Bert Lloyd Centenary (1908 - 2008)
Events
National Folk Festival (11 April 2009 and 12 April 2009)
Films ... BERT A Personal Memoir & TEN THOUSAND MILES A.L. Lloyd in Australia
Download flyer (PDF)
Illawarra Folk Festival (18 January 2009)
AL Lloyd Tribute Bush Songs Concert with
Alan Musgrove
Tamnesia
Heather Mandich and The Southern Alliance
Wangawilli
Mendala
Mark Gregory (MC)
Illawarra Folk Club & Illawarra Folk Festival (March 7th 2008) see Photos
EFDSS: A Tribute to Bert (15 November 2008)
read reviews from:
Caroline Clayton
Dave Arthur
Malcolm Taylor
Martyn Wyndham-Read
Frankie Armstrong
Kevin Bradley
A.L.Lloyd on the web
Rufus Sargent: Selected English Folk Singers: Bert Lloyd
Wikipedia: A.L. Lloyd
Reinhard Zierke: A.L. Lloyd: Discography
Reinhard Zierke: Index of A.L. Lloyd's Songs
E. David Gregory: A.L. Lloyd and the English Folk Song Revival, 1934-44
E. David Gregory: A.L. Lloyd and the Search for a New Folk Music, 1945-49
MusicWeb Encyclopaedia of Popular Music: LLOYD, A. L.
Mark Gregory: Interview with A.L. Lloyd (1970)
Peter Fairbairn: Living Tradition CD review of A.L. Lloyd
Topic Records History: Celebrating Over 60 Years
Goldsmith College: Papers of Albert Lancaster Lloyd
Graeme Smith: A.L. Lloyd and Australian Folk Revival Singing Style
Graham Seal: A.L. Lloyd in Australia: some conclusions
Lucy Duran: A.L. Lloyd. A Tribute
British Library: A.L. Lloyd Collection
Bruce Elder: A.L. Lloyd: Biography
Redferns Music Picture Library: A.L. Lloyd
Caroline Clayton: A. L. Lloyd: A Daughter's Perspective
Vic Gammon: A. L. Lloyd and 'Folk Song in England'
Faber & Faber : A. L. