At: Groove Pad, 48 Saltaire Road, Shipley BD18 3HN
Venue (not Club) Tel: 01274 586542

Est: 1956

Map

The Topic in 1970-72
by Trevor Carolan

On August 30th 2010 Topic website manager Nick Waller received an email from one-time regular Trevor Carolan about his memories of the early 70s, and also permission to reproduce it here. He also sent some photos from the time. It would be great to have more memories of The Topic from other regulars over the years, so please do write in if you have something to contribute.

Howdy Nick

Trevor Carolan here from Vancouver. I've discovered your Topic Folk Club web-site with great pleasure. I used to sit-in there pretty regularly with blues guitarist & singer Josh Grundy from late 1970 thru 1972.

Born in Bradford, I emigrated with my family to Canada in '57, then returned to Bradford for three years in 1970. My first week back in Yorkshire I met Josh, who was a pal of Roger Sutcliffe, at the White Horse Pub on Great Horton Road that used to have a Thurs. night music session. I was a young blues harmonica guy and had sat in on the West Coast here with T-Bone Walker and others; that seemed to work with the English fellas and I played regularly with Josh in a blues duo for two years. We played clubs all over the north, getting to gigs in his old motor.

I lived with my Irish relations a few streets up the road from the Star Hotel on White Abbey Road in the heart of the old Irish district. I recall the Polish owner very well with his comb-over hair-style. Roger S. and another big, booming-voiced/guitarist fellow named 'Baz' were both polished regulars back then. Josh, by contrast, has a very scrappy style style, although he was terrific as well. There was actually a regular rota of gigs back then: the White Horse on Thurs., the Topic on Friday, a pub on Canal Road on Sunday nights. The Otley Folk club--got in a tremendous punch-up there one night--and the Three Nuns at Mirfield also had regular folk nights. There was a club at Queensbury where Swan Arcade sang fairly regualry with Jim Boyes. They were as trad as the broad Yorkshire crowd got. Dave Burland invited us down his neck of the woods to a gig in Barnsley and we played a couple of very large Workingmen's Clubs in Leeds. The best tiems, I think were in the warm weather months when there'd be runs out to the Dales, and people used to camp over for a couple of nights at one ancient pub or another and sing and drink pints all weekend. Kettlewell, stands out in mind as the best of the lot. Other gigs at Appletreewick and Settle--that's nearly 40 yrs. ago now.

It was always a scuffling time in the U.K. back then; I earned 13 quid a week and spent 5 of that on rent for a bedsit-flat while working at St. Luke's Hospital. Finally came back to Canada, then moved to California for a couple of years. Returned to university and began writing. Have since published 16 books. In my first book, a poetry collection back in '85, I included a poem entitled "Bengley Moor" that I wrote after a weekend run in spring of 1971 out to Bingley Moor. From time to time during my readings I resurrect it, out of old affection. The key person in it was a Topic regular too. Among the other local singers who used to get up and do a turn, I recall Neil Ingram, whose wife Kathy would join him on their signature tune "A Sailor's Life". Big Mick Hanson, a former boxing champ in the British navy used to look out for us all. Another regular fella who'd stand up and do a turn back then--and it was always a highlight for me--was an older fella, a workingman sort of bloke who would stand up with a pint in his hand and deliver a long recitation--a story of the Battle of Hastings. He had a punch-line in his narrative that he'd deliver every so often--an old memory-aid of oral tradition people said--and it went "'Arold with iz 'Awk in 'iz 'And". Whenever he came to this, right on cue the crowd would take any empty glass on the table and rap the bottoms on the table 4 times--tap/tap/tap-tap. As a result of my travels and ongoing studies I became a university English prof, and for more than 25 yrs I've told my students in poetry classes here about this narrative display that clearly tied ordinary working people and students into a centuries old bardic tradition. It was unforgettable.

