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CHAPTER 1 CONTINUED...
On the back of one of Lonnie’s EPs, I found the name Woody Guthrie. Even as I type it now, I feel the same thrill at this name. I had never imagined that anyone could be called Woody. I determined to find out more about this mysterious man. I started by sending a letter to: --
Mr. Woody Guthrie, USA.
After six weeks, it came back …
Some weeks later, I was passing by a small record company when I saw a yellow album sleeve in the window. I did a series of double takes but sure enough, it was called More Songs by Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston. I bought it.
I can remember now the first bar of Columbus Stockade and the tingle that went down my spine as the instrumental intro was followed by this Oklahoma voice, singing,
"Way down in Columbus Stockade
Want to be back in Tennessee".I had finally found my inspiration and mentor.
I can’t quite remember how I finally located Woody. It must have been around 1958 and he was lodged in a hospital in New Jersey with a genetic wasting disease called Huntingdon’s Chorea, which he had inherited from his mother. I sent off another letter. This time I was very excited to get an answer from a woman called Sid Gleason. She and her husband Bob had taken it upon themselves to entertain Woody at weekends. I wrote sometimes twice a week, asking questions about various aspects of Woody’s life. Woody was mentally alert and meticulous in making sure that I was given the right answers. I made plans to go over and live with the Gleasons.
The Woody Guthrie Newsletter was a mimeographed couple of sheets sent out to those interested in knowing how Woody was and what was happening with his records and songs.
I received a copy that listed a whole page full of famous names that Woody wanted to thank. I waded through Pete Seeger, Alan Lomax, Ralph Rinzler, Oscar Brand, Lionel Kilberg, Ernie Marrs, Harold Leventhal, Bill Doerflinger, Jack and June Elliott……
I think I was hoping against hope that I might see my name in there and I read through all these famous names and came to the end of it and right at the bottom it said, ‘’...And to Andy Irvine from Woody personally’’.
I was always very proud of the fact that I knew Woody…personally… if only by letter…
Around this time, I went to see Jack Elliott play a hootenanny at The Ballads and Blues Club.
Jack had traveled with Woody in the early fifties and sang Woody’s songs and told stories about Woody that thrilled me. At the end of the evening, he was surrounded by hardier souls than I and I waited until he left the club and followed himself and his wife, June, home on the train. I stalked them from train station to lodgings, made a note of the number of the house and sent a letter. Good at sending letters I was in those days!
Jack rang me a day or two later and said : "Come on over!" Little did he know what he was letting himself in for … I used to ride my bicycle over there every morning after that. I’d arrive at about 10am, bang on the door and sit on the end of the bed till they got up! Davy Graham was another frequent visitor. Jack, June and I would go out, leaving Davy to play Jack’s guitar. When we got home, Davy would be gone and Jack would be lamenting that his "goddam strings" had been new that morning!
Derroll Adams and his Belgian wife, Isabelle came over from Brussels where they were living and Jack and Derroll, who were old friends and playing partners, did some great gigs together. Derroll was much taken with my mother and he and Jack listened with interest to her stories of "treading the boards" in the Thirties.
Derroll and Isabelle went back to Belgium and Jack went off to Israel where he parted with June. She wrote me a letter, telling me this and asking me to look after Jack when he came back that spring. Jack was pretty cut up about the split when he got back to London. I went down to Waterloo station to meet him with his agent, Malcolm Nixon.
Jack seemed a bit lost without June but he wasn’t alone for too long. He used to come round to my flat with various girlfriends and we’d sit and record tapes for Woody. One evening we recorded a Woody song and Jack turned to me in amazement and said, "Andy, you sound more like Woody than I do!" As Woody had once said to Jack, "Jack you sound more like me than I do!" I felt pretty proud.
Jack showed me how to play the harmonica in Woody’s style, holding the low notes on the right hand side and ‘’sucking when the instructions tell you to blow and blowing when they tell you to suck’’. He also introduced me to many of the people involved in folk music at that time. We’d often go to parties given by Cy Grant, Noel Harrison or Shirley Collins’ ex husband, Mike Marshall. It was a whole new world for me and I took it all in without saying very much. I still felt like a child among all these grown-ups. I was a bashful 17-year old.
I also met Cisco Houston that summer. I had written to him in California and he had sent me a couple of signed photos. He came over to play a few gigs after touring India with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. At the beginning of his tour I missed my great opportunity. He invited me over for tea and I was about to cycle over when I suddenly thought, "I’ll take a mandolin and I can be Woody and he can be Cisco". Remembering that I had not practised the mandolin for a while, I sat down and played it for what I thought was about five minutes. It wasn’t, it was 40 and when I got over there, there was a message saying he’d had to go out! I’ve agonised over that missed moment ever since. I went to both his London concerts and was just a little disappointed. He never sounded like he had with Woody when he was singing alone. I met him a few times subsequently but never again had the chance to get him on his own. He seemed like a really nice person. I told him I was going to live in New Jersey near Woody and he said that I should come out to California.
One year later, Cisco died of cancer. Same day as my mother died of the same disease.
Well, I grew up pretty fast after that. I got a job on the BBC Repertory company that lasted for two years and gave up all thoughts of going to New Jersey. Uneasily, my dad and I shared the flat, the rent and the cleaning duties.
I had a great time on the Rep. It was a full time job. You might be playing the lead in some abysmal Afternoon Theatre or playing two or three small parts in a Third Programme feature. Whatever came along you were expected to do it.
I used to hang out in The George, round the corner from Broadcasting House, drinking with the likes of Louis MacNeice, the famous Irish Poet who was working for the BBC at the time. I was in love with his secretary …
I decided that when my two-year contract was up, I would head for Dublin…
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