Here's Fred singing 'The Banks of the Sweet Primroses'
Fred
Jordan was born in Ludlow in Shropshire, the youngest of 5 children. Most writers
give his date of birth as January 5th 1922, but Karl Dallas writing in the Independent
gave it as 16th October 1922. Karl was repeating Peter Kennedy’s inaccurate
date of birth published in an old EDFSS magazine and repeated also on Fred’s
first LP sleeve.
Fred made his singing debut at the age of six in a competition at Ludlow town hall with The Gypsy's Warning and won a pound. He was a bright pupil, always top of the class, but he nevertheless left school at 14 and became a farm labourer ("Without you could do farm work, that was it"). The tractor had not yet replaced the horse on farms and Fred was happy working with horses, mostly Clydesdales. As was usual, he lived on the farm where he worked. He was paid three shillings (15p) a week, which rose to 10 shillings when the Second World War broke out.
Fred learnt his songs from his parents, particularly his mother, from fellow farm workers and from families of travellers in the area. Singing in public always appealed to him ("It happened to be an easy shilling I think") and he was welcome in the pub sing-songs on a Saturday night. This encouraged him to learn new songs.
Just after the war, Fred was working for a blacksmith when "a chap called Alan Lomax was over, hunting songs, summat like Sharp must have been." The blacksmith suggested Fred. Alan Lomax recorded him and subsequently Peter Kennedy recorded him three or four times during 1952 on a farm at Diddlebury. At this stage, Fred had never been out of Shropshire. But the discovery of this young and talented singer quickly led to invitations to record for the BBC in Birmingham, where he sang on the BBC radio folk dance programmes, and to the Festival Hall in London, where he sang The Banks of Sweet Primroses and The Farmer’s Boy for the English Folk Dance and Song Society. This last appearance led to invitations from the newly emerging folk clubs in the 50s and 60s. There was also a tour of Scotland and more concerts at Manchester's Free Trade Hall and the Royal Festival Hall in London.
By the 1960s, Fred was working as a casual farm worker, where his jobs included fencing, hedging, ditching and harvesting, and could combine this with his second career as a singer. He appeared at the Keele Festival (now The National), at Cambridge, Bromyard, Sidmouth, Redcar and Whitby. Bromyard and The National were never complete until Fred had sung the last song, usually The Farmer's Boy. It was at Bromyard that he met Albert Shaw, a fine old singer from the Black Country, from whom he learned The Benefit Concert.
Fred was, of course, noted for turning up to sing in his working clothes. Karl Dallas says "he turned up at his first public engagement in dark suit and stiff collar and tie, but, after observing the al fresco déshabille of your average young folkie, he then turned up in his working clothes, a cloth cap perched precariously on the back of his head, great boots upon his feet, cords tied around the bottoms of his trousers". It's rather unkind of him to describe Fred as "not above pandering to the audience by changing his appearance to look more the part". Later, he says of Fred, "He claimed to have obtained most of his songs from his mother, though he was quite prepared to supplement his lyrics from print, most notably The Dark-Eyed Sailor, some of the words of which he copied out from the Farmer and Stockbreeder magazine". Funnily enough, most of the major traditional singers discovered since the Second World War have also consulted print sources. And Fred did appear at musical evenings with another older Shropshire singer, Arthur Lane, from whom Fred Hamer collected The Dark-Eyed Sailor.
Away from the folk clubs and festivals, Fred lived a simple life in his cottage in Aston Munslow. He never had radio or television, but he was well-informed about current affairs. His cottage was primitive by modern standards - there was no running water, the doorways were low and it had in fact been condemned. Fred grew enviable crops of vegetables and he had a large collection of horse brasses which he polished every week. Those who knew him confirmed that he was never changed by the fame he achieved ("I dunna bother about it at all, it never turned my head").
As regards Fred the singer, Peta Webb remembers "the beautiful timbre and vibrato of his voice and his ability to bring out the essence of a song through a wide range of subtle devices". Derek Schofield commented on his "subtle and skilful use of melodic ornament. In performance, he sang with a dead-pan expression and rarely talked between songs, a deliberate ploy which forced the audience to listen carefully to the words and story - he certainly saw himself as a story-teller through song". He added to his initial repertoire songs he heard in the clubs and festivals. Fred was awarded the English Folk Dance and Song Society's highest honour, the Gold Badge, "for distinguished and unique contributions to the folk performing arts" in 1996.
Peta Webb says Fred had strong opinions about performing ("I like to hear somebody singing that will get up and sing. I cannot bear with somebody doing a lot of talking"). Fred never wasted time introducing or explaining songs ("No point in me a-tellin' 'em what I'm goin' to sing afore I sings it"). He could get away with irreverent remarks about Morris dancers, storytellers ('Pah! I could have sung eight songs while that was going on..") and the like, as he enjoyed his position as the grand old man of song. (''That's the trouble with folk singers - they go to bed too late and get up too late!"). As Karl Dallas pointed out, Fred Jordan's repertoire was not confined to traditional balladry. Like most English country singers, he had some music-hall songs, such as Down the Road and Away Went Polly, and other composed lyrics, such as The Farmer's Boy. Dave Hunt remembers Fred as a regular guest in the sixties and seventies at the Giffard Folk Club in Wolverhampton. "If we drove him to and from the club, he would come for nothing .. except free beer. We would have been better off paying him a fee! He would drink anything from ten to fifteen pints in the course of an evening ... and seemingly without any ill effect on his performance!!"
In 2001, ill health persuaded Fred to leave his cottage and take up residence in a home in Ditton Priors, where his many visitors found him surrounded by his collection of horse brasses. Dave and Maggie Hunt went to visit him several times in his cottage and later when he was in residential care. "He was always cheerful and very easy to talk to ... never any embarrassing silences with Fred! We took him the ten sheets of messages from people at the National Festival. He was overjoyed and very touched that so many had sent their best wishes. ("I didn't know I 'ad so many friends.") He told us that a few days before he had been singing The Miner's Dream of Home with an old lady of 103! ("her sister's 105 ... they'm tough old birds from off th' hill") ... and this only a few weeks before he died". Fred Jordan sadly died following a heart attack on Tuesday July 30th 2002.
Fred Jordan 'A Shropshire Lad' (Veteran VTD148CD), a double CD in a Voice of the People style box with a biography by Derek Schofield.
Sadly, many of Fred Jordan's early recordings - Songs of a Shropshire Farm Worker Topic LP 12T150 (1966), When the Frost is on the Pumpkin Topic LP TS 233 (1974) and In Course of Time, VWML cassette 006 (1990) - are no longer available.
Fred has one track on A Century of Song EFDSS CD002 and another on Good Old Boys at Whitby Folk Week WFW 26CD.
Fred can be heard on several volumes of the excellent Voice of the People series on Topic - TSCD652 My Ship Shall Sail the Ocean, TSCD653 O'er His Grave the Grass Grew Green, TSCD655 Come My Lads That Follow the Plough, TSCD657 First I'm Going to Sing you a Ditty, TSCD663 They Ordered Their Pints of Beer and bottles of Sherry (2 tracks), TSCD670 There is a Man Upon the Farm.
Doc Rowe is planning to make available a video of Fred singing at the Musical Traditions Club in London. If you'd like to get a copy, contact him here.
.