Dave Hunt (aka Dr. Sunshine) remembers Vic Baker
(aka Dudley Vic), his partner in Dr. Sunshine's Pavement Show and
his friend for many years.Dave Hunt (aka Dr. Sunshine) remembers Vic Baker
(aka Dudley Vic), his partner in Dr. Sunshine's Pavement Show and
his friend for many years.Edward Victor Baker was born in Dudley in September 1944 (he often celebrated his birthday at Bromyard Festival) and had two sisters. All the time I knew him he lived on the edge of Dudley on a large council estate called the Wrens Nest (known locally as The Wrenner). For many years, after his sisters had left home, he looked after his mother who became fairly frail and very dependant on him. He purchased the house from the council many years ago and carried out lots of improvements. Vic originally trained as an electrician and for many years his 'day job' was as a wirer and tester of large electronic control panels.
I first met Vic at the Giffard Folk Club in Wolverhampton in the mid 1960s. At that time he was running a small folk club in Dudley at the Two Bulls Heads. He very soon became a regular visitor to the Giffard and one of the resident singers. One idea we tried out very successfully at the club was getting the residents to perform together in different combinations. This encouraged singers to work together and find new material and explore effective ways of presenting it. Vic and I worked in many such partnerships and always found some interesting stuff to sing together.
The club had a great influence on both of us...the list of guests we had over ten years reads like a who's who of folk music and we were able to learn from a wonderful selection of singers and musicians. Vic was a fine singer of traditional songs...he had a good tuneful voice and a wide repertoire...and was a fair English concertina player and guitarist. One little problem he had was that if he mis-learned the words of a song that was how it stayed forever. One wonderful example is from the song 'The Winking Finnegan'. The line should be "Light hair and fresh complexion" but Vic always sang...."Light hair and flesh complexion"...too good to change really!!
In the late sixties, the Giffard club started running a monthly ceilidh at the Hollybush Inn, Penn Rd, Wolverhampton. Several of us got together to form a band The Corn Rigs. The early line up was Frank Loach (accordion), 'Woody' Shaw (fiddle) Vic Baker (guitar) and myself (drums). Other people who played in the band over the years included Pete Measey (mandolin), Sean Myers (melodeon) and Paddy Billson (fiddle). We got to be quite a well-known band over the seven or so years that we played together. We built up a good reputation, and got a considerable amount of work. We did a lot of PTA/works social club type stuff, the odd wedding (and some of them very odd!), and a few Festival ceilidhs.
Vic was a very good band guitarist in terms of never being stuck for the appropriate chords...Frank would often play things in strange keys but Vic never had any trouble finding the correct accompaniment. It has to be said though that he never developed much variation in style - it was always fairly basic ‘dum-ching’ sort of stuff, but, nonetheless, a good solid underpinning to the band. I do remember one occasion where I suggested that for a waltz it might be better to play dum-ching-ching, dum-ching-ching...... "O aar, I’ll gie it a goo" Dum-ching-ching, dum-ching-ching.........dum -a-dum-a-dum-a-dum....!!
As part of our work with the band we usually did a couple of song spots during an evening...and it was generally Vic and I who were the main singers, so we learnt lots of suitable light, jolly, fun songs. A PTA dance isn’t really the place to sing a twenty-eight verse ballad.!!
The band stopped working when some of the musicians
left the district or had too many work commitments. Vic’s
interest in the song side continued however, and he was a
frequent visitor to local clubs. One of these clubs was to have a
profound influence on the course of both our lives. During the
year after the band finished, Vic and I had met occasionally at
the Meadow Folk Club in Ironbridge and one of the organisers
asked if we would be surprise guests for a ‘fun’
evening.(June 1976). Vic and I got together and rehearsed lots of
daft stuff. The original plan was that we should share the
evening with Ted Beresford (another ex-Giffard man) and his
puppet show. However Ted was unable to be there due to illness so
we did the whole evening by ourselves. In planning for the event
we decided that we needed a silly ‘group’ name, hence
Doctor Sunshines Pavement Show!!.
We fully expected the performance just to be just a one-off. However, the previous year, I had been working with Magic Lantern at Poynton Festival (in my other role as Ramo Samee the Fire-eater) and the festival invited me back to do another show. I explained that I would be difficult to fill the full period they wanted solely with fire eating....but...I had a mate...we worked together...we did lots of suitable stuff...we were cheap...and could we do it?? Fortunately they said yes (Bless you Mike and Pol). We did the festival, everything went very well and we had lots of compliments. Again we thought it would just be a one-off thing, but there were several club and festival organisers present who then wanted us to appear at their events. Oh all right then!!
The following year we were booked for about a dozen festivals and at lots of clubs. Little did we think that we would still be working together at festivals 23 years later! We were at Cardiff Festival in the early 1980s and staying in a hotel with many of the other Festival guests. Also resident were a couple of theatre/club musical comedians called Lambert and Ross, who, when they walked in the first night said "Hello Wingnut" to Vic. Who knows why? Still, it stuck and he became Professor Wingnut for ever.
Over the years we worked at most of the major festivals, as well as in lots of clubs, doing street shows, at community events and for all sorts of celebrations. In all the time we worked as a duo, or with other people, we never had an argument or even a cross word. Vic was always very easy to get on with and we had some wonderful fun together.
In 1977 we were asked to perform at our first children’s event. So, once again, we rehearsed some specific material, the show went well and we had started our long and enjoyable 20 or so years of working with children. Vic was excellent when working with kids . I never saw him get annoyed or impatient with any of them. If a child turned up just as we were about to start a procession or show and said "what can I do, mister?" (O they do...they do!) he’d try and help the kid to quickly make something to use for the event.
