Witham and Blues - the album

Big Al Whittle

Witham and Blues - the album

St Peter

Johnnie Dillinger

Big Al Whittle making final career statemet

In 2005 I finished recording and writing the package for my album St Peter and John Dillinger. I regarded it as a final career statement.

I knew at that point I was never really going to make a success out of song writing, despite my best efforts over a thirty year period. Many of the songs were intensely private and required too much explanation to make good performance material. I regarded myself as having signed off artistically. I had done my best – failed, and I resolved to move on.

However I got ill.

I was taking the mini PA into an old peoples home in Nottingham the week before Christmas 2004, when suddenly I felt terribly ill. I had heart disease the doctors told me , although – it took another 18 months to diagnose the nature of my illness. The first year I cut down my performing schedule by half. The second year, I gave up performing professionally completely.

During these two years I wrote a lot of songs. And I played them at folk festivals, folk clubs and for the first time for years, I had time to sit down and try and raise my game as a guitarist.

Here are fifteen of those songs that came into being as I have explained. As I am no longer gigging – I can’t afford to make up cds. So, if you want them they will be available as a download – or they make up a cd for you at Woven Wheat. You can get my first album through Woven Wheat as well.

Here they are as samples and here are the lyrics, and some of the story of how they came to be written. I hope you like them. They are, I hope you will notice, songs about being alive in the 20^th and 21^st century. If you ever catch me writing a song about what a bugger it is being taken away by the press gang….there will be no need to take away the life support system as I will be beyond help!

Alan Whittle

February 2007

HERE ARE THE TITLES

1) By Witham Side

2) Ten Miles South of Oxford

3) Aunty Nelly

4) Like a Wayward Son

5) Mellow Moonlight

6) Ragtime Blues Guitar

7) Hairy Mary

8) Waiting

9) The Day Delaney’s Donkey had sex with The Pope

10)Moira O’Shea

11)Blue Rider

12)Irish Tinker’s Son

13)Winter Hill

14)Let’s Have a Drink - it’s Christmas!

15)Citroen Saxo Driver

All songs apart from Waiting were written by Alan Whittle.

Waiting contains much of the text of a poem by Mary DeVille, and we have therefore decided to call it a joint composition.

All of the songs on this album were recorded in one day and night at a small studio in East Acton, London under the supervision of Donald Ross Skinner on January 25^th. The mixdowns were done the next day.

Play By Witham Side

I sat down by Wtham side and watched the river flowing.......

By Witham Side

I sat down by Witham side

And watched the river flowing

The peacefulness within my heart

It was beyond all knowing

For the small fish jumped

They caught the sun, on silver scales that evening

And cows came down to take a drink

A scene of peace beyond believing

but then I thought of all my years

The places I had travelled

How like the small fish I once jumped for the sun

And all my dreams unravelled

I sat down by Witham side

And watched the river flowing

The peacefulness within my heart

It was beyond all knowing

Son this placid bank of time

I stand by peaceful waters

Taking refreshment from that scene

And think what life has taught us

I know our days, they run from us

Life’s progress you can’t fight

But we can return back to our source

And for a moment catch the light

I sat down by Witham side

And watched the river flowing

The peacefulness within my heart

It was beyond all knowing

The Witham is the river that runs through my Lincolnshire hometown of Boston.

My cousin Bernard lived in St Helens in Lancashire. As two little boys , we loved each other very much, though we only saw each other rarely. When My Grandma died, Bernard and his Mum came over to Boston to help arrange the funeral. Bernard and I were pretty much in the way. As a distraction we were given five shillings each to buy a pair of fishing rods from Woolworth’s.

We were both in Grammar Schools, and despite the strange circumstances of our respite from the everyday terrors of school life - we were idyllically happy, fishing at a spot called Anton’s Gowt on the Witham. The song was an attempt to conjure up the atmosphere of that pastoral scene and quietitude.

Guitar tuned D A D Fsharp A D

Play Ten Miles South of Oxford

Ten Miles South Of Oxford

It was ten mile south of Oxford , On a hot July day, We were both hitch hikin’

She said she was goin’ my way

Both at some sorta college, but I was dumb as she was smart

Seemed all her life was comin’ together, while mine just kept falling apart

Oh beauty was always there for you to see

It’s really not such a rare commodity

But young or old - love rarely happens

Be you woman or a man

Catch as catch can

Be you woman or a man

That was an educated thumb I was waving, I was a prince of the dusty highway

I kept chain smoking tho’ the drivers was choking

It was an incredibly strung out day

That night in a fav’rite crash pad, we slept in our clothes by the fire

Both our heads were full of the road, I sang her a lullaby

Yeh beauty is always there for you to see

It’s really not such a rare commodity

But young or old - love rarely happens

Be you woman or a man

Catch as catch can

Be you woman or a man

And that was it tho we write long letters, swop cards at Christmas time

When Roger left her, when the kids got married

and that time she thought she was dyin’

Life isn’t meant to be easy - You just get the odd good day

Like ten miles south of Oxford with a girl

A real beauty in that 60’s way

Beauty is always there for you to see

It’s really not such a rare commodity

But young or old - love rarely happens

Be you woman or a man

Catch as catch can

Be you woman or a man

One of the first songs that I wrote, which defined my style was a song called George Joseph Smith – a jokey take on the cult of serial killers.

Serial killers are of course so few and far between that its still almost possible to be jokey about them. However despite their numerical insignificance, they have impacted on our lives, and restricted our freedoms.

