Bob Cooney

The first time I saw Bob Cooney was in the late Sixties at the Jug of Punch Folk Club run by the Ian Campbell Folk Group, a hugely popular club which packed the old Digbeth Civic Hall and had floor singers like Harvey Andrews and, occasionally, Bob Cooney. Therefore, let's start with Ian Campbell's memories of Bob:

As an old family friend, Bob Cooney loomed large in my life. One of my very earliest memories concerns Bob; it was a sharp, frosty evening just before the Second World War, and, as a mere toddler, I was hoisted on my Dad’s shoulders from among the feet of a dense throng of people who were chanting and singing outside a big grey building. We were all there to welcome my uncle Bob, who apparently had been staying with some lady called Ruby Slaw ever since he annoyed the other Bobbies at an anti-fascist rally. When he appeared, he was carried on people's shoulders, just like me, only when he spoke, everybody listened and cheered.

Then there was the War, which for Bob really was the second because he had already fought the fascists in Spain as a volunteer. This time, he was not an officer, and he was fighting Nazis, and, by the time he came home, I had left Aberdeen with my family to join my Dad in Birmingham. Throughout my teenage years, I heard only intermittently about Bob, but gained the impression that in various parts of the country, in some capacity or other, he was still fighting fascism.

In the middle fifties, en route from one job to another, this living legend visited my parents. A slight, palish man in working clothes, with a shy, quiet manner, he would have been amused to know the contrast he made with the fire-eating giant I had always carried in my mind. At the family’s invitation, he moved in and found a job in Birmingham (now those were the days!), and his weekend visit stretched into twenty years, during which I had plenty of opportunity to glimpse the truth behind his unassuming exterior. As an adopted member of the family, he moved easily into, and immeasurably enriched, the little Caledonian enclave that the Campbells had established among their Birmingham friends.

As a Marxist, he was active in the Trade Union and Peace movements, but it was in the clubs of the new and growing folksong revival that he found his recreation, and where he made an equally valid contribution to working class life and culture. His lifelong interest in the songs of the movement had given him a unique repertoire of American Wobbly and Union songs, Spanish Civil War anthems, British Co-op and Union songs, camp-fire choruses, and Scottish traditional songs, - all of which he sang engagingly in his warm, husky voice. And, as well as this, he wrote poetry and songs which gave expression to his lifelong loyalties and passions, and his unshakeable identification with the working people of the world.

Bob, of course, was singing at most of the major folk clubs around Birmingham. His work was at Pressed Steel Fisher in Castle Bromwich where he was employed as a tool-slinger four nights a week. One of his workmates was Mick Hipkiss, currently lead singer with Drowsy Maggie. Ivor Pearce, still a regular singer around Birmingham clubs, remembers:

Bob worked four nights and relaxed the other three nights in Birmingham folk clubs, where I used to bump into him and chat a lot to him. Of course, he was a lot older than me and I was beginning to get the confidence to get up and perform, whereas Bob was called on most nights, especially singers nights, to get up and sing a couple of songs (usually ones he'd written himself).

Mike Turner, who was just starting to sing at the Grey Cock Folk Club, remembers:

He was very well-known and well-loved in that circle of friends which I had only recently joined. I still remember very clearly his incisive wit and his emphatic performance style, hampered though it was by obvious breathing difficulties. I probably have a recording or two of him, hidden away in my archives. I can remember at least two of his songs; 'Washington Church' and 'Thirteen Nothing Five'.

Malcolm Speake, a long-time singer around Birmingham clubs, remembers Bob as a warm-hearted man with a mischievous smile.

Physically, he was short, perhaps 5 foot 7 inches, a wiry Scot from Aberdeen, but he always appeared to be larger than life when he sang at clubs. He had a shock of silver grey hair, was clean shaven and dressed casually, though, unlike most folkies, he wore a jacket.

I remember Bob particularly from the Star Club in Essex Street where he was a regular floor singer. The Star Club was named after the 'Morning Star' newspaper which was the new name for the 'Daily Worker'. I can remember him singing songs from the Spanish Civil War like Jarama, Jamie Foyers and There Was An Old Man And He Lived In Jerusalem. The last was learnt in Spain from an American in the 'Lincoln Brigade'. I may even have acquired these songs from him by what is called the 'folk process'.