I must say he was sometimes a bit too thorough in his construction work, often putting a lot of effort into bits that were not on view, although, in the later years, I did get him round to my principle - ‘It will be OK-FADITD’, i.e. it will look OK From A Distance In The Dark!!] He was also of the belt and braces school. If I just used masking tape on a construction he would also wire it, tie it, double Gaffa tape it and glue it..."Just t’be on the safe side". Still, none of it ever fell apart!
All the children we worked with over the years were very fond of Vic. Although he never had children of his own, he had an instinctive feel for working with them. Many of the songs we used were suggested by him, as were lots of the games. We had great fun when we made a record (Sunny Songs for Children) and jointly we wrote much of the material.
We were both interested in the history of the Music Hall and, in particular, the speciality acts. Over a number of years, we developed this side of our show to include fire-eating, escapology, smashing the paving slab on Vic’s unprotected chest, illusions, mind-reading and lots more silliness. I can still picture Vic dressed as a skinny ‘Arab’ being the Famous Egyptian Mind-reader ‘Mustapha Klew’, or as the dashing Italian Ventriloquist ‘Signor Lipsmove’. I was often asked to be the ‘Chairman’ for Music Hall shows, so were able to extend our repertory to include lots of crazy interruptions and cross-over gags. Vic would keep appearing as a variety of characters on some stupid pretext....bit of ‘business’...and off he’d go to get changed again. At one memorable Bromyard, he changed costume twenty times in one evening!
We were fortunate to be around when many festivals had a Music Hall night/show, consequently we were always busy during the summer festival season. I suppose we were a good ‘package’ buy for a festival. We could do the Music Hall stuff, entertain the children, run workshops for adults (fire-eating, etc..) and the kids, do things like the Silly Olympics (particularly memorable ones at Wolverley, Towersey, Butlins Bognor, [yes we did the folk festival there for ten years!] Chester and others). We could also do the ‘straight’ stuff too...concerts, run singarounds, and of course I was available as a caller.
Another interest we had in common was for old 78rpm records. We had both been collecting them for years and had about five thousand between us! We specialised in collecting ones that were fairly bizarre. For example we had recordings of such things as a speech by Marconi- (‘The Wonder of Wireless’) ..a conjurer doing a trick (honest!)... a record in Morse... pronunciation of French vowels...choirs of canaries...lots of sound effects...etc.etc.. This gave us the idea for the 78 Workshop, which we did at many festivals. A gentle, relaxing, Sunday morning session taking a light-hearted look at the history and development of the old 78 rpm record. We played lots of examples, with a chance at the end for people to play their choice from a large selection. I do recall one occasion when we were asked to do the 78 Workshop as a late night thing (Chester Festival). The following morning some chap stopped Vic and asked "Was I drunk last night or was I really listening to ‘Daybreak on a Surrey Farm’ at 1.30 in the morning"? ....." Yes aar kid, that’s what yoe wuz lis’nin’ to"
When
we formed the Giffard Morrismen in the late 60s, Vic was a
founder member, but did not continue with us very long. Many
years later when I was with the Ironmen (Ironbridge area) I
persuaded Vic that we needed a Fool, and that he was just the man
for the job. He joined the team and was with us for several years
- and a very good Fool he was too. He wore black boots, red
tights (quite a sight with his skinny legs) a red jumper,
a black tailcoat and a very battered top-hat. As the Ironmen
‘blacked up’ he decided to use white make-up instead.
Eventually, I think the 50 mile round trip to practices got to be
too much and he just sort of stopped coming out with the team.
We were working at Towersey Festival in 1998. We had done several kids workshops and shows on the Friday and Saturday, although Vic seemed a little under par. On the Sunday morning he came knocking on the door of my caravan in a bit of a state, having lost the use of his legs. A friend of ours on site who was a doctor examined Vic and recommended that we take him home, which we did. He was admitted to hospital and found to have lung cancer. They operated immediately, then Vic was in hospital for three months recovering. When he was allowed home he was in a wheelchair for most of the time, but was gradually learning to walk again with a frame. He was always cheerful and optimistic about the future, saying such things as "Well Dave, we can always do the Flanders and Swann stuff" !! After a while he was taken ill again and re-admitted to hospital. However, he was still talking of what we could do with the show. I’ll always remember him saying " Well now Dave, we’ll just get this little problem sorted out, then we’ll be OK for next year."
Vic died on 3rd June 1999. A very sad loss to us all.
On 1st April 2000 (All Fools Day appropriately), we organised a memorial weekend in Telford. We had a very successful ceilidh on the Saturday...many thanks to Old Hat who did it for nothing. When Vic was not working at festivals, his favourite Sunday morning hobby was going to car boot sales...so on the Sunday morning we ran a memorial tabletop sale!..followed by an excellent session in the Coalbrookdale Inn (where Vic and I had done the Children's Christmas Party for several years).
We had originally intended to use the money raised over the weekend to sponsor a childrens event at a festival, but then thought that something more permanent would be more appropriate. I was talking to Steve Heap about this and he said suggested that, as we had been booked at Sidmouth for the last 20 years, a memorial bench would be a good idea. A while later, I was staying with Chris Coe in West Yorkshire. I mentioned the idea of a memorial bench to her, so she sketched out a design shaped like a Wingnut!! I thought it a brilliant idea, so she did me a proper drawing, which I sent to Steve. He also really liked the design and passed it on to the Sidmouth Council who eventually agreed with the proposal. [Steve was great, he had visited Vic several times when he was in hospital, he and Lioux attended the funeral and also came to the memorial weekend and he has since given the Sunshine team the Freedom of Towersey festival in recognition of the work that Vic had done there]
The memorial bench was made in late 2000 and was in place in the Children's Glade on the Arena at Sidmouth in time for the 2001 Festival. A fitting tribute to a lovely man.
