This review is written by Dai Woosnam, daigress@hotmail.com, 4/06
Hughie Jones was always my favourite member of The Spinners. (Now you Americans reading this will need to know that I am not talking about the DETROIT Spinners, but the LIVERPOOL group of the same name. A group whose heyday was the Sixties and Seventies.)
And sometimes in the years that have elapsed since their break-up, he
has disappeared from my radar. But he has never disappeared from the
Scene.
He has been appearing at virtually all points of the compass (with a
marked penchant for seafaring festivals) and getting into the Fellside
studio (this is his third album for that distinguished label).
He has come up with a very satisfying album here. However, I am not in
the business of writing puff-jobs, so I will add the odd note of
censure to my praise.
But let’s look at the many plusses first.
Don’t let the “and friends” above the title on the CD front cover, fool
you. Oh yes, the friends are THERE alright, and a stellar bunch they
are.
But this is very much HUGHIE’s album: he takes all the vocals in a
voice that is every bit as good and fresh-sounding now as it was 40
years ago.
I applaud him for keeping the flame burning in himself: even the best
of singers can find a certain world-weariness enter their vocal DNA
after half a century singing in public! Not Hughie.
I applaud him also for the selection of songs. There are favourites
like Shep Woolley’s “Down By The Dockyard Wall” and that Stan Kelly
masterpiece “Liverpool Lullaby”. The latter song he delivers “a
cappella” (and it amuses me to see him change the original “when
Littlewoods provide the cash” to “when the Lottery provides the cash”:
a sign of the decline of the Football Pools in the UK, methinks!). And
then there’s Ewan MacColl’s “Dirty Old Town”, which I can honestly say
I have never heard done better.
A really funky arrangement with some glorious melodeon from Brian
Peters, sweet Nashville guitar from Bob Conroy, and best of all, some
wonderful double-bass by John ‘Count’ McCormick (my oh my, can’t that
man SWING!)
And mixed with such well-known songs, we have the relatively esoteric.
“Here’s to Cheshire” is a fine song written in the last half century
here in Britain, but I first heard it recorded by the great Pete
Seeger, and have it indeed on several American recordings, yet it is
relatively unknown here.
And there are two settings by Alan Fitzsimmons of poems by Cicely Fox
Smith. I am ashamed to say I was unaware of both. My loss.
Great to see the usual high quality Fellside liner notes. And black
print on a white background. That is heaven. I can read it easily. No
“psychedelic swamp” for Fellside!
And now my three slight caveats. First, I note that Hughie says that
“Dirty Old Town is Ewan MacColl’s masterpiece”! Eh? Surely not? I
realise that we don’t all think the same, but most people I know would
not put it in MacColl’s top TEN songs, let alone describe it as his
“masterpiece”.
And then there is the excellent partly self-penned song “Alexander
Selkirk Is My Name”. A song worthy of a much wider audience. But if
people DO cover it, I hope that they will not do as Hughie has done
here, and show the song as “Alexander Selkirk Is My Name (Jones)”.
For the fact is that the verse melody is note for note that of “The
Wild Colonial Boy”. The middle eight is Hughie’s though. And ALL the
fine words.
And lastly there is the apparent “Liverpool” thread that binds the
songs together. At times this is risible. I think Hughie knows it, but
getting “Liverpool” in the title is a good commercial move that will
see the CD sold at the various shops and museums in the city catering
for “music tourists”.
Recommended.
Dai Woosnam
Grimsby, England
daigress@hotmail.com
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