The people involved in that were Cyril Davies, who sings and plays the six-string and the twelve-string guitar; Keith Scott, an art student from Hornsey who plays on the piano; and Alexis Korner who, when he isn’t broadcasting about jazz, plays a mandolin or a guitar. I asked him how you would describe this music…
AK: Well, barrelhouse is really the earliest mixture of blues and jazz piano playing. It is really blues piano playing with a jazz sound, more or less. It started in the South
’round about 1910 sort of time and then it spread. BBC: Why barrelhouse?
AK: Well, a barrelhouse really was a pub! And, all the barrels up on the wall and on the floor, everywhere they could get in barrels, and so they called them barrelhouses
and they used to have odd piano players wandering in. Sometimes they got paid by the management, usually they didn’t, they played for tips.
BBC: How long have you been doing it in this pub here? AK: Er, about four years now, I think, isn’t it, Cyril?
CD: Yeah, about four years.
BBC: Was this before skiffle, or after it?
AK: Well, we started about the same time. We got more or less fed up with skiffle pretty rapidly, and we decided that we wanted to work on blues. [Davies murmurs agreement]
BBC: Why did you do it?
CD: Well, it’s good fun, you know. We enjoy playing it, and people come along and hear it, [and] they enjoy listening to it, so that’s it!
BBC: Do you do it for cash?
CD: No, I don’t. [Davies and Korner laugh]
AK: As Cyril says, if we did it for the cash that would be our lot, in no uncertain terms.
BBC: Among the guest artists who are often at the Round House is Lisa Turner, who describes herself as a housewife. [music clip]
Some people think it rather odd that English musicians should even attempt to play or sing this sort of music. How can they ever hope to compare with the coloured people who invented it? Alexis Korner has strong views on this.
AK: Well personally I think I am an appalling singer, but I don’t see why we shouldn’t be able to play the music. It originated in America, naturally, but the fact that it was originally an American Negro music doesn’t mean that it can’t be played in England by white people. It isn’t really a matter of where you are born; it’s a matter of what you play best. I feel that there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to sing and play it reasonably well. Cyril, I think, is an extremely fine singer on form. The fact that he is a white-skinned English panel-beater from South Harrow doesn’t seem to me to affect his singing one way or another. In fact there are several people who seem to agree with me and they are not all English by any means.
BBC: Yes, I believe you’ve had quite a number of coloured singers from America down here, haven’t you?
AK: Well yes we have. We had Bill Broonzy, and Jimmy Rushing has been up to the Round House to sing. Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee are honorary Presidents of the Round House, and whenever they are in England, they come up every Thursday night that they are free, quite often to listen as well as to play.
BBC: What do they think of your style of singing and playing?
AK: Well, they are quite surprised actually, they were very impressed with the fact that we were trying to do it, and I know Sonny and Brownie in particular were most impressed with Cyril. Sonny Terry said that he’s the closest thing he has ever heard to Lead Belly playing and singing, and he used to sit there and say, “Sing for me, Cyril.”
BBC: Sometimes the Round House is crowded out. Sometimes there are more musicians than audience. But, come what may, they go on playing for their own enjoyment. People can listen or not listen as they like. But Cyril, the white-skinned panel-beater from South Harrow, will go on singing. This time it’s about a ‘Yellow Gal.’ [music clip]
And on that rhythmic beat, we end Town and Country for this week.
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