My college was at the side of the A1 road near Grantham, Lincs. All the students hitch hiked, the A1 was OUR road. The more literary minded had little Jack Kerouac fantasies about criss crossing England. We all used hitch hiking as a practical means of getting home in the vacations, going down to London at weekends to take in the folk music at Les Cousins – there was even an annual hitch hiking race up to Hayling Island.

You don’t let your kids put themselves in such peril these days. We just know characters like Fred West are out there.

Play Aunty Nelly Sample

Aunty Nelly

I had an Aunty Nelly, she loved to boogie woogie around

She used to get up on the table, and man she used to shake ‘em down

Well Grandma said to Aunty Nelly, Nelly you won’t come to no good

Hanging round the Yankees, stationed up at Burton Wood

But Nelly said to Granny, I wanna show ‘em something of mine

Before they get aboard of that big old B29

So Nelly went boogie ing, no matter what Grandma thunk

She used to come at dawn, with nylons and pineapple chunks

So that was the war, Daddy had to fight with a gun

But Nelly showed her knickers and just had loads of fun

I had an Aunty Nelly, she loved to boogie woogie around

She used to get up on the table, and man she used to shake ‘em down

If you journey from St Helens in Lancashire in the general direction of Manchester, you will at one point pass what was the largest American Air force base in England during the Second World War – this is Burton Wood Aerodrome. There are still a few hangars there.

And apparently my Aunty Nelly had a thing about Yank flyers. The family legend was that she used to dance on the tables with wild abandon, and they used to reward her efforts with tins of pineapple chunks and the like.

I was repeating this legend to my cousin Bernard, who looked at me with gaze of withering pity and said – actually Alan, the trade was a bit more basic than that.

One day when I was about four I was my Aunty Eileens house in Atherton Street, St Helens and Eileen said to my Mum – it’s Nelly’s birthday this week…

My Mum said, oh I’d forgotten…

Never mind said Eileen, I got these off the market.- we can send them from both of us

And Eileen produced a staggeringly beautiful pair of diaphanous French knickers – canary yellow, with lines of white lace along the back.

Oh yes, said Mum, Nelly loves that sort of thing

I thought to myself, I’d be a Bobby Dazzler if I had a pair of those…..And you know that’s probably the best you can hope for from this life……making sure you have one or two snapshots that make you smile.

Play The Wayward Son

Denise getting the rockstar interview treatment in Cologne

The Wayward Son

I wrote this in a hotel room in 2006 in Cologne. Denise and I had been invited to mime on a German TV show – our 1983 song Rummenigge was voted the 38^th most popular football song in Germany. So there we were performing between a punk rock version of You’ll Never Walk Alone and The Village People singing Go West with the German football team.

We had been lodged in the Out of Africa Suite in a posh hotel, ( there were plastic giraffes standing guard outside our hotel room door, imitation leopard skin cushions strewn around the place and plastic elephant heads on the wall). There was a view out of the window of the train station and Cologne Cathedral.

Plastic Elephants Head on the Wall in Out of Africa Suite

Imitation giraffes out side the door of the Out of Africa Suite

Suddenly I realised that this was IT……this was THE DREAM. This business of the hotel room and the guitar, and waiting for the limo to take you off to the gig was what so many of my dear friends had put their lives on hold for, trying to achieve; relationships and families subordinated to this great vision of creative fulfilment. Billy Connolly even does whole TV series asking us to envy his gigging musician/tourist perspective on the world – what Christopher Isherwood calls the Down there on a Visit syndrome.

Somehow the symbol of the apple with a worm at its heart seemed very pertinent.

Tuning DADGAD

The Wayward Son

Well I won’t say that we fell on our feet

It was just a place that we all used to meet

Always somethin’ to smoke there, and before too long

this guitar would appear – I’d play it

She’d sing a song

And I suppose what we do, makes us what we are

A few old songs and a ragtime guitar

Some words of love set to a guitar strum

And a Lady that sang like a Wayward Son

So I played the music and she sang the songs

And sometimes we made it, oh yes we got along

Everyone listened before too long

To the Lady that sang like a Wayward Son

And I suppose what we do, makes us what we are

A few old songs and a ragtime guitar

Some words of love set to a guitar strum

And the Lady that sang like a Wayward Son

So here I am sat in a hotel room

Writing down some words, she’ll be singing quite soon

While she’s out with some girlfriend,

My fingers endlessly search this guitar

And the TV station says they’ll send round a car

And I suppose what we do, makes us what we are

A few old songs and a ragtime guitar

My words of love set to a guitar strum

And a Lady that sang like a Wayward Son

I hope you like what we do, cos that’s what we are

A few old songs - and a ragtime guitar

The words of our love set to a guitar strum

And the lady that sings like Wayward Son

Play Mellow Moonlight sample

Mellow Moonlight

I’ve been ill with heart disease for nearly two years now. I can’t communicate with the doctors, about how I feel. I came to performing late in life and finding a way I could enjoy making a living out of it very late. I was lucky, some people never find as much.

As the illness grew worse I had to give up the way of life of a professional performer, something I’d loved and striven for, for years.

So I sat at home and played the guitar. And one morning I was sat in my backroom, strumming away with the sunlight streaming in on me, and some words of WH Auden came into my mind

Life remains a blessing

Although you cannot bless

Some people are like that – sunlight streaming in on you. One night I was in Mansfield folk Club, feeling very down about the way things were going. This lady , Stella and her husband Erwin sat next to me and they were so nice – asking how I was, and what I was doing……

I think it was the next day I wrote this song.

Mellow Moonlight

Sunlight came through my window this morning

Found these chords on my guitar

I said, Sunlight you know who I am

And I know who you are

And your sunbeams must write the poetry

For this morning I have no words

I saw sunlight on my window

And this is the song I heard