FOLKSINGER / SONGWRITER / RESEARCHER
CYRIL TAWNEY
12th October
1930 - 21st April 2005
Cyril Tawney earned his living as a full-time
professional folksinger for 45 years
At the time of his death this was longer than
anyone else in Britain
Cyril
Tawney was born in Gosport, Hampshire into a Royal Navy family and was
evacuated to the village of Hambledon during the war. He joined the Navy in 1946 as an Artificer
Apprentice and purchased his discharge in 1959, in order to pursue his radio
and television career, which it had become difficult to combine with his RN
service, during which he served in submarines for 3½ years.
This left him free to play a full part in the
pioneering days of the British Folk Revival of the 1960s - his professional career was concurrent with the
advent, growth and establishment of Britain's folk club and festival scene.
It all began in
1950 when he heard a current American hit song from ex-Spike Jones man Red
Ingle -Cigareets and Whiskey and Wild,
Wild Women - and he was sufficiently impressed to write a British
counterpart - Five Foot Flirt. It wasn't Cyril's first song, but it was the
earliest that remained in his performing repertoire.
At about the same
time Alan Lomax began his folk song collecting in Britain, which inspired the
BBC to commence a five-year collecting campaign of its own, with a weekly
shop-window programme on Sunday mornings called As I Roved Out. Until then,
Cyril's folk song diet had been based on records by Americans Jimmie Rodgers,
Frank Crumit and Burl Ives, with just a taste of the more courtly English
singer, Elton Hayes, thrown in. Now he
became hooked on the straightforward performances by ordinary people from the
British countryside which he heard on the BBC Home Service, and so began his
life-long interest in traditional songs and singing.
Cyril's own
broadcasting career began on Christmas Day 1957, while he was still a serving
sailor, in Sing Christmas and the Turn of
the Year, a UK-wide live link-up programme written and presented by Alan
Lomax and produced by Charles Parker.
Further radio and TV work soon followed, which prompted Cyril to buy
himself out of the Royal Navy (on the 3rd May 1959) to become a Plymouth-based
full-time professional folksinger. With
the British Folk Revival still in its infancy, he then spent two years working
entirely in the field of radio and television before playing his first folk
club engagement at the Balladeer, Southampton on 18th October 1961. His Saturday morning BBC record request
programme Folkspin was the first (and
still possibly the only) such programme entirely devoted to British traditional
song and music. Along with his peers
from other parts of the country, he enjoyed the bonus of frequent TV and radio
work - regional and national - which in the 1960s gave our traditional music a
high profile. The programmes included
the very popular nationally-networked BBC Scotland weekly television series Hootenanny, which showcased Britain's
leading folk performers, and (all too briefly) made them household names. Other broadcasts ranged through drama,
religion, documentaries, magazine programmes, extended runs as featured artist
on the BBC pop music show Nightride,
and as guest presenter of several incarnations of BBC Radio Two's folk
programmes.
Cyril Tawney was
instrumental in developing the folk song movement in the South West of England
and he has often been called "The Father of the West Country Folk
Revival". He made a special study
of the region's traditional song collections, especially that of the Rev.
Sabine Baring-Gould, and collected many valuable items from local traditional
singers when his touring commitments allowed him to make field trips. At his West of England Folk Centre at
Devonport he created the first (and, again, still possibly the only) Registered
Club in Britain whose stated objectives were the furtherance of British
traditional culture. The Folk Centre
opened in 1965, but the pressures of running it, even with the help of loyal
volunteers, combined with his heavy touring commitments, led to a breakdown in
his health, and the enterprise was short-lived.
Cyril's account can be read in the "Celebrating Cyril" Commemorative Booklet,
details of which are on the Order Recordings page.
Cyril
left Plymouth in 1972 to study as a mature student at Lancaster
University, whilst still continuing his singing career. He gained a BA (Hons.) in English and
History, and in 1976 he went to Leeds University to do an MA in Dialectology, his
thesis title being Dialect in Folk Song. He and Rosemary intended to return home after
this, but several factors, including better rail travel facilities than were
available from Devon, conspired to keep them in Leeds until 2000, when they
returned to the West Country to settle in Exeter. Cyril did not drive, so most
of his tours were done using public transport.
