Folk club

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.

[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.

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.

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.

[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.

[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.

In London Les Cousins in Greek Street, where John Renbourn often played, and The Scots Hoose in Cambridge Circus, were both casualties.

Also, during the following years, came a growth of interest in the folk revival that was taking place in Britain and the US, and the success of The Clancy Brothers in the US.

The first folk club in Dublin was the Coffee Kitchen in Molesworth St., run by Pearse McCall, where Johnny Moynihan met Joe Dolan and Andy Irvine and formed Sweeney's Men.

The Tradition Folk Club on Wednesdays in Slattery's of Capel Street hosted the Press Gang, Al O'Donnell, Frank Harte and others.

In the following decade groups such as The Barleycorn, the Dublin City Ramblers, Planxty and Clannad became popular on the folk scene.

Other lesser known clubs, such as the Turk's Head and the Sword in the Stone (on Charles Street) and, later, the Idler (in Cambridge), also helped to make up what was known as "The Boston Folk Scene".

Philadelphia offered two such non-alcohol clubs: Manny Rubin's tiny Second Fret (The New Lost City Ramblers, Ian and Sylvia, Lightnin' Hopkins), and, in the Bryn Mawr suburbs, Jeanette Campbell's The Main Point, an intimate club featuring artists on their way up such as Joni Mitchell, Janis Ian, Phil Ochs and Bruce Springsteen.

In California, one important San Francisco club was the hungry i; Los Angeles had The Troubadour and McCabe's Guitar Shop.