When I first arrived into this scene I was lost: everyone else seemed to know the words to the tunes, when to bang glasses, what the chorus was...but it didn't take long to get the hang of it. There was quite a sense of camaraderie in it all, and it stood in juxtaposition to the flash music scene in London. Nevertheless, the folkie crowd mixed easily with other music communities. I think it was the innate respect for both an old English, and especially a northern English heritage that set the Topic kind of scene apart, even thought the touring headliners came from all over the isles--down south, the midlands, sometimes Scotland, and people like Therapy from Ireland. Most of the performers knew each other. They respected each other's abilities, sometimes swapped songs, and maintained loose, but friendly rivalries. It was a culture entirely alien to what I'd come up with as an immigrant kid and young hippie on the west coast of North America.

A fair bit of drinking took place with the folkie crowd, and a lot of them still smoked like chimneys back then, so the air was often blue. The Topic was a good scene though, and well run. It was not an especially big music room, but people packed in together and there was denseness to the packed bodies. The vibe was significantly different among Yorkshire people than what I'd experience down south, particularly in London. It may seem curious now too, but in a chat with John Renbourn who played Vancouver two or three years ago, he mentioned that back in the late sixties/early seventies you never heard anyone talk about "Celtic" music. Now, he noted, there's a whole Celtic renaissance underway around the world. Oddly, my first awakening to the new "Celtic" culture came specifically at The Topic in 1971.

I've often wondered what became of Paul "Josh" Grundy. He taught school and was a vice-principal or something in Halifax. His wife was called Angie and they lived off of Great Horton road. He was good pals with many of the touring acts who came thru the Topic Club. He introduced me over the years to Dave Burland, John Pashley, Roger Sutcliffe, Vera Johnson, Martin Carthy, Sam Bracken and Fiona from Therapy. We'd often go off for a few drinks after the Topic closed and eat at a place called the Kashmir Restaurant run by a Mr. Bashir behind the Mandeville Arms further downtown near the bus station not far from the university--in those days meat curry was three shillings, chicken curry four shillings, and you got a small dish of mint chutney and all the chappatis you could eat. Oddly enough, over the years I had chance to renew acquaintance with Vera Johnson and Martin Carthy when they were visiting and playing here in Vancouver. Vera had actually come up as a singer in Vancouver, where she worked for the big Vancouver daily newspaper, The Sun. I don't think anyone knew that she'd been the secretary to Bob Hunter, a popular alternative-culture columnist in the city. Bob was one of the original six or seven people who founded the Greenpeace organization here in town that has since become the best-known Eco defence outfit on the planet. He was a guy I admired a lot as a young writer, and we became friends later on. It was in fact Vera, who introduced me to Bob in '73. Vera loved singing and used to take her holidays in the U.K., where she toured the folk scene. Two other acts I particulary recall among the glittering best were Ann Briggs and Rab Noakes. They had powerful singing styles. Diz Disley was another tremendous performer, but he may have played a bigger show with the Peggs who had a band called Mr. Fox. We opened for them and Diz at a theatre over that way not too far from the Alhambra. Stefan Grossman and Duster Bennett, both wonderful bluesmen came and played at St. George's Hall as opening acts for blues shows, and I recall many of the topic gang turning out to hear them as well.

Anyway, from time to time I still pass thru Bradford, visiting relations there while on holiday or book tour visits to Europe. We'll likely be over there and in Ireland & France again next year. I'll have a scout thru my old photograph colletion and see if there's any likely memorabilia. I did contribute a chapter about those years, when Bradford had a very compelling social dimension and the multi-culture vibes felt a lot different than now, in 'Bradford Chapters: Episodes in the History of a City', a book edited a couple of years ago by Bob Duckworth, the city archivist for Propagator Press in Leeds. If you might have any news of what become of Josh Grundy, I'd love to pass a hello along to him. Regards from Canada's Pacific Coast.

My author web-site address follows,

Trevor Carolan
Vancouver, CANADA
www.trevorcarolan.com
 

Since sending that letter, Trevor got back in touch to say that someone who'd known Paul Grundy from school days had written to him with the news that, unfortunately, he died some years ago - NW