Folk club

The "Princess Louise", Holborn

Sandy Bell's, Edinburgh

From the end of the Second World War there had been attempts by the English Folk Dance and Song Society in London and Birmingham to form clubs where traditional music could be performed. A few private clubs, like the Good Earth Club and the overtly political Topic Club in London, were formed by the mid-1950s and were providing a venue for folk song, but the folk club movement received its major boost from the short-lived British skiffle craze, from about 1955 to 1959, creating a demand for opportunities to play versions of American folk, blues and jazz music, often on assorted acoustic and improvised instruments.[1] This included, as the name suggests, the 'Ballad and Blues' club in The Round House, Wardour Street, Soho, co-founded by Ewan MacColl, although the date and nature of the club in its early years is disputed.[2]

As the craze subsided from the mid-1950s many of these clubs began to shift towards the performance of English traditional folk material, partly as a reaction to the growth of American dominated pop and rock n’ roll music.[3] The Ballad and Blues Club became the ‘Singer Club’ and, in 1961 moved to the Princess Louise pub in Holborn, with the emphasis increasingly placed on English traditional music and singing the songs of one's own culture, e.g. English singers should avoid imitating Americans and vice versa, using authentic acoustic instruments and styles of accompaniment. This led to the creation of strict 'policy clubs', that pursued a pure and traditional form of music.[4] This became the model for a rapidly expanding movement and soon every major city in Britain had its own folk club.

By the mid-1960s there were probably over 300 in Britain, providing an important circuit for acts that performed traditional songs and tunes acoustically, where some could sustain a living by playing to a small but committed audience.[5] Scottish folk clubs were less dogmatic than their English counterparts and continued to encourage a mixture of Scottish, Irish, English and American material. Early on they hosted traditional performers, including Donald Higgins and the Stewarts of Blairgowrie, beside English performers and new Scottish revivalists such as Robin Hall (1936–98), Jimmie Macgregor (b. 1930) and The Corries.[6] Some of the most influential clubs in the UK included Les Cousins, Bunjies and The Troubadour, in London and the Bristol Troubadour in England's West Country. In Scotland there were notable clubs in Aberdeen. Edinburgh (Edinburgh Folk Club) and Glasgow.

Although the name suggests a fixed space, most clubs were simply a regular gathering, usually in the back or upstairs room of a public house on a weekly basis.[7] These clubs were largely an urban phenomenon and most members seem to have been from the urbanised middle classes, although the material that was increasingly their focus was that of the rural (and to a lesser extent industrial) working classes.[8] The clubs were known for the amateur nature of their performances, often including, or even focusing on local ‘floor singers’, of members who would step up to sing one or two songs.[9] They also had ‘residents’, usually talented local performers who would perform regular short sets of songs.[10] In the late 1960s and early 1970s especially in the West country there was quite a revival of local folk clubs with regular weekly gatherings in places like Taunton, Halberton, Ottery St Mary, Exeter, Barnstaple, Truro, Padstow where a new group of local performers such as Cyril Tawney performed regularly along with local singers performing "Come all Ye" nights

Many of these later emerged as major performers in their own right, including A.L. Lloyd, Martin Carthy, and Shirley Collins who were able to tour the clubs as a circuit and who also became major recording artists.[11] A later generation of performers used the folk club circuit for highly successful mainstream careers, including Billy Connolly, Jasper Carrott, Ian Dury and Barbara Dickson.[12]

The number of clubs began to decline in the 1980s, in the face of changing musical and social trends. In London Les Cousins in Greek Street, where John Renbourn often played, and The Scots Hoose in Cambridge Circus, were both casualties.[13] The Singers Club (George IV, Lincoln's Inn) closed its doors in 1993.

The decline began to stabilise in the mid-1990s with the resurgence of interest in folk music and there are now over 160 folk clubs in the United Kingdom, including many that can trace their origins back to the 1950s including The Bridge Folk Club in Newcastle (previously called the Folk Song and Ballad club) claims to the oldest club still in existence in its original venue (1953).[14] In Edinburgh, Sandy Bell's club in Forest Hill has been running since the late 1960s.[15] In London, the Troubadour at Earl's Court, where Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Sandy Denny and Martin Carthy sang, became a poetry club in the 1990s, but is now a folk club again.[16]

The nature of surviving folk clubs has also changed significantly, many larger clubs use PA systems, opening the door to use of electric instruments, although drums and full electric line-ups remain rare. The mix of music often includes American roots music, blues, British folk rock, and world music as well as traditional British folk music. From 2000, the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards have included an award for the best folk club.[17]

Since 2002 A "public entertainment licence"[18] was required from local authorities for almost any kind of public performance of music. To avoid the constant need to re-apply for licences for new events, some folk clubs opted to create a "Private members club" instead. This required that members of the public join at least 24 hours in advance, not on the night of the actual performance. Licensing laws changed over the following years. As a result of changes by the Live Music Act 2012, for example, live music in on-licensed premises is no longer a licensable activity between 08:00 and 23:00 hours before audiences of up to 200 people.