The Northumberland and Durham coalfield has always produced folk-song writers of the highest calibre. Some, like George Ridley (Blaydon Races) became professionals, earning their living in the area's nineteenth century pubs and music halls. Others, such as Tommy Armstrong, remained pitmen all their lives, and wrote mainly for beer-money.
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This north-east tradition of what might be called 'heavy industry song-writers', survived right up until the 1960s, with fine young writers, such as Johnnie Handle and Eddie Pigford. Tragically, however, the man whom many considered the best of this mid-century crop is now entirely forgotten. Just before Christmas (2006) I typed the name 'Geordie Coulson' into my computer, and, with all its immense resources, Google delivered ... nothing at all! Next, I typed in the title of Coulson's best-loved song, and got ... nothing at all!
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So who was this Geordie Coulson? He was born in Sunderland during the war years (when Sunderland people were still called Geordies!). He turned up in York around 1966, and soon established himself on the fringes of the local folk music fraternity. He never shared the more trenchant 'revivalist' views, and was greatly amused by not a few of them. Consequently, he remained on the fringes of 'the scene'. And yet, he would confound the narrowest of these people by writing the most exquisite songs perfectly within the traditional industrial north-east style.
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To my mind, his outstanding contribution to the north-east tradition was the revival of maritime-related songs. These had always been there, of course (Ye shall have a fishy when the boat comes in, etc.). But the best-remembered songs of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries had emanated from the mining communities, and, in time, these tended to overshadow the shipping type. A preponderance of Geordie's songs were of the maritime-related community - sea-going, ship-building, lifeboats, etc. These included an intriguing series of approx. six songs about the last days of sail - and I remember being amazed when he told me that sailing ships ran on the grain trade commercially until 1940! Considering that Sunderland was the biggest single shipbuilding town in the world, 1850 - 1960, and that much of Tyneside life was maritime-related, too, this revived focus was much needed I think.
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But, of course, no town is about one thing. Sunderland was a mixed mining, engineering, and maritime town, and his songs reflected this. I have A Wearside Wedge, which describes Roker Park football ground when Sunderland are playing arch-rivals Newcastle United. And Whitburn Rocks, harking back to the days when a coxswain had to trawl the pubs and streets for volunteers before he could put to sea (I believe this song won an award of some sort at the Northumbrian Festival, though I don't have the year). But the greatest of this type was undoubtedly Sea Watter Shy (Watter to rhyme with 'matter', rather than with 'daughter', hence the double 't') which told of a ship which stuck on the slipway, and refused to be launched. The public's thirst for this song was insatiable. He sang as a resident at The Lowther Folk Club in York for a couple of years, and would be asked to sing it every single week! Wherever he went, a rendition of Sea Watter Shy was essential. In the end, he came to resent it a bit, for he'd written other songs which he felt had to be unfairly held back to make way for one that he'd already done to death. And yet, requests for it never abated. To many, this was the finest, most exuberant north-east song since the death of Tommy Armstrong in 1919. To match the sheer mischief of it, one might, perhaps, have to go back to The Row Between the Cages.
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But in many ways, Geordie was at his most attractive with what he called 'Me Scullery Songs', a type of quiet little song, just two or three verses long, giving a unique glimpse of the inside of a miner's terraced cottage, or the grim terraced houses around the docks. It felt almost as though you were peeping over the window-sill. Many of these took the form of a conversational monologue, allowing you to 'overhear' what went on. I remember one New Year (around 1968 or '69) he produced a beauty. I only have one verse, but it typifies the type :
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Here's your coal and here's your fish
Now light your fire and eat your dish,
There's nowt in the world ye canna wish
Now the New Year's here.
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This reflected the north-east tradition of 'first-footing' on New Year's Eve. In form, it is a grand-dad telling the kids to forget the past - they were in a new year now and had everything to look forward to. When writing this type of song, Coulson achieved an intimacy I haven't come across in any north-east writer of any generation. They were quite beautiful, even though many of them would only get sung once or twice before being ditched (he didn't think a live audience could stand too many of them!). I often wondered if these represented something he'd never had, for he hated both of his parents. He once told me his father was 'a bully boy who married a psychopath'! Beatings were regular, and there was one stabbing. I never heard him describe the north-east as "home", and I wonder if he felt he ever really had one.
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And yet, he would draw on his memories endlessly. Seaham Mourning, which described the stillness of Seaham Harbour the morning after a lifeboat disaster which took all hands, was written from personal experience. His father, a sea captain running in and out of the north-east collier ports on a regular basis, was apparently involved in some way or other with search efforts that night.
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Geordie never made a folk song record, and never had a book of songs published. I personally doubt that he tried hard for either, or cared very much about what never came. He just seemed to write his songs, sing them till he tired of them, and then discard them in favour of new ones without any apparent sentiment (the danger now being that he might never have written them down!). There was one overwhelming factor which mitigated against him becoming much better known. He sang only a few times in north-east clubs, so publishers up there, who might well have jumped at his product rarely got to hear him. And, whilst immensely popular in Yorkshire clubs, he was never likely to appeal to local publishers intent on preserving their own Yorkshire traditions. I suspect he fell between these two regional stools quite badly.
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The sad fact is that, having written perhaps some of the finest industrial folk songs of the twentieth century, he never made a penny out of it.
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What became of him? - I have no idea. He just seemed to vanish. There were rumours that he went into a pop music industry more inclined to pay for what it gets. I'm not so sure we have any right to know anyway - even if he's still alive, he'll be in his sixties now, so perhaps he's earned his privacy. And perhaps we should respect that. I have no intention of allowing this blog to become an uninvited intrusion.
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His songs are a different matter, however. It's important that we recover and preserve as many of them as possible, for the Industrial Age is gone, and no more will be written like them. The whole folk music tradition of this country will be poorer if we let these slip away. And just a few years longer will do the appalling trick. I've felt free to post Sea Watter Shy and A Wearside Wedge here because both are already somewhere in E.F.D.S.S. archives. Whitburn Rocks and Seaham Mourning have been printed by the organizers of the Northumbrian Festival. Publication of any others which people might remember (and of a couple more in my possession) would be problematical - copyright is surely his. But then we don't know how many of them still exist. It might not be many after forty years of neglect.
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Geordie Coulson was among the finest expressions of a fine tradition, and deserves to be esteemed much more highly than he has been, or, sadly, seems ever likely to be.
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Without question, that's our loss.