He actually did one South Coast tour by bicycle, in the true spirit of
Cecil Sharp.
Cyril's repertoire
was presented to a wider public by means of a recording career which began in
1960 and continued, side by side with his nationwide public appearances and
occasional overseas trips, until two years before his death. In 1987 he set up his own record label,
Neptune Tapes, which showcased his nautical repertoire and his own songs. Many of these tracks have since been released
on CD by ADA Recordings, followed in 2007 by a commemorative double CD and a
recording of a fine concert which Cyril gave in Chicago in 1987.
In 1958 he began
researching the almost totally neglected field of 20th century Royal Naval
traditional songs, and this work resulted in his unique book GREY FUNNEL LINES: Traditional Song and Verse of the Royal Navy
1900-1970 (RKP, 1987). His Neptune Tapes recordings of songs from the book
sold widely amongst retired and serving Naval personnel as well as to his folk
music fans. Encouraged by this
publishing success, he spent some time on creative prose writing, producing
several short stories with Naval themes, also a memoir recounting the story of
his time as an evacuee. These works are,
as yet, unpublished, except for the extracts from the wartime memoir, Thank
you Hitler, which are in the Commemorative Booklet
During the latter
part of Cyril's career, market forces required him to concentrate more upon his
nautical material both traditional and modern - largely because of the great
popularity of his own compositions - but he never lost his love of the rural
songs of his beloved West Country. Cyril wrote songs in the folk style, many of which
draw on his Royal Navy experiences. There are hundreds of recordings by other
artists (it's very unlikely that a definitive list can ever be completed!) from
folk club stalwarts through to national and international performers in a
variety of styles - from folk to electronic and experimental, the favourites
being Sally, Free and Easy, Grey Funnel
Line and The Ballad of Sammy's Bar. There are parodies/alternative versions of
several of his best-known songs, including Les Barker's Lassie, Free and Easy and Grey
Tunnel Line (which Cyril recorded for one of Les's CDs) and several from
the filking community of science fiction and fantasy aficionados. Cyril was proud to be the only songwriter to
have his work included in both The Oxford
Book of English Traditional Verse and The Oxford Book of Sea Songs.
Grey Funnel Line has been used in two feature
films - the Silly Sisters' recording in the opening sequence of the Hugh Grant
film "Sirens", and actor Stephen Rea sings it in "Between the
Devil and the Deep Blue Sea". Canadian folklorist and film maker Seana
Kozar is working on an animated film which will feature the song.
During the last few years of his life Cyril
limited his appearances, but he continued working until he was overtaken by
illness. His final performances were at
the 14th Lancaster Maritime Festival of Easter 2004, an event in which he had
taken part almost every year since its inception. This provided a fitting conclusion to his
distinguished career. In July 2004 he
was admitted to hospital where he died on 21st April 2005 after a brave fight
against diabetes-related complications and a rare mycobacterial infection.
Messages received since his death show that Cyril Tawney was a quiet influence on very many people. During his lifetime he was described as "a living legend" and "a self-perpetuating organism". The continuing interest in his work, particularly amongst up-and-coming young performers, bodes well for this to be true in years to come.
Many clubs and
festivals held memorial events and tributes for Cyril, which culminated in
April 2007 with "Celebrating Cyril"
at the English Folk Dance and Song Society Headquarters in London. The EFDSS Vaughan Williams Memorial Library
will house and maintain Cyril's extensive archive of field recordings,
correspondence and other documents.
Please Check the News page if you think you may
have any useful archive material, including live recordings and videos.
Rosemary Tawney (March 2008)
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Orders and enquiries:
Rosemary Tawney
10 Sivell Place, Heavitree,
Exeter, EX2 5ET, England
Tel. 01392 426 055
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