Recording of the Month, October 2014: “Dingie ‘Underd Ghoost o’ ‘Alloween”

Our Sound Archivist Martin Astell brings us another highlight from the Essex Sound and Video Archive…

SA 24/221/1

Whether you believe in ghosts or not, it is possible that some may knock on your door at the end of October. For that reason, I have chosen this ghostly tale – supposedly recounted in Essex dialect – as our recording for this month.

We know that the poem was written (and presumably spoken) by Mr J. London of Collier Row at some point in the first half of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, we know very little else about this delightful curiosity.

It tells of supernatural goings-on in Essex’s Dengie peninsula, which is still referred to by the historic term of the Dengie Hundred, and why on ‘’Alloween Eve’ you may still hear ghostly cries as you travel through its misty lanes. According to ‘The Witches of Dengie’ by Eric Maple (published in Folklore, Volume 73, Autumn 1962), “the Hundred of Dengie was until comparatively modern times regarded as ‘Witch Country’, to use a local term for any district where the traditions of witchcraft were very strong.” This article goes on to describe reputed encounters with witches said to have the power of flight – “like other witches of the Essex marshlands” – and a number of tales involving horses and carts affected by witchcraft. One wonders whether Mr London had heard some of these tales before he sat down to compose his tale.

Centre disc label

The poem begins: “Should ye ever goo in a pub called Kickin’ Dickey, down Dingie ‘underd way” which is curious as we find no record of a pub with this name in the area. There is a pub called Kicking Dickey in Great Dunmow in Essex, but this is decidedly not in the Dengie Hundred. However, ‘dickey’ is a dialect term for donkey, so could it be that locals used Kickin’ Dickey as a nickname for the White Horse in Southminster, or Mundon, or even the village of Dengie?

If you know, let us know.

Recording of the Month, September 2014: Mrs Cranwell’s Driving Test

Our Sound Archivist Martin Astell brings us another highlight from the Essex Sound and Video Archive…

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This month’s recording highlights the principal joy of working with oral history. That is, the fact that it is about people. Everybody has a story to tell, but some tell them better than others. Mrs Irene Cranwell from the village of Chrishall in Essex falls into the category of characters whose personality bursts out of the recorded interview, and in this extract she describes her somewhat unusual driving test in Cambridge.

Irene Cranwell died in 2010 at the age of 99, having become a local celebrity through regular contributions to a BBC Cambridgeshire radio show. She had been a teacher at Chrishall village school and later worked at Barkway First School and Icknield Walk First School in Royston. She also, apparently, had an impressive knowledge of local history and started a museum in Chrishall based on her own collection.

When listening to oral history interviews we should not forget the contribution of the interviewer who, in this case, has created a relaxed and congenial atmosphere, allowing the interviewee to express herself in a free and uninhibited manner.

Recording of the Month, August 2014: John Barleycorn

Our Sound Archivist Martin Astell brings us another highlight from the Essex Sound and Video Archive…

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I am led to believe that August is the time for harvesting spring barley, so I thought this folk song would be a suitable choice for this month as it describes and celebrates the processes traditionally involved in turning barley into beer.

In the song the character of John Barleycorn is a personification of the cereal who undergoes a series of attacks – such as being ‘cut down at his knees’, being bound to a cart and being placed in a kiln ‘for to roast his bones’ – which correspond to the cultivation of the crop as well as the malting and brewing processes.

The example we provide is sung by Ernie Austin and was included in a compilation of Essex dialect stories and songs called All Manner of What which was created by Essex County Council’s Education Resources Centre in the 1970s for use in schools.

 

Recording of the Month July 2014: Father Went Down to Southend

Our Sound Archivist Martin Astell brings us another highlight from the Essex Sound and Video Archive…

Acc. SA710 part

The promise of summer sunshine leads our thoughts toward the seaside and this month’s recording should help us on our journey. It is taken from a 78rpm Edison Bell gramophone disc released in 1911 or 1912. The song Father Went Down to Southend was written by T.W. Connor who wrote a number of other Music Hall favourites such as She Was One of the Early Birds (And I Was One of the Worms), I’m the Airy Fairy and A Little Bit of Cucumber. This last can be heard performed by Mr Cutmore of Halstead on the Essex Record Office CD How to Speak Essex: 20th century voices from the Essex Sound and Video Archive.

Bell disc 348 - label

Father Went Down to Southend can be seen as providing further evidence of the popularity of the resort as a destination for day trippers travelling by rail from London in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, telling a story – which may be familiar to some of us even now – of a man who ‘didn’t see much of the water, but he put some beers away!’ The tune is lively and the words humorous. Note also the curious ending which mirrors the introduction but, to me, has the effect of sounding like an arrangement intended to segue into another song.

If the recording quality sounds a little less than ‘hi-fidelity’ to our modern ears, it is worth noting that the disc itself is over 100 years old and that it would have been recorded acoustically – that is, without microphones – requiring the singer and accompanying orchestra to be arranged in front of a conical horn (somewhat akin to those seen on gramophones) and to perform live.

