THE
BALLAD OF SID KIPPER
Chris Sugden.
A Star Is Spawned
Sid
Kipper was born on a sunny Saturday afternoon in Farmer Trout's barn in the tiny
Norfolk village of St Just-near-Trunch. Which
means that Sid is a true Truncheon (and he never has to close the door).
Many people have remarked that Sid seems younger than his age.
Well, every biography needs a sensational revelation, so here's one
straight away. I can now exclusively
divulge that Sid is younger than his age!
That is to say, he's younger than he has previously claimed to be.
Let
me take you back to 1936. In that
year the whole village sighed with relief when Sid's parents, Henry Kipper and
Dot Spratt, married each other, because it meant that nobody else would have to
marry either of them. They set up
home on the edge of the village in Box Cottage, and seemed quite happy, in a
miserable sort of way.
Henry
and Dot never wanted children, but at the outbreak of the Second World War they
saw the advantage of the extra rations that a child would bring.
So they registered the birth of a son, Sid, who at that stage didn't
actually exist. This arrangement
worked very well, until the end of the war.
When the lax wartime bureaucracy was tightened up it became clear that
they might be required to produce the boy. No
longer could they claim, as they had, that he had been "ejaculated to
London". So Henry enquired of
the vicar how they might go about having a child and, after some incredulity,
they went ahead. Dot finally, if
reluctantly, gave birth to the real, flesh and blood Sid on the twenty-first of
September 1946.
But
it's not easy being an unwanted child, as Sid recalls.
"I
sort of got the feeling that I weren't wanted when the rationing got eased.
What give me that feeling was when mother used to leave me in shops or on
buses, or anywhere in fact. I once
spent three days in a cake shop in North Walsham before they managed to trace
her and make her take me back. Of
course, that was nothing personal. Eventually
I learned to keep an eye out for her trying to sneak off.
I reckon that must be where I picked up the habit of following women
home."
By
all accounts Sid was a happy little boy, although something of a loner.
He spent much of his time practising putting his finger in his ear and
singing folk songs. He loved nature
and when he was not needed to work around the house would go for long walks.
He knew where every pheasant and rabbit lived, and he sang to them.
It
has to be said that Sid and education never saw eye to eye.
The biggest problem was Sid's singing.
It was in his blood, and he had no wish to do anything else.
At the age of five, however, he was dragged kicking and screaming to
start his formal education at Trunch Bored School.
It was a day he will never forget.
"I
weren't kicking and screaming - I was dancing and singing.
But I do remember we did have a bit of trouble over the singing.
Miss Eels, the teacher, spent all her time telling me not to sing in the
classroom. Well, not all her time,
obviously. I mean, for a start, she
used to go home of an evening. Mind
you, I never went home with her, so I don't know for sure she din't spend her
time there telling me not to sing in the classroom.
But even if she did, there was one time she didn't tell me not to sing,
and that was during singing lessons. She
threw me out for them. She said I
put the others off."
Eventually
a compromise was reached, whereby Sid could sing whenever he liked, but had to
leave the classroom and do it in the boys toilets, which were situated at the
far end of the playground. In fact
he spent so much time there that he taught himself to read from the graffiti on
the walls. However, Sid was not a
complete failure at primary school. In
fact he gained a qualification of which he is very proud.
"I
got a certificate for Fifty Yards Breast-stroke Theory - the school didn't have
no swimming pool, so we couldn't do the practical.
I was very good at the breast-stroking, though I never could get the hang
of crawling - Cyril Cockle got a Distinction for that."
On
leaving primary school Sid was offered a place at Borstal, but his ambition was
thwarted, as his parents couldn't afford the uniform.
So he went, with the rest of his class-mates, to the nearby Knapton
Academy. Here he was not allowed to
sing in class. Nor was he allowed to
leave the class to sing, as he had done before.
This was because the boys toilets were situated next to the headmaster's
office, and the walls were thin. So
Sid took to truancy. But in a small
village, where everyone knows everyone's business, he quickly had to become
expert at evading the Attendance Officer. He
spent a lot of time lurking in the woods - a habit he retains to this day.
"I
never bothered none about doing well at school.
Even then all I wanted to do was sing and play the accompaniments, so I
couldn't see no point in getting no big qualifications.
My Uncle Walter was teaching me the piano by the traditional method of
beating time on my fingers with the lid, apart from which I taught myself the
other instruments. Now that weren't
easy, 'cos of course I didn't know how to play them in order to teach myself.
It was like the deaf telling the deaf, really.
But most of all I was practising the unaccompanied singing.
Well, it's not easy to evade the Tendency Officer if you're dragging a
piano, is it?"
The Golden Buoy
When
Sid left school in 1960 he was apprenticed to his uncle, George Kipper.
The exact nature of George's business is not clear, but it seems to have
involved such traditional crafts as 'dealing', 'flogging', and 'following
lorries waiting for things to drop off the back'.
"I
come under the influence with Uncle George, when he was back in the village
after a spell away, pleasing Her Majesty. He's
a lovely singer is George - much better than my old father.
It's a shame he has to help the police so much with their enquiries, or
he could be famous without the 'in'.
George
taught me all I knew at the time. Mind
you, that weren't a lot. I mean,
George knew a lot, but he always used to say 'If I told you all I knew then
you'd know as much as I do, plus anything you might have picked up for yourself,
and then I'd have to be your apprentice, so you'll just have to find things out
the hard way like I did, young fellow-me-lad.'
He always used to say that. Unless
you offered to buy him a drink, of course, and then he said 'A pint of the
usual'."
But,
as much of George's business seemed to revolve around pubs, and in particular
the Old Goat Inn in Trunch, Sid had lots of opportunities to hear his Uncle
sing, and with his keen ear he rapidly learned all that George knew about that.
As an apprentice he was not allowed to sing in the pub himself - singing
was considered to be man's work, and until a Truncheon had gone through the
strange ritual which took place on his twenty-first birthday he was expected to
keep quiet and buy the beer.
"Kid's
nowadays have it soft. At that time
of the day they used to say 'One boy is worth half a man, two boys is worth half
a boy, and three boys aren't worth nothing at all'.
But they couldn't stop me singing in the privy of my own house, although
they wished they could when they wanted to go in there for a sing
themselves."
In
1964, at the age of 18, Sid began his National Service.
This was a very difficult thing for him to do, not least because National
Service had been abolished some years earlier!
But Sid has never been one to shun a problem, and he managed to get the
Mundesley Dark Infantry to take him on for a year.
"I
got fed up with people going on about how the army made them what they were.
I mean, looking at some of them, you'd think they ought to go and ask for
their money back. Howsomever, I
thought I'd like to give it a go. I
thought wrong as a matter of fact, because I hated every minute of it.
Well, I tell a lie - I didn't hate every minute.
I hated every minute except for about twenty minutes in September, with
the Colonel's daughter. I quite
enjoyed those minutes."
Actually
Sid and the army got on surprisingly well, in fact.
He has always been a smart dresser, so the uniform was no trouble to him.
"I
was always one for dressing smart and up to the minute.
I mean, I was the first person in Trunch to wear drain-pipe trousers -
that would have been in about 1964, as far as I recall.
Then again, they all laughed when I moved on to flares in 1978.
I'm a bit of trend settler, as a matter of fact.
Of course that's where a lot of these modern folk singers get it wrong.
You see, I was brought up to dress in my best for the singing - it's a
mark of respect. But these new
people, a lot of them don't even wear a tie!
It's all Aran sweaters, which are only correct for singing Scottish
songs. It's a shame, 'cos some of
them aren't bad singers. It's just
the clothes that let them down."
He
was also very good at soldierly activities like creeping about at night with a
gun and shooting things. Square
bashing took him some time to come to terms with, but once he had worked out
that it was really just a flat footed sort of morris dance he quickly got the
hang of it. Consequently he marched
with bells on his ankles, but no-one could find a regulation that actually
banned it, and the years of training under his Uncle George had made him an
excellent barrack room lawyer, so they couldn't stop him.
"Every
now and again I got leave, so I kept in touch with what was going on in the
village. There was a new vicar, who
we've still got, except, of course, he's an old vicar now.
That was Rev 'Call-me-Derek' Bream. We
didn't get on too well at first. He
was having Hops in the village hall, and that sort of thing.
I never went - I was too busy having hops in the Old Goat Inn.
But over the years he's made quite a difference to our village.
Well, either that or it's got different of its own accord, and he just
happened to be there."
Derek
(known to some as Dingley Del) has been an important influence on Sid's career.
His songwriting, in particular, brought other sorts of music to Sid's
attention, and over the years Sid has sung a few of Derek's songs himself.
"Well,
sometimes I get bored with the old songs and fancy something a bit more groovy
and up to date. More often, though,
it's the audience who get bored, and need waking up.
That's when I give them one of Del's numbers.
By the end of one of them they're begging me to go back to the old songs
again."
A Plaice In The Sun
After
National Service Sid went back to work for his Uncle George.
And in 1967 came the great moment when he went through the rite of
passage into manhood and public singing. The
ceremony itself is a closely guarded secret, known only to the adult males of St
Just-near-Trunch, and I've been unable to get any of them to describe it to me.
Certainly, it involves a lot more than Sid claims.
"Well,
it's just a sort of passing out ceremony, really.
You have a few drinks, sing a song, have a few more drinks, sing some
more songs, and so on until you eventually pass out.
Actually I hold the record for the person who had the most drinks and
sang the most songs before passing out. Well,
I do if you only count people who lived to tell the tale."
Once
Sid was allowed to sing in public people had to admit what, in fact, they
already knew - that here was the sort of singer that comes along only once in a
generation, if that. And what's
more, he was a genuine all-rounder. From
front bar chorus to back room ballad Sid had real class - and that's not to
mention snug bar story-telling and courtyard dancing.
The lad was so talented, so superior to the older singers, so much better
than any of his contemporaries, that in no time at all they were heartily fed up
with him.
"Well,
I mean, that was just jealousy, weren't it?
I was better than them, louder than them, I knew more songs than them,
and they din't like it. It din't
bother me none, though, because by then I was being asked to go along to other
pubs in the area to sing there. I
used to get free beer and the like. You
see, people today don't realise what it was like then. If
you were one of the top singers then you were somebody.
I'm not sure just who you were, but you were somebody.
And that somebody was somebody who was respected, and looked up at.
All the young women wanted to be seen in your company.
Mind you, that weren't so wonderful, 'cos as soon as you got them alone,
and there was nobody to see them with you, they didn't want to know you no
more."
At
about this time Sid had a brush with fame. It
happened one night when he was singing in the White Hearse Inn, in North
Walsham, when a stranger in a suit came in and sat by the bar.
This meant, of course, that he was sitting near Sid, as singers always
sat by the bar so as to avoid any interruption in the flow of free pints.
He was visibly impressed by the power and range of Sid's voice.
"He
was - he was visibly impressed. You
could see that. So when I had a
break from the singing this bloke in the suit started me up in conversation, and
asked a lot of questions. He said
did I want to be a pop star, like that Cilla Black?
He said did I realise there was a gap in the market?
Well, I knew the answer to that, so I said yes I did - that was where the
gents lavatory used to stand before it blew up.
He said no, not North Walsham market - the record market.
He said someone called Bob Dylan had been electrocuted, so they was
looking for a new folk star, and did I want to be It?
Well, I said I couldn't be It because I had both feet off the ground when
he touched me, but after a bit I realised he wanted me to make hit records and
the like.
So
then I had some questions for him. The
first one was whose round was it? He
said we weren't in a round. So I
asked did he realise that if he bought me a pint I'd be in his debt, and he took
the hint, and bought me a pint. Well,
by the end of the night I was in his debt a lot, but that was alright 'cos I
didn't have no intention of paying him back.
You see, there was a fly in his ointment.
I couldn't do my own songs. He
said old traditional songs didn't make no money for nobody, so they wouldn't do.
Well, that was what I was known for, so I said no thank you and thought
no more about it. Not till I heard
he'd gone on to Sheringham and signed up some bloke called the Singing Postman.
Then I realised I'd missed an opportunity, and you know what they say -
opportunity never knocks twice in the same place."
The Silence Of The Clams
Seeing
the Singing Postman rise to international fame and riches, such that he had his
postman's uniforms handmade at Burtons The Tailor, Sid might easily have become
bitter. So he did.
"I
thought that should have been me on 'On Your Marks, Get Set, Go', having all
them roadies dancing round in their short skirts.
I didn't want to sing just to a few people in the pub no more.
I thought I should be doing big places, like Cromer Pier, like he was
doing. It took a long time to get
over that. In fact I don't reckon I
really got over it till that Ralph Harris recorded one of his songs - then I
realised what an awful mistake it would have been."
George
Kipper being off the scene at the time, being 'unavoidably detained' yet again,
Sid concentrated on his own business of supplying game - although some customers
found his habit of delivering the goods in the early hours of the morning
somewhat disconcerting.
"I
still used to sing to myself, but I only used to do it at night, in the woods.
Mind you, the gamekeeper used to find that hard to believe when he wanted
to know what I was doing there."
These
were Sid's wilderness years, at least as far as public performance went.
Not that he lacked offers.
"The
Womens' Bright Hour was forever after me to perform for them, but I thought that
would be a bit of a come down after having nearly been famous, so I refused.
My cousin Annie used to be after me to sing too.
She said wouldn't it be a shame if the old songs died out, and all that
squit. But I didn't take no notice
because everyone knew she hadn't been right in the head since she went to North
Walsham Grammar School for Girls. I
don't mean she actually got taught there, but she did once visit it as third
reserve for the netball team, and, like I say, she was never the same
after."
And
so, for some fifteen years, the finest voice of a generation lay dormant.
When the singing started in the Old Goat Inn Sid would simply order
another pint and sip it with a brooding look in his eye.
Even the most lusty chorus song could not tempt him to join in.
He didn't step dance, or tell stories, or perform or participate in any
way shape or form whatsoever.
"Which
is just a fancy way of saying I didn't do nothing, which is exactly what I did
do. Mind you, I done other things.
I done my crafts, like making sweetcorn dollies and so on, and I done my
game business, and I played my cricket and my bowls and so on. And
in my spare time I was seeing a bit of Raquel Whelk - well, I saw several bits
of her, actually, but never all in the same place.
She was always playing hard to get was Raquel, but she weren't a very
good player, so she always lost. If
you don't believe me, ask anyone".
Sid
is often asked why he has never married. In
fact Raquel is usually the one doing the asking.
After all, at this stage of his life Sid was all set to settle down in a
small village, where a wife would be an asset if only to stop the tongues of the
old women from wagging.
"Ah,
but I had a better way of stopping them wagging.
I used to go up to one of the old women and tell him straight that my
business was none of his business, and that went for my personal life too.
That and a good stare used to do the trick.
And if you want to know why I never got married I'll tell you the same
thing."
And
so the years went by with Sid singing only for his own amusement.
And as this is about Sid the singer there's little more to be said about
this period.
Return Of The Octupi
But
of course Sid did start singing in public again.
For in 1980 a rumour began to circulate that the Cockle family were
better singers than the Kippers. Sid's
father, Henry Kipper, decided that he'd better start singing in public himself,
in order to protect the family name from the gossips.
Sid soon realised that he would have to join him, in order to protect the
family name from his father.
"Well,
he'd only have proved the rumour right, wouldn't he.
I mean, if George had been about I wouldn't have bothered, 'cos George
could sing the Cockle Family into a cocked snook.
But with his being away again there was only me to save father from
himself."
Henry
Kipper was a proud man. This was
always a surprise to those who met him, since it was immediately apparent there
was little of which he could be proud. Nevertheless
he had become custodian of the family tradition when his own father, Billy
Kipper, died in 1948, leaving his elder son the blue family songbook.
"Mind
you that weren't so much, 'cause Uncle George got the red family songbook.
Years ago Billy used to get up in the Old Goat and say 'Would you like
one out of the red book or the blue book', and they always asked for the red
book, 'cos that was the one with the good songs in.
But my father always pretended the red book never existed, which was
silly really, 'cos it was there all the time, large as life, propping up the
wonky leg on George's wardrobe."
Sid
was later to resurrect the songs from the red book when he went solo in 1992.
But here I'm getting ahead of my story.
"Well
I'm not. What happened was father
started to go round singing Billy's old songs, and I thought that was my duty to
go along and help him out. I used to
do what they call 'counter-melody'. The
idea was to try and counter what father was doing to the melody by distracting
people with some different notes. After
a while I got him sounding quite good. Later
we decided we ought to have some sort of a stage-name (although we never sang on
no stages, so it was more of a corner-of-the-pub name really).
We thought of loads, but none of them was quite right.
We tried The Sugarbeatles, and The Bloody Moos, and things like that, but
father wasn't happy with none of them. He
said we had to have a name what went along with the serious old folk songs we
was doing. It was Aunt Ruby who
eventually come up with one."
So
began the career of Sid Kipper and Henry Kipper, soon known throughout
north-east Norfolk by their snappy new name, the Kipper Family.
Henry, a born-again defender of the folk tradition, insisted that they
only perform the songs which his own father had painstakingly written in what
was now a dog-eared blue foolscap notebook.
Not only the songs, but also the manner of singing them were to be
preserved just as Billy had handed them on.
"They
had this thing they called the oral tradition round our way.
Very popular it was. The idea
was the fathers used to pass on all their old songs to the sons - where they
could be traced. That was the idea,
but most people's fathers was only human, if that, so they kept a couple of the
best songs back for themselves and passed on the rest.
That happened for generation after generation, until you get to where we
are today - with all the old rubbish left. So
we were doing all these old songs about jolly ploughboys and their jolly ploughs
and that was all we was allowed. Well,
no, to be fair, father did let me do one of George's now and again, but that was
only because he was family, and father felt sorry for him, what with him not
being able to get out and do them for himself."
A
fight once broke out in the Nelson's Arm in Knapton when Cyril Cockle declared
that Billy had only written the songs down as examples of what nobody liked any
more, and proceeded to silence the pair by putting 10 pence into the jukebox to
play Stand By Your Man. For more
than a year father and son toured the area, singing their old songs to people
who didn't want to hear them, each too proud, stubborn and stupid to be the
first one to suggest giving it up.
There, But For The Grace Of Cod
And
this is where I enter the story. One
day in 1982, my friend Dick Nudds and I received a letter from Sid's cousin,
Annie Kipper, telling us about a traditional singing family from Trunch.
Dick insisted this was a practical joke, and the place couldn't exist.
But I knew better - I always did. I
had distant cousins in Trunch, and my aunt once passed through the village when
lost. So, being enthusiasts for
traditional song, Dick and I went in search of Henry and Sid.
"I
can sort of remember sitting in the Old Goat one afternoon, just innocently
drinking after hours, when these two blokes with beards come in.
The whole pub went quiet, just like in the Westerns - except there
weren't no piano player. Well, no,
actually there was a piano player, but you wouldn't have known that 'cos there
weren't no piano.
Ernie
Spratt, the landlord, he asked what did they want?.
They said they was sorry to come in when the pub was closed but they was
looking for the Kipper Family. Ernie
said never mind that, what did they want to drink?
So they ordered a couple of pints of Old Nasty, which was their first big
mistake, other than coming in the pub to start with.
After a bit they asked about the Kipper Family again, so Ernie asked what
they wanted us for. They said they'd
heard how we knew some old songs what we might not want.
Well
that was how we knew something was up. You
see, that was exactly what Cecil Sharphouse had said to my Great Uncle Albert
sixty years before. So Ernie asked
the six and four-penny question - had they got any money?
Yes, they said, so he sold them a couple more pints of Old Nasty.
They looked as if they thought they was getting no-where, but they
weren't - they was getting drunk."
We
only drank three pints as far as I remember.
But I will never forget the odd couple at the table in the corner of the
bar, who were watching us in a disconcerting manner.
There was an old man with a white beard, and a younger man with a scar on
his cheek. And then they started to
sing - loud enough at first, and then slowly fading as we slid, unconscious,
from our bar stools.
Star Fish
As
soon as we were discharged from Cromer Hospital we went back to the village and,
to cut a long story short, persuaded Sid and Henry to place their careers in our
hands. For a year or more we
polished these rough diamonds, until we thought they were ready for the big wide
world. But was the big wide world
ready for them? It was.
Their rise to fame was meteoric. In
1984 they turned professional, and were voted Most Promising Newcomers by the
readers of Folk Roots, the most prestigious folk magazine in the country.
Henry was particularly flattered at being described as a newcomer in his
seventieth year. Thus began seven
years of touring, recording, and radio and TV work.
"It
was like a fairy story, really, with me and father as the fairies."
They
were heaped with awards and certificates, perhaps the most glamorous being Radio
Orwell's award as 'Most Popular Club Act' in 1985.
"That
was a mistake, of course, 'cos we didn't use no clubs in our act at all.
I think they must have got us mixed up with some jugglers who were going
about at the time. They was called
the Skipper Family. They used to do
a lot of work on Radio Norfolk at one time, although after a while the novelty
of a juggling act on the wireless wore off.
One of them, Keith Skipper, carried on for a while, but he had to
interview people and play records during the juggling to make it sound a bit
more interesting. In the end they
got fed up with the holes in the ceiling and got rid of him.
I believe he does his juggling in the paper now!"
Suddenly
these two Norfolk 'boys' were touring from the Shetlands to Cornwall - which
wasn't one of the best arranged tours, since they had no engagements in between.
The Kipper Family were soon established as firm favourites on the folk
scene. Their first album, 'Since
Time Immoral', was followed by five others, the last being an edited recording
of Henry's retirement party, 'In The Family Way'.
Sid and Henry also appeared with their own band, The New Trunch
Coronation band, and toured several times with Rev Derek Bream.
It
seemed they could go on forever. But
seven years of touring and singing and sleeping in strange beds took it's toll
on the old man - and on the younger man too.
"I
didn't have no trouble with the touring and the singing and the sleeping in the
strange beds - the only trouble I had was having to tour and sing and sleep in
strange beds with the old man. He
snored, you know - and not just when he was asleep.
But the main thing was he was holding me back.
I mean, that was kept a secret at the time, but I was asked to join the
Fairport Convention, but they didn't want father, so I had to turn it down.
Also, I wanted to play a lot more musical instruments, but father
wouldn't have it. He said 'You'll
play all them instruments over my dead body', so I said Yes, I would, and the
sooner the better."
To
those of us 'in the know' relations between father and son were clearly becoming
strained. It was the little things,
like one of them leaving the room whenever the other came in.
I knew matters were getting serious when Henry failed to accept Sid's
offer of a drink one night.
"Things
got worse between us when the Trunch Trumpet voted me best Young Thruster of
1991. Father was livered!
He wanted to know why, if he could be a Most Promising Newcomer in 1984,
he couldn't be a Young Thruster in 1991? I
said he should be glad he couldn't enter 'cos he'd be sure to come last.
He said he'd forgotten more about folk singing with one hand tied behind
his back than he'd ever known, and I should hold my row.
I said I was surprised 'cos I thought he'd forgotten more than that.
There
was a whole lot more like that, but the upshoot was we sent each other to
Coventry for a month. Mind you, we
still sang together, which was a bit difficult, 'cos we couldn't discuss what we
was going to sing. So it was a
question of being first off the mark singing what you wanted, and the other one
had to catch up."
"Things
got worse and worse with me and father, and in the end there was only one
solution. We organised a surprise
retirement party for him, and the whole thing was a café compléte, whatever
that is. Well, whatever it is, the
whole thing was one of them. We done
a farewell tour, and with one bound I was free."
Shortly
before Henry's enforced retirement the English Folk Song and Dance Society had
announced the founding of an Old Folkies Home, and asked for anyone who knew of
any worn out old folkies to get in touch. They
were inundated with replies, but Henry got a place on the grounds of seniority
(a number of the worn out folkies nominated were only in their early forties).
The
home was a model establishment, with regular activities for the inmates.
For instance, every day there was a 'singaround' in the lounge, where the
old people could sing long boring ballads to each other with their hearing aids
turned off. Once a week, as a treat,
a folk song collector would come in with a microphone and pretend to record
them.
But
now we have lost the old man. He
passed away on July 29th 2000. Henry's
obituary is elsewhere on this site.
Going Sole-oh
And
so, on the second Friday of 1992 Sid gathered up his music stand and
instruments, along with some songs from his Uncle George's red songbook, and set
off for his first solo performance, in Chichester.
"Of
course, that was a bit nerve wrecking, but inside I was loudly confident.
After all, I only had to play my instruments and sing my songs.
I knew I could do both them things alright.
The only thing I hadn't actually practised was doing them both at the
same time. But I needn't have
worried. I got to this folk club,
which is upstairs at a pub, and they were busy putting out the chairs.
But after I'd explained that I weren't a dance band they put all the
chairs back in again, and we waited for people to arrive."
Gradually
the room filled up, and only a few people said "I thought Sid was the old
one - that's who I came to see". And
all too soon Sid was on his feet introducing his first song.
"I
launched off into The Stick Of Rhubarb, and right from the start they was with
me. What's more, they was still with
me at the end, which is always a good sign, 'cos sometimes they sneak off if you
sing with your eyes closed, and you don't notice till there's no applause.
All in all that was a great start to my career as a solo megostar."
Wherever I Hang My Sprat, That's My Home
Sid
was still busy touring clubs and theatres all over the country, but he
discovered that during his absence the singing in the Old Goat Inn had suffered
a disastrous decline.
"They
reckoned my sort of singing was honestly all out of fashion, and they'd got one
of those Carry Oakley machines instead. I
mean, it was a folk Carrry Oakley machine, so some of the time you were singing
along to nothing, due to the song being an unaccompanied one, but a lot of it
was things like On Top Of Old Smoky and Are You Going To Scarborough Fair,
Canticle? I mean, what have songs
like that got to do with people in St Just?
There's no-one in our village called Canticle!
And it meant that highly skilled folk singers like me weren't needed, 'cos
any fool could get up and do it. Personally
I reckon only a fool would get up and do it - which meant that in the Old Goat
there was a lot of takers."
St
Just-near-Trunch must have been one of the last places in the country where folk
song became old fashioned! Centuries
of tradition were being threatened by the advance of technology.
