The Modern Antiquarians

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

Folk me - the Axminster School Folk Group EP

A copy of an early Sentinel EP by The Axminster School Folk Group recently appeared on ebay, with a starting bid of 99p (thanks to Richard for alerting me to the auction). My curiosity was piqued, even more so when the price started escalating....and escalating.... until the record finally sold earlier this week for £113.11. Astonishing. (It goes without saying that I backed out well before it reached this price...) So what's the story? Was there a future rock legend in the Axminster School Folk Group? Does a former pupil want to relive a slice of their past? There's a story here, I think. I could only find one other mention of this EP on the web, when it sold on ebay a few years back for under a fiver...and even that entry seems to have disappeared now. Is there anyone out there who performed on this record? Is the lucky winner reading this right now? Do tell! Titles are Pack Up Your Sorrows, Swansea Town, Dark As A Dungeon & The Water Is Wide/O Waly Waly. It was issued on the Private Record Division of Sentinel, cat no SENP EP 001. Thanks to ebay seller cdsandrecs (in advance) for the photos.

Seagulls, lambs & old women.

I’ve recently received a large missive from Job, detailing the early days of Sentinel, which I'm currently editing into a blog entry to hopefully follow later. In the meantime, here are a few recordings from a couple of the label’s popular “Sounds Like West Cornwall” and “Sounds Like North Cornwall” collections (the West Cornwall volume SENS 1001 was Sentinel’s inaugural release in 1970, while the North Cornwall album SENS 1011 followed in 1972). Both these albums are splendidly edited encapsulations of Cornish life, not only including music & spoken word, but also incorporating sound effects & field recordings from key locations such as Newlyn Fish Market, Land’s End and the Padstow May Day celebrations (see entry elsewhere). The perfect holiday souvenir!

“The Seagulls Scream” is a fantastically evocative solo guitar & vocal piece from Christine Quayle, aged 17 at the time of recording. Christine was a regular at the Mermaid Folk Club (she was known as “The Mermaid Of Zennor”), and also sang with Clive Palmer’s Temple Creatures. Later still she was a member of RCA-signed folk rockers Daylight. Their full story can be found here:
http://rprest.adsl24.co.uk/kernowbeat/daylight.html

“Searching For Lambs” is performed by husband-and-wife duo Christopher & Janet Ridley, also known as Warm Gold. They also issued at least two EPs on Hurler Records (where’s their blog?!), both called “A Taste Of Cornwall”. “Searching For Lambs” is pretty twee, I grant you, but still embodies that strange, sinister air that’s unique to the folk music of this era. Rather jarringly, “Searching For Lambs” is followed by the sound of Launceston Pig Market (that’s a field recording, not the name of a prog rock band). To spare your ears, I've removed these effects from this edit.

Finally, if you’ll forgive the indulgence, here’s “The Old Woman” sung by my uncle, Douglas Williams, “one of Cornwall’s finest tenors”, according to the sleeve notes. The recording begins with the sound of the listener entering the church where the performance is taking place...

Thanks once again to Richard Prest at Kernowbeat.



The Seagulls Scream


Searching For Lambs


The Old Woman

Catalogue, studio photos & discography update

I've recently managed to track down Job Morris, former owner of the Sentinel label & its associated studio. There will hopefully be more info to come from him, but for the time being, here's a copy of the last Sentinel catalogue of all which he kindly sent me, including some photos of the facility in Paul. The catalogue included a list of all currently available stock as of the mid- eighties, so I've also given the discography (see posts passim) a comprehensive update. Thanks to Job for this.

Geniuses are always difficult; they abhor the rest of humanity.

A rare venture into spoken-word territory for Sentinel, “A Cornishman at Oxford and in America” (SENS 1048) is a collection of prose & reminiscences from writer & historian A. L. Rowse. Rowse was born in Tregonissey, near St Austell, and while he spent much of his life in Oxford, he returned to Cornwall in 1973 to retire at Trenarren. I say “retire”; Rowse was a remarkably prolific writer, publishing over 100 books in his lifetime, many of them after his return to Cornwall. He also left a mountain of unpublished work when he died in 1997.
Rowse was also a formidable lecturer, and it’s from his lecture tours in the USA that he draws much of the material contained herein, which was recorded at his home in 1981.


