(The cover of the Shrewsbury Folk Club magazine)

Shrewsbury folk club came into being early in 1965, formed by a group of former members of the Belmont Youth Centre (now The Hive) Folk Club. [It was by joining that group, run by Taff Brissenden, that I found about Shrewsbury Folk Club myself, not many years later]

Membership of the Youth Centre was restricted to the under-21s, so they formed a group that met, initially, in a room at the Old Post Office. They met every Tuesday, paid five shillings per year for membership plus one shilling each time they visited the club. At that time, they had about a dozen resident singers, and were expecting Jackie and Bridie as guest performers in the near future, and were also anticipating moving to Boat House in the near future (which is where they were when I joined).

Club secretary Susan Slater was quoted by the Chronicle as saying:

“It is definitely becoming more and more popular and this is due to the commercial folk records. I’m not all that keen on these records personally, but I wouldn’t criticize the people responsible. They are making money out of jazzing the folk songs up to make them commercial, but at the same time they are creating an interest in folk music in general.“

Ron’s article ended:

The Chronicle’s article was among a number of items pasted into a scrapbook which was found in the local library. Another article was by Megan Wilson, the then press officer, written when the club had been in existence only two weeks. This stated that on the club’s first night, Tueday, February 17^th 1965, thirty-five people attended, and the following week the club had forty-two members.

Along with the newspaper cuttings are the words to a number of songs that were very popular in the club at that time – ‘Jug of Punch’, ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’, ‘I loved a Girl’, ‘Dirty Old Town’, ‘Michael Row The Boat Ashore’, ‘This Land is Your Land’, ‘The Wreck of the John B.’, ‘Johnny Todd’, ‘If I Had a Hammer’, ‘Drill Ye Tarriers, Drill’, ‘The Spinning Wheel’ etc.

The first committee consisted of: Chairman – Roger Drummond; Secretary – Sue Slater; Treasurer – Carol Lewis; Press Officer – Megan Wilson; other members: Dave Hoy, Roy Farmer, and Colin Horton.

(A face pictured in one of the article’s illustrations, although partly obscured by a full pint pot, is still easily recognized as belonging to our present chairman [Ken Hughes]. The caption below simply says, ‘Thirsty work this singing.’ I suppose that’s as good an excuse as any. – Mine’s a double whisky!)