But Sid proved himself a man of action, and did the one thing nobody
expected - he joined forces with the only person who lamented the loss of the
singing as much as he did, his arch enemy, Cyril Cockle.
"Well, I went in the Old Goat, and Cyril was the only person to talk
to, due to all the others being busy at the Carry Oakley.
So we got to talking, and I realised he wasn't all bad.
I mean, don't get me wrong, he's mostly bad, but everyone have a good bit
in them somewhere, and that even applies to Cyril.
We found out we both hated the machine, and we decided to have a truce on
the feud which has gone on between our families for centuries and see if we
couldn't do something about it. We
made up a plan where one of us would unplug the machine, and in the confusion
the other would get up and sing. But
which should do which? I pointed out
that he was the only one who knew where the plug was, so he should do that bit.
He said he could easily tell me where it was, but I said no, the first
rule of plotting was never to tell no-one nothing they didn't need to know.
He said he didn't know that, and I said that was alright, 'cos he didn't
need to."
Astonishingly
the plan worked. The machine went
off and Sid rose to sing The Innocent Dodo.
The effect was stunning. They
clapped and cheered, they carried him shoulder high through the streets, and
they threw the machine out of the pub (although the fact that Ernie Spratt had
just announced that he was going to charge for its use may have had a bit to do
with it).
"Everything
went back to how it always was, and Cyril and I resumed the family feud by
having a fight about who's idea it had been."
Now
the Old Goat is once again a centre for the traditional arts.
Readers are particularly recommended to the Old Goat Folk Nights, which
take place on the third Tuesday of every September (8.00 o'clock prompt -
usually starts by 9.30). On this
special night all the locals go over to Knapton and leave the pub to a load of
people who come from outside the village to enjoy singing in that special
atmosphere, generated by the ghosts of centuries of singers, story tellers and
pig men.
"These
people aren't proper traditional singers like what I am.
They're what they call revival singers.
There's nothing new in that - we had them years ago, marching up and down
the village street, banning their tambourines and blowing their own trumpets.
Those sort of people are always trying to tell you that you're doing it
all wrong and you ought to do it like they say.
Well, I'm telling you, it's all wrong to go round telling people their
wrong, and I don't care who hears me say it."
As
Sid toured the country with a head full of songs and a belly full of his
mother's cooking, his reputation was growing apace.
And one aspect of his performances in particular caught the popular
imagination - his playing and teaching of the walnut-shells.
Many A Good Tuna
Readers
may not be aware of Sid's mastery of a variety of ancient instruments, many of
which had hitherto remained unplayed. It's
a shame that he is not more widely recognised for his contribution to the use of
authentic instruments (the definition of which is an instrument which used to be
played before better ones were invented). Sid
has amazed audiences with the crab shell, the English bodhran and his Norfolk
small organ, but it's for the walnut-shells that he is justly famous.
"The
walnut-shells are very easy to make and much harder to play well.
To make them all you need is a walnut and some knicker elastic - of
course, walnuts are easy to lay your hands on.
That summer I trained hundreds of people in the basics of playing the
walnut-shells. Of course, they were
all very raw, which is how it should be - cooked walnut-shells are no use to man
nor breast."
Walnut-shells
fast found favour as the folk fashion of the year.
Everyone was playing them, everyone was talking about them, and, of
course, everyone wanted to see their greatest exponent, the Rising Son, Sid
Kipper. He was quickly snapped up
for the Radio 2 Arts programme, where he swapped compliments with Arnold Wesker
(he also swapped coats, but unfortunately Mr Wesker noticed and insisted on
having his back). He accepted an
invitation to represent his country in the folk section of the European
Broadcasting Union, where he mingled with all sorts of foreigners from places
like Dresden, Oslo and Birmingham. By
the end of 1992 Sid had firmly established himself as a major force on the folk
scene.
"You
ought to mention my Partner In Crime, Dave Burland, 'cos I started working with
him that year. How it happened was
like this. My agent said as how it
might look good if I toured a bit with someone big, so, of course, Dave Burland
sprung to mind at once. We rung him
up and he was out, so we thought well, he didn't say no.
So we went ahead and got the bookings.
By the time he found out he was a double act it was too late for him to
do anything about it, so he did the tour with me and enjoyed me so much that he
kept coming back for more".
On
the face of it the combination of Sid, a Norfolk boy straight from the folk
tradition, with the urbane, experienced Dave Burland, a Barnsley man brought up
in the folk revival, may seem unlikely. But
in fact they brought the very best out of each other.
"How
it worked was that first I'd do some of my best stuff, then he'd do some of his
best stuff, and then, when we run out of the best stuff, we'd do some of the
other stuff together - 'cos that way we could make more noise so people don't
notice."
But
even Dave Burland had to accept second place to the walnut-shells as the hit of
the year. To complete their
ascendancy they were voted top musical instrument in Nuts and Nutters, the
magazine for nut fanciers, and Sid's use of them on the song 'Queensbury Rules,
OK' was voted Accompaniment of the Month by the reader of the Cromer Clarion.
Gutted
January
1993 was a crucial month for Sid and I. At
the time I was living in Norwich, which to Sid was the Big City.
