I have to admit to a slight bending of the rules for this one, as the subject of this entry appears on the VRC label (cat no VRC 1: Video Recording Company, apparently), though to all intents & purposes it’s a Penwith-based private pressing. But enough of the pedantry. The Pipers Folk album appeared in 1968, emanating from the Pipers Folk Club of St Buryan. The club, named after the Pipers standing stones in nearby Boleigh, was inaugurated in May 1967 in the village hall, following the sudden closure of John Wood’s & Ian Todd’s seminal Count House Folk Club in Botallack (more of which some other time, perhaps). Among the resident singers at The Count House were Brenda Wootton & John the Fish, and upon moving to St Buryan, they soon built up a large enough following to have this album pressed up & distributed at the club.
There’s some jazz & blues amongst the more trad folk on this LP though it’s all bare-bones acoustic stuff, and all the better for it. As befits a folk LP, there aren’t many originals herein, but I’ve selected a wonderfully haunting and atmospheric tune entitled Stars. Just the sound of Brenda's breathing before her vocal entrance is enough to transport you to some place...elsewhere... It was written by a 22-year-old Mike Sagar-Fenton, one of the club regulars, and later co-manager of legendary Penzance record shop Chy An Stylus. (Later still, of course, he became a famed local historian, and still writes a column for the local paper...but that’s another story...)
Though some of the titles on this LP were apparently recorded at the label’s own studio facility in Stourbridge (of all places), many of the recordings were laid to tape in the Newlyn Meadery, barely a stone’s throw from (what was to be) the Sentinel studio on The Strand. So that counts for something, surely?
More about the Pipers standing stones here: http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/237/pipers.html
