Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 59

Record label: Columbia

Produced: Peter Eden and Geoff Stephens

Recorded: Summer 1965

Released: Autumn 1965

Chart Peaks: None (UK) None (US)

Personnel: David Elvin (g, v, banjo, kazoo); Vernon Haddock (mandolin, swanee whistle, jug); Alan Woodward (g); Alan ‘Little Bear’ Sutton (pc, washboard); David Vaughn (hm, bv); Sid ‘Piles’ Lockhart (v, 12string guitar).

Track listing: Coney Island Washboard; Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down; Clementine; Coloured Aristocracy; Mandy, Make Up Your Mind; Boodle-Am Shake; Viola Lee Blues; Vickyandal; Stealin’; Little Whitewashed Chimney; I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate

Current CD: Not currently available

Further listening: The website below may be a decent starting point for more peculiar obscure folk gems.

Further reading: www.theunbrokencircle.co.uk/albums_history_1_1959–66.htm

Download: Not currently legally available

Among the many obscure acts that recorded for major labels in the 1960s, perhaps the most extreme example was the memorably named Vernon Haddock’s Jubilee Lovelies, who made one very peculiar album in 1965 before vanishing for good.

In 1965 Peter Eden and Geoff Stephens were hot property after discovering Donovan. Eager to produce as well as manage, they easily landed a four-album deal with EMI. The first fruits, ‘Songs For Swingin’ Survivors’ by Mick Softley and a folk album by Bob Davenport and the Rakes, both flopped. Unfazed, Eden and Stephens turned their attention homewards to Southend, where a group of their friends from school and art college were gigging as ‘Vernon Haddock’s Jubilee Lovelies’.

I’d always liked the word ‘Lovelies’. Then I saw the word ‘Jubilee’ on a row of cottages and put them together’, says their leader David Elvin of their bizarre moniker. ‘Vernon was in the band. His name sounded good, so we added it – it’s pure nonsense.’

Keen to capture their good-natured, inclusive atmosphere on record, Eden was glad to offer his friends a deal. ‘I liked what they were doing,’ he says. ‘They were having fun – the opposite of earnest folk.’ And so it was that one summer’s evening in 1965 the Lovelies made their way to London to make an album. ‘We started at five and were done by midnight’, says Elvin. The result is a charming, skilfully-played and very eccentric folk record, reflecting both their earlier influences and contemporary acts like Jim Kweskin’s Jug Band and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.

Mainly comprising vigorous interpretations of standards like ‘Coney Island Washboard’, ‘Viola Lee Blues’ and ‘Stealin”, the only original is ‘Vickyandal’, a belated tribute to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The percussion throughout is deft, and added atmosphere comes courtesy of a swanee whistle, surprisingly similar in sound to a theremin. Released in the autumn in an eye-catching red and blue sleeve, the album sold, um, 400 copies, all at gigs.

But Eden and Stephens had another album to make before fulfilling their obligation to EMI. When the well-regarded young guitarist Eric Clapton left the Yardbirds to pursue the blues more seriously, Eden immediately got in touch. Clapton readily agreed to make a solo acoustic recording, only to renege a few days later after joining John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Frustratingly, the album was never made and the final quarter of Eden–Stephens’s production contract remains unfulfilled. As for the Lovelies, all that remains today is a handful of extremely rare records and the members’ fond memories.