He was gradually finding the hustle and bustle of metropolitan life more
exciting than St Just, and was coming into Norwich more and more for the night
life, at places like the Reindeer, where melodeon legend Tony Hall was to be
heard (albeit usually ordering beer rather than playing the melodeon) and the
Denmark Arms, where the 'sessions' were renown and, it was said, they opened you
with welcome arms. Unfortunately the
last train in the direction of Trunch left long before closing time, so Sid took
to sleeping on my floor.
"Of
course, there was a spare bed, but somehow when your in the Big City it seem
more exciting to sleep on the floor. Anyhow,
when you've gone to the trouble of picking the lock on Sugden's drinks cupboard
it's easier to stay where you fall than get up and find a bedroom."
Things
came to a head when Sid suggested that, since he was at my house so often, it
would be more convenient if he moved his ferrets in.
Well,
they were pining for me. They're one
person carnivores are ferrets, and mother just couldn't cope with them.
Well, actually, they couldn't cope with mother either - not many people
can. Anyhow, when I brought them up
on the train to Sugden's I found he'd moved.
And he'd taken the drinks cupboard, too."
I
was finding Sid's increasingly frequent visits too much to bear, so I moved to
Yorkshire. But Sid didn't take it
too well.
"It
wasn't for four weeks I found out he wasn't paying the rent no more.
Nor the gas and electric. When
they come round for the money that was a bit embarrassing - well, I was in bed
with a roadie at the time. I still
reckon they should have let her put her things on before they threw us out.
I mean, she'd done nothing wrong. Not
yet, she hadn't, what with us drinking so much the night before.
That was all very frustrating."
This
was the start of Sid taking more responsibility for his own affairs.
He moved back home to St Just-near-Trunch, where he still lives to this
day, and now we communicate mainly through third parties such as his agents,
record company and so on. We get on
much better that way, and as long as he doesn't find out where I'm living
there's no reason why we shouldn't go on working apart for years.
"The
truth is I'd begun to go off Norwich anyhow.
I mean wine, women and song is alright for a bit, but two of them leave
you feeling rough the next morning. I
reckon I was about ready to get back to my roots, which needed weeding, anyhow.
So me and my ferrets ended up back at home having to cope with mother
whether we liked it or not - which we didn't, as a matter of fact."
Having
time on his hands Sid began to do some research into some of the songs held in
the Gudgeon Collection at the nearby Coote Memorial Museum.
In the old days a song used to be someone's personal property.
For instance, no-one would dream of singing someone else's song unless
they had no further use for it and had given it to them.
Then the giver would stop singing the song themselves.
Folk song collectors didn't realise that when someone gave them a song
they would immediately stop singing it. Thus
thousands of songs were removed from the tradition, written down, and left to
moulder in drawers, and folk singing in England was virtually wiped out.
"One
bloke who done some collecting - apart from the well known people like Cecil
Sharphouse and Rolph Vaughan-Williams - was the Rev Aubrey Gudgeon, who was the
vicar round here at one time. He
wiped out a lot of the local singing by collecting the songs, although my family
never give him none, due to the fact that he used to cut out people's dirty
bits. We didn't want our dirty bits
cutting out, thank you very much. We
were very proud of our dirty bits."
So
began another new aspect of Sid's relationship with traditional song.
In a sense the gamekeeper turned poacher, and uncovered some fine songs,
lurking in the metaphorical bushes.
See Fever
1993
also saw Sid beginning to put together particular shows which exposed his
knowledge on a wide variety of subjects. For
instance, he was invited to take part in the Lancaster Maritime Festival, where
the rules are strict that only sea songs may be sung.
Sid was in one of his elements.
"Of
course Trunch, where I come from, is in the land, but we're very close to the
sea. On a good day you could see it
- if it weren't for the things in the way. On
a bad day you can smell it. But I
know all about the sea because of my old Uncle Albert.
He sailed the seven seas in his time.
Well, actually he sailed them in other people's time, 'cos he was being
paid for it. He was a real pro was
Albert - he didn't hold with no free sailing.
I do folk singing the same way."
Albert
has been a great influence on Sid's life and career, and Sid sings a lot of his
Great Uncle's songs.
"He
knew them all, did Albert. What
Shall We Do With The Sober Sailor?; The
Leaving Of Lowestoft; Whip Jamboree
- although he saved that last one for adult only sessions, of course.
He knew all about the sea, and sailing, and that sort of thing.
He used to bring everything back to sailing, because he was the only one
who knew anything about it, so no-one could disagree.
Course,
if you ever met Albert you'd have known he was a sailor straight off, 'cos he'd
have told you. But even before that
you couldn't help noticing his wooden leg. He
used it for things like nailing up boxes and playing snooker - that sort of
thing. We never found out whose it
was, as a matter of fact, but he always insisted on wearing it."
Now
it is clear why, when Sid sings a sea song, there is always a whiff of the briny
in the air. Well, there's definitely
a whiff of something in the air.
"That'd
be the roes water. It's something
the old fishermen used to wear when they went out for a drink.
You make it by leaving a couple of herring roes in a bowl of water
overnight, then dabbing a few drops behind your ears.
It's guaranteed to get you a place at the bar."
The Haul Of Fame
That summer also saw the release of Sid's first solo album.
"I wanted it to be just me, with no-one else, to show what I could
do. In the end we did get some other
people in, but mainly to do the choruses. You
see, Sugden was producing the recording. Mind
you, that seemed to me as I if was producing the recording, but he said no, he
was producing it, and he had a signed piece of paper to prove it.
He did too, all legal and over board, and signed by himself.
So it was him that said we had to have the other people in.
He said the chorus songs
sounded a bit thin with no-one else singing on them.
Well actually, he said they lacked 'balls'.
So we got in Cocklesdale, just to balls up the choruses.
And, to be fair, they made a thorough job of it."
Local singer Linda Herring was also engaged to perform the female parts.
"Well, when I work on my own I have to do the female parts myself,
and, really, I don't mind getting high up in the female parts.
But we decided that might sound a bit strange on a record, so I got in
Linda, and the reproduction was amazing."
'Like A Rhinestone Ploughboy' came out on the Leader record label, which
in itself was a great compliment, since the label is reserved for the recordings
of traditional singers. Here was
final proof, if proof were needed, that Sid had become a genuine old folk singer
at a younger age than anyone else ever had.
"It made up for all that disappointment about the Singing Postman
making it when I didn't. When Jim
Folk of 'Lloyd on 2' picked it as one of his albums of the year I knew I'd done
the right thing in getting rid of father. And
when I found out that there were daft people willing to give me money for copies
of it, well, that was 'I sing on the cake', as they say!
The album showed what a range of styles Sid is capable of.
It went from deceptively simple sounding unaccompanied singing to more
complex forms, such as the local form of music known as 'collapso' (this
particular form of music is normally only played late at night in the Old Goat
Inn, with the doors locked). Sid
also played an impressive variety of instruments, from the more common guitars
and accordions to unusual ones such as the scallops and the Trunch blowpipes.
The bass walnuts, only recently invented by Cyril Cockle, were recorded
in Cyril's shed, as it was only after inventing and building them that he
realised that they wouldn't go through the door - indeed, the door had
inadvertently been incorporated into the instrument!
Yet
another string added to Sid's bow was story telling.
"I
don't understand that. I mean, how
do you fire a bow with more than one string?
You'd have to fire more than one arrow at a time, wouldn't you?
It sounds like another one of Sugden's daft ideas.
But I do know about the story telling.
I do it because I'm trying to get an Arts Council Grant, and they don't
do them for folk singing. You see,
all the singing money goes to the opera. I
did give that a look, as a matter of fact, and I reckon if I put on a couple of
stones and learned to shout I could do that.
But what put me off was when they done all them lovely choruses.
Nobody joined in. It's true -
the night I was there I was the only one. So
I give up that idea and started story telling instead, 'cos you can get grants
for that too."
Publish And Be Dabbed
In
1994 Sid and I collaborated on another project.
Some time before I had been asked to edit the diaries of Mrs Miriam
Prewd, who spent a year in St Just-near-Trunch in 1904-5.
To be frank I was having difficulty understanding some of her references,
so I had taken to asking Sid about them.
"He
kept asking me about things in the village, and I realised that he was going to
try to take all the praise for it. So
I took him to one side or the other and I put it to him straight - if he wanted
me to help him he'd have to give me proper credit.
Well, I had him by the curly wurlies, didn't I, because without me he
couldn't do it. He finally agreed to
let my name go on the cover as well as his, so when it came out I told everyone
it was all my doing."
Prewd
and Prejudice was greeted with much critical acclaim.
Within eighteen months it had gone into a second reprint, and been
enjoyed by thousands all over the country.
"It's
great being a famous author. I get
to sign books and things. That give
me a chance to show off my writing. People
are always impressed, 'cos I do real printing.
A lot of people have to do joined up writing, because if they lift the
pen off the paper they get lost and can't find where the next letter goes, but I
can do proper printing."
Sid
was really up and running now, and for once in his life it wasn't because there
was a gamekeeper chasing him. That
year saw him appearing on The Big Breakfast, acting as a roving reporter for
Radio 4's Kaleidoscope and recording two sessions for Radio 2 (one with 'Partner
In Crime' Dave Burland).
"I
was becoming a medium person. Wireless,
telly, it was all the same to me, which was a shame, really.
It meant I had to get all dressed up for the wireless, even though no-one
could see me. But, I mean, it's not
hard once you get the hang of it. It's
nothing like as hard as, say, appearing at the Trunch Empire Music Hall used to
be. Now that used to be really hard,
'cos the audience had a reputation, and they liked to live up to it.
The saying was that they used to leave no turn unstoned.
They had the same saying at some of the folk clubs I've done, but it
meant something different there. Anyhow,
compared to that the telly is a piece of cod."
Sid's
impressive range of accomplishments has continued to grow.
He has presented his own four part series, The Lateral History Programme,
for Radio 2. He has toured and
recorded for radio the 'Partners In Crime' seasonal show, The Christmas Robbin'.
And he has performed everywhere, including Hong Kong and the Shetland
Isles.
"Well,
if you've performed everywhere it stands to reason you've included them, don't
it. But I still reckon my greatest
achievement had to do with me being a member of the TCCB - the Trunch Cricket
Cub and Bar. I specialise on the Bar
side, and this year I topped the club's drinking averages for the third year
running. I got a pewter tankard and
a herbal infusion."
Fish Line
What
happened next? Everything!
Six albums; three books;
radio; TV;
the internet; and counting. Perhaps,
when history has added more perspective, I'll tell the next part of the Sid
Kipper story. But, for now, we will
leave him, fully launched as a solo star, and flying far in our firmament.
"Well, there's a lot of Fs in it, anyway."
Chris Sugden