I hope this recording gets you in the mood for your summer holiday. Perhaps you should consider a day trip to ‘Southend on the Sea’.

Recording of the Month May 2014: Docking of the Jervis Bay

Our Sound Archivist Martin Astell brings us another highlight from the Essex Sound and Video Archive…

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In the early 1980s the Essex-based broadcaster and journalist Dennis Rookard produced a series of radio ballads to be broadcast on hospital radio. This month’s recording is an extract from one of those programmes – called Wind Over Tilbury – which was based around Tilbury Docks and told the story of the enormous changes to working practices brought about by the introduction of containerisation in the 1960s. It was first broadcast on Basildon Hospital Radio.

‘Radio ballad’ is a term used to describe a particular type of radio programme which uses a mixture of songs and the spoken word to create an entertaining, possibly sentimental, form of documentary. The term was coined for a series of programmes made between 1957 and 1964 for the BBC Home Service by Charles Parker, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger. They were entirely new in that they used the voices of the ordinary people involved, carefully edited and interwoven with the music, to tell the story without the need for a narrator.

Dennis Rookard was greatly influenced by this series and he used a similar template to make his radio ballads which, like the originals, were generally focussed on the working lives of ordinary people and used folk music to tell the story. In Wind Over Tilbury and other programmes the South-Essex musician and songwriter Jack Forbes has composed songs specifically related to the subject in hand.

The extract I have chosen is the part of the programme in which we hear a large container ship called Jervis Bay being lined up to enter a lock. Amongst other things, it provides evidence for the assertion that radio is better than television because it allows you to create your own pictures. I hope you enjoy it.

Recording of the Month April 2014: ‘I didn’t want medals’ – One man’s experience of the First World War

Our Sound Archivist Martin Astell brings us another highlight from the Essex Sound and Video Archive…

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This month we have extracts from a talk given in 1992 by Alf Webb who had served as a machine gunner in the First World War. The recording from which these extracts are taken is an incredible resource. Alf Webb was talking to a group of school children and his recollections of both the mundane detail and the harsh reality of the war are delivered in a matter-of-fact and unflinching way (perhaps surprising given the audience) as he talks about mud and lice, tactics and trenches, the death of friends and colleagues, and his own unheroic attitude towards the war as he did his best to ‘try and survive and get out of this.’

If you are interested in finding further resources held in the Essex Sound and Video Archive which relate to the First World War, a sources list is available.

We will be hearing a great deal about the First World War over the centenary period, but few things will bring us closer to understanding the reality of events than to hear the experiences, thoughts and authentic voices of people who actually lived through them.

Recording of the Month March 2014: The Essex Youth Orchestra

The next monthly highlight from our Sound Archivist Martin Astell…

Essex Youth Orchestra – Wand of Youth (SA 10/1/1/1/1)

For March we have some music. Our choice this month is, we believe, the earliest recording of the Essex Youth Orchestra. The orchestra was formed in 1957 as part of the County Youth Service of Essex County Council and by the time this recording was made, in 1960, they had already made successful tours of West Berlin and Essex and been invited to tour Holland.  In subsequent years the orchestra visited Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Italy, the USA and Canada, and has performed at the Royal Albert Hall, the Royal Festival Hall, Snape Maltings, and at the Bath Festival both accompanied by and conducted by Yehudi Menuhin.

Youth Service Volume 8 Number 4 April 1968

New works have been written for or dedicated to the Essex Youth Orchestra by composers such as Alan Rawsthorne, Elizabeth Maconchy and Bernard Stevens, and former members have gone on to perform with any number of major symphony orchestras. Membership of the orchestra was open to any young person aged under 21 who was resident in Essex or attended an Essex school or college.

The Essex Youth Orchestra continues to the present day along much the same lines. You can find more details here.

The four recordings with our reference SA 10/1/1/1/1 were made on April 19th 1960 by Pike Films on both sides of two 7″ 45rpm lacquer ‘instantaneous’ discs. The discs have pre-printed labels bearing the Pike Films logo with the details of the recordings being hand-written in ink. The first two sides contain recordings of The Impressario by Mozart and part of Dvorak’s Symphony No.4. However, we have chosen to feature the third side which contains the first section of Elgar’s Wand of Youth (Suite 1), which seems appropriate for a youth orchestra. The fourth side has parts 2 and 3 of Wand of Youth.

Media Types 004 - Lacquer disc close-up

We are told that Elgar, when in his fifties, decided to develop into full orchestral works a number of compositions he had made at the tender age of eleven to accompany a childhood play staged by him and his siblings. These resulted in two suites to which he gave the name Wand of Youth and he chose to give them the opus number 1 to indicate that they were, in fact, his earliest work.

The Essex Sound and Video Archive holds a series of recordings of the Essex Youth Orchestra as well as others from Colchester Youth Chamber Orchestra, Witham Choral Society and others. We also hold recordings of compositions by Essex-based composers from William Byrd to Alan Bullard. Details of all the recordings held in the Essex Sound and Video Archive can be found on the Essex Record Office online catalogue Seax.

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