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

The Sound of the Crowdy

If any artist is associated specifically with Sentinel, and indeed with Cornish music in general, it’s folksinger Brenda Wootton. Something of a legend in her home county (and in France too), Brenda deserves a website all her own, although the website that *is* all her own, www.brendawootton.com , is frustratingly lacking in context. There’s no denying that her voice is an acquired taste, but I’m sure we’ll be returning to her recordings again as this blog expands, so if you’re new to her, you can find more background here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Wootton , or, for the purist, here: http://kw.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Wootton


Among her most renowned work is the music she made with Robert Bartlett under the name Crowdy Crawn. The duo had a shared past, but were brought together musically by singer-songwriter Michael Chapman while on holiday in the early '70s at his home in Northumberland. Brenda’s voice & persona was never far from the Cornwall she loved, but with Crowdy Crawn there seems to be an attempt to push things beyond being “merely” a cultural ambassador for the west country, and to incorporate occasional pop/rock, latin & blues influences into the mix. Compositions by the likes of Bob Dylan & Antonio Carlos Jobim are included on 1974's “No Song To Sing” SENS 1021, the first LP on which the duo worked together (rather confusingly, Wootton’s previous Crowdy Crawn album was recorded with Cornish language maven Richard Gendall), suggesting a wider worldview than the usual songs of tin mines & pasties. Even so, this music couldn’t have been recorded without the performers being richly steeped in Cornish culture, and Gendall is again on hand to contribute a number of evocative pieces in Wootton’s mother tongue.

Personal picks from the album are Jan Knuckey, a Trad Arr. singalong primary school favourite of mine (thanks Mrs Ellery!), and the rather more reflective Michael Chapman-composed title tune. Great cover too; the drapes, scatter cushions & half-empty Courviosier bottle casually resting atop Bartlett’s Telecaster evoke the spirit of the times as precisely as the music itself does. And more intriguingly, at least in the context of this blog, hidden in the photomontage on the cover is –unless I’m mistaken- a small picture of Job Morris in his Riverbank Studio on The Strand in Newlyn...

Jan Knuckey



No Song to Sing

School Of Rock

Record collecting is a funny old game. It only takes one appearance in a dealer’s catalogue at an inflated price, or a showing on a tastemaker’s list, to send the cost of a record through the roof. Such is the case here, with “Nearly All Our Own Work” SEN LPP 503, performed by the singers, instrumentalists, composers & arrangers of Newquay School, Cornwall. Though its £100+ pricetag rather oversteps the mark, the album is, in fairness, a surprisingly competent –if somewhat ragtag – collection of folk, showtune, balladry, heavy rock and showy instrumental prowess.

The music teacher at Newquay School at the time of this recording was one Goff Richards. Goff was later to become world renowned as an arranger of brass bands, but he was already proving to be something of a visionary in the field of education. He was an acquaintance of Basil Tait, who ran the TC Recording facility in Polzeath, and the two came to an agreement whereby Tait would record a selection of the work of Richards’ students, which would then be “processed” by Sentinel. The recordings were made at the school itself on a single day in 1973 using Tait’s mobile facility (a 4-track in a horse box), and were later issued on both Sentinel & TC Records. Richards went on to fame as an arranger, while Tait & Job Morris returned to recording brass bands & male voice choirs.

So what of the music? The nature of the beast makes it a fairly hit-&-miss affair, but the hit rate of this one is surprisingly high, with many of the folk numbers having a dark, sinister edge. “Jowanet’s Song”, written by Goff & sung by Pip Old, is an evocative solo vocal piece enhanced by tape effects of gulls & crashing waves (if ever there was a “sound of Cornwall”, here is that sound). Peter Brown’s florid piano instrumental “Gift Of The Wind” is strangely redolent of Beach Boys obscurity “The Nearest Faraway Place” (must have been the surf in the air), while “Full Circle” by Company is an engagingly charming harmony folk piece. Sticking out sore-thumb-like are the two rock numbers, ”Turn Around” by Jester, and Effigy’s “Do You Wanna Try It?”, the latter in particular sounding like a harbinger of DIY punk three years before its time. Dig that cowbell! Remarkable stuff.

I’ve not been able to track down an original issue of this one, so many thanks to Rupert Cook for the CD. If you, dear reader, have a copy for sale or trade, do get in touch!


Pip Old - Jowanet's Song

Company - Full Circle

Effigy - Do You Wanna Try It?