George Dunn

George Dunn was born at Quarry Bank, an industrial village in the Black Country on 24th December 1887 and died in March 1975. He spent his long working life in Noah Bloomer's chainmaking shop. In his younger days, he was well-known in his locality as a singer and much in demand for jollifications. He was a skilled and precise singer, with an acute sense of pitch and timing, and a feeling for subtle variation and decoration. George Dunn was discovered as a traditional singer by Mrs Rhoma Bowdler and was recorded by Roy Palmer. An LP of his songs was released in 1973 on the Leader label. The sheer quality of his singing was astonishing, particularly for an octogenarian.

Here's George singing 'The Miller's Song'

The LP, long deleted, was Leader LEE4042, recorded in 1971 by Bill Leader with notes by Roy Palmer. It was produced by Roy Palmer and David Bland. The tracks were The Oyster Girl - Cold blows the Wind - Edward - The Miller's Song - The Nottingham Poacher - Young Sailor bold - Here we come a-wazlin' - Nelson's Death - John Riley- Henry my Son - Oh , it was my cruel Parents - The gallant Poachers - All fours. It contained a few short excerpts of George Dunn's warm and articulate conversation.

As Tony Green commented in reviewing the LP: 'The industrial Midlands are thinly represented in the records of traditional song, and Mr Dunn's repertoire and style would be of interest for that reason alone. But he was a versatile performer who handled the sombre and the comic with equal facility.....Mr. Dunn says candidly (and with a fine disregard for false modesty), "I'd used to like singing, and I was a very good singer". This he remained in his concern for basic principles - immaculate diction, good control over breath, pitch and dynamics - and in what can only be described as his taste - a sense of the right pace and degree of rhythmic emphasis for each song's content'.

Tony Green adds: 'An interesting feature is his handling of the bawdy, best exemplified by his performance of All fours. This generally rather dull exercise in sexual metaphor is given a new flavour by a conclusion which, as Roy Palmer points out, is unusual in this context though familiar in others. After the usual final stanza, in which the young man, having had the stuffing knocked out of him, invites the girl to a return match at a later date, Mr. Dunn's version adds a stanza announcing the girl's pregnancy'.

George Dunn's repertoire has a number of songs in which, whether triumphant or defeated, the woman is the central figure in the battle of the sexes. Tony Green speculates that George Dunn may have been the inheritor of a female tradition, but since, according to Roy Palmer, most of the songs derive from his father and cannot be traced back further, this conjecture remains just that.

There is a double CD of George Dunn now available on the Musical Traditions label. Roy Palmer wrote the booklet and helped with the compilation selection - this from his own recordings and those of Charles Parker and Ewan MacColl & Peggy Seeger.  For more details, visit the Musical Traditions web site.