He was famously irascible, to the point of arrogance, and the quote of his that I chose as the subject header is a neat summation of his world-view. Here’s another: "This filthy twentieth century. I hate its guts". Great stuff. Sadly, this temper rarely reaches boiling point on these recordings, which mostly comprise rose-tinted reflections on times past. Having said that, it’s certainly a fascinating glimpse into the history of (amongst other topics) Cornish settlers in America. If only he’d been backed by The Fall’s rhythm section.

The sleeve notes are penned by John Betjeman. “This is very good,” he claims, somewhat prosaically. Thanks for that.

Here’s an autobiographical selection from the album, “The Choice”, in which he considers the twin passions of his life: scholarship & the imagination.

Sounds Like West Cornwall in Melody Maker

Journalist, pop obsessive & all-round good egg Richard Morton Jack recently forwarded me a review of Sentinel's debut release, which he stumbled upon in his Melody Maker archives recently. This review appeared in the October 3rd 1970 edition of the paper, and Richard tells me that the Melody Maker's coverage of the Cornish folk scene was fairly widespread in the late 60s/early 70s, so hopefully we can expect more from his collection in the future. Please?! Either way, thanks very much for this snippet; how delightful it is to see my Uncle Douglas mentioned not once but twice in its text! Richard's excellent blog can be found here: http://galacticramble.blogspot.com/

This also seems as good a place as any to reproduce some of the sleeve notes (since the music isn't much to my taste) from "Christmas In Cornwall" by the Climax Choir (SENS 1010). These notes are, for me, as pure a statement of a label's intent as "the greatest recording organisation in the world" or "it was easy, it was cheap, go and do it".

"We at Sentinel are endeavouring to present something of the true Cornwall on all our records. We firmly believe that Cornishmen & lovers of Cornwall alike, want to hear the fine sound of our choirs, bands & artists as they really are, and in a natural setting.
"To this end, we refuse to put a 'studio polish' on the sound from our LPs, and shun all studio gimmickry, even though this does present us with many technical problems. Letters from all over the world and reviews from many critics make this point & encourage us in what we are trying to do. We hope that you, the listener, agree with this policy."

Happy Christmas all!

Don't Mention Wogan

The problem with writing a blog about a label like Sentinel is knowing that, sooner or later, I’m going to have to write about a form of music for which I have little enthusiasm. Thus it is with brass & silver bands, which make up a sizable portion of the Sentinel catalogue. Still, this 45 issue of The Helston Flora Dance by the Helston Town Band (SENM 003) is certainly a curio. Released in 1972, it’s a recording I remember from airplay on BBC South West & Radio Cornwall. I always felt a little cheated by the studio sheen on the 1977 hit version by the Brighouse & Rastrick Brass Band (the label bills the recording as “The Authentic Helston Flora Dance” making it THE REAL DEAL, guys), not to mention Katie Moss’ extreme re-writing of the piece, so it was something of a nostalgia-fest to find a copy of this single recently. It certainly feels authentic, & bears all the hallmarks of a field recording, definitely lacking the polish of its Yorkshire cousin. Hurrah!

The flip is a location recording of another traditional Cornish festival, that of the Padstow Obby Oss. Now, as a former Newlyn resident, Padstow was a bit “up country” for me, but I gather Obby Oss Day served a similar purpose to that of the Helston Flora Day, in that it marked the passing of the winter months and the arrival of spring (both festivals occur at the start of May within days of each other). If these recordings are anything to go by, Padstow sounds like a rather more rambunctious celebration than its Helston equivalent. That’s North Cornwall for you.

The Flora Dance



Padstow Obby Oss