played the mouthorgan and the piano. He was also pretty good on the spoons. He had no musical education so was entirely self taught. During his time in the navy in the second world war he had also learned to play the ukulele. He no longer played it when I was growing up but we had a great selection of ukulele music in the piano stool. It’s difficult to remember exactly when, but it was probably sometime during my first year at Barking Abbey when I was twelve, that I decided I wanted a ukulele.
Ukuleles had nothing like the popularity then that they have now, so there wasn’t a lot of choice. How I saved enough out of my pocket money I don’t recall, but I managed to buy a good basic ukulele, with a nice sunburst finish, from Hill’s in Barking Broadway for 30 shillings.
I dug the music out of the piano stool and with a little help from my dad learned to play by strumming the chords of Lilly Marlene, Coming In On A Wing And A Prayer, Underneath The Arches, When I’m Cleaning Windows, and so on.
During my first year at Abbey, 56/57 I became friendly with Derek Boulter who sat near me in class. We went cycling together and seemed to get on well. During the second year at I got to know another classmate, Bill Plaskett. We then teamed up with another member of the class David Flack and the four of us started going cycling together.
Bill was interested in music and we must have been increasingly aware of the impact of skiffle. Lonnie Donegan’s Rock Island Line had been released in 56 and skiffle groups were springing up around the country. Bill’s father had played tenor banjo and guitar in dance bands at one time and still had both instruments, which Bill was learning to play. Derek and David both acquired guitars. My father, having something of DIY attitude to music, bought a washboard, which he rapidly lost interest in. So we started a skiffle group, with me initially trying to make something of the washboard and alternating with the ukulele. I quickly decided I wanted to play guitar instead.
Bill’s dad recommended a guitar shop in Aldgate called Ebblewhite’s. I can’t find any reference to the shop as it was in the 50’s but I did find a 1921 London Street Directory online listing Ebblewhite Albert Victor, musical instrument importer at 4&5 Aldgate High Street north side, so that must have been the place. I went there one Saturday morning with my Dad and came away with a nice pine topped, round hole, steel stringed guitar for £10.
We started with some Donegan numbers and went through a lot of the standard skiffle repertoire. My brother Brian, who was seven years older than me was already a trad jazz fan and had discovered Bessie Smith. I was fascinated by her (still am) and we started singing Backwater Blues and others from her repertoire. I borrowed a copy of Jerry Silverman’s Folk Blues from the library and that added some more numbers to try. I had the book on more or less permanent loan as my sister Maureen worked at the library and just kept stamping it out for me. Eventually I got my own copy. In the sixth form I won the Barking Manufacturers Prize for Applied Maths and requested the Jerry Silverman book as my prize.
We rehearsed a lot at Dave’s place in Goodmayes and we started going to a youth club in Goodmayes attached to the Presbyterian Church. There was a back room we could rehearse in and we would sometimes perform a few numbers to the club. We also met there a slightly older lad Ian Forester who joined us on Eric Delaney drum kit, Eric Delaney being a famous dance band drummer of the time. His drum kit was not much more than a toy, a snare drum perched on three legs and a cymbal, however it added some percussion to our sound. Ian’s personality also added something to our performances.
We called ourselves “The Creekmouth Mourners”. The River Roding became Barking Creek as it passed through Barking and met the Thames at Creekmouth. So, Creekmouth was well known to us and a popular spot to go for a walk along the river bank with views, interesting rather than picturesque, of passing ships and distant river bank industries. We were happy with the name but in retrospect it wasn’t ideal for selling us to anyone who might have booked us for a gig, especially as one of our signature numbers was ”New Burial Ground”! However, I think we were mainly in it for fun so it wasn’t a problem.
Our biggest performance was a concert at school for a charity the school were supporting, the Ockenden Venture, which helped refugee children. Another notable event was taking part in a service for the Goodmayes Presbyterian church one Sunday. We found a book of American spirituals and I think we sang two at the service.
We also entered a skiffle competition at what I believe was the Bow Civic Theatre. I don’t recall what numbers we did but we didn’t get anywhere in the competition. We adopted a friend of Ian’s, John Cormac as our “Manager”. I don’t why, maybe just to include him in the group, but I remember him being the one who dealt with the competition organisers for us. He also had the first recording machine I had seen. This must have been just before reel to reel tape recorders really took off. John had a machine that recorded magnetically on a grooved disc that looked much like a LP. It’s the only one I ever saw.
We mainly played the standard skiffle stuff of the time but were just as happy trying Buddy Holly or early Cliff Richard or Marty Wilde numbers. I seem to remember doing Peggy Sue, Rave On, Move It, Bad Boy and other songs of the time. Derek had an Elizabethan reel-to-reel tape recorder and recorded us a number of times in rehearsal. The recordings still survive, the last one being from 1960. At some point, I guess around 1960, we started to progress in our musical interests and abandoned the skiffle group.
My sense of the chronology of these events is vague but a number of things were happening. I was developing an interest in jazz. Trad jazz was booming and my brother Brian was a fan so I was familiar with Ken Colyer and Chris Barber. At one point Bill and myself joined a local trad band, Bill on banjo, me on guitar. It was led by a trumpet player Graham Booth who lived near me. He had found a couple of real characters Seamus who played piano, and trombonist Jim Piddington. It was a good little band though we didn’t ever seem to have a permanent bass player. We had some fun rehearsals but I don’t recall playing any gigs, though a subset of the band did play on the back of a lorry in a rag parade for the South East Essex Tech. Seamus had a rolling piano style and played a great Tishomingo Blues, which Bill subsequently learned to play in his style.
Meanwhile, as already mentioned, we were getting more interested in the popular music of the time. We discovered that a then unknown local group, Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, were rehearsing in a class room at a school in Barking (Ripple School I believe) that ran a youth club. We had a sort of connection with them as Brian Poole, who was a few years older than us, having passed his O Levels at Park Modern School joined Barking Abbey for the sixth form. We joined the youth club so that we could sit at the back of the class room and listen to the Tremeloes rehearsing. At that time they were mostly rehearsing Cliff and the Shadows covers. For us it was exciting to watch and listen to a rock group coming together. They had a great sound. We had no idea then that they were destined for stardom.
At some point, I’m guessing around 61/62, Bill and David joined up with two other schoolmates, Roger Wholey and Dave Price, and a fifth (non-Barkabbeyan) to form a rock group which became known as Section 62. I discovered recently that Roger actually bought his first drum kit from the Tremeloes’ drummer. They got sponsorship from Kangol who were well known in the 60’s for their highly fashionable berets. Section 62 was very successful locally but eventually broke up as careers started to take precedence.
The story stops at this point as we all went off in different directions.