Bob was a regular not only at the Star Club but also at the Old Crown and the Old Contemptibles in Edmund Street which was run by Mick Hipkiss and the Munster Men. Some of Bob's self penned songs were very funny. I remember in particular 'The Two Righteous Old Men' in which two old gentlemen in their private members club world deplore the lack of morals of the younger generation with 'their drugs and the Rolling Stones'. Al the time, these gents were getting progressively more drunk on gin, whisky, port, etc. Bob's imitation of the upper class accent was hilarious.

Bob was interviewed around this time by Maureen Messent for her column 'Focus on Folk'. During the interview, Bob stated the philosophy behind his singing:

I can't help singing and writing songs. I was brought up among that sort of music. But, in those days, there wasn’t today’s distinction between folk and other music. Our everyday songs just happened to be folk. Folk songs are simply what people sing of their lives and conditions. They needn’t sound ‘folky.’ I wrote of what I know and I reckon these are folk songs.

One of Bob's favourites, though he did not write it, was the 'Turra’ Coo'. And he could remember all too well the commotion that led to its being sung. ‘Turra' is an Aberdonian word meaning tariff. Just after the First World War, an Aberdonian farmer who refused to pay National Insurance had his cow seized for public auction. Neighbouring farmers were so incensed by this that they turned up at the sale but kept the bidding so low that the animal was returned to its owner.

Bob also looked beneath the surface of traditional songs:

If you look at the story behind the 'Twa Recruiting Sergeants’, for instance, this looks like a rollicking recruiting song. Really, it sets out the hardships of Scots farm servants at the beginning of the century. Although farmworkers belonged to what was known as the ‘Scottish Farm Servants’ Union’, they had a pretty raw deal. Instead of being paid a weekly wage, they were hired twice a year, in June and October, at what were called ‘muckle Fridays’ because of the number of people they attracted to market towns. The following week’s markets were called ‘rascal Fridays.’ Here the workers not hired the week before would offer their services at reduced rates to 'rascal’ farmers on the lookout for even cheaper labour.

Bob, then, was a very perceptive, self-educated man. Eileen Whiting remembers:

Bob, with his sunbleached hair and soft Scots accent, was a quietly charismatic character. He never boasted of his experiences in Spain with the InternationaI Brigade, but you were always aware that he knew more than he spoke of. He was very good with a young audience. One of the first meetings I remember was when he got us all joining in the chorus of a song he had written as a counter measure to Coronation fever in the 1950s. To the tune of ‘Funiculi Funicula’, we all carolled:

He was always in demand at Burns Suppers when either he or Dave Campbell would give ‘The address to the Haggis’. He had much of Burns’ poetry off by heart and there were good political lessons to be gleaned in 'The Tree of Liberty' and, of course, 'A man’s a man for a’ that', as pertinent today as when it was written.

One of the memories I always carry with me is of Bob stilling a whole hall full of people with his heartfelt "Lass of Ballochmyle".

It was a compound of love and homesickness that still resonates.

Many people, of course, knew Bob more through his politics than his singing. Ivor Pearce remembers:

I knew Bob through my membership of the Young Communist League in Birmingham. Bob used to come to come and lecture to us on a Sunday afternoon about Socialism and Communism. His heavy Aberdonian accent was difficult to understand, but I guess I took in some of what he was saying. This must have been about 1962-3 when I was 16-17 years old.

Bob used to hold forth about the vision of a better society where exploitation for private profit was done away with and goods were produced so abundantly that everybody could take what they needed and everybody would contribute to society.

Bob joined the Communist Party as a very young man in Aberdeen. He fought against Fascism as Political Commissar with the British Battalion of the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Unfortunately, the Republican coalition fell apart when the Stalinists showed more interest in liquidating Trotskyists and anarchists than in fighting the Fascists, thereby virtually ensuring Franco's eventual victory. Bob continued the fight against Fascism by joining the British Army at the outbreak of World War II and was on active service for the entire duration. After the war, he went to the Soviet Union where he studied economics at university in Moscow. He spent the next part of his life working as an engineer in Birmingham until his retirement when he returned to his native Aberdeen.

Of his departure from Birmingham, Malcolm Speake remembers:

When Bob retired, he had a burst of new life and enthusiasm. He decided to return to his native Aberdeen and, because he was so well loved by the folk fraternity in Brum, all of the clubs organised 'farewell benefit concerts'. Bob enjoyed these occasions so much that he insisted on having another round of farewell concerts. After all, he was a canny Scot and people were only too willing to please.

So Bob passed out of our lives and returned to Aberdeen, but thankfully his songs were printed and sold for a modest sum by Aberdeen Folk Club.

The only existing recording of Bob is his contribution to "The Singing Campbells", originally released on Topic Records, now available from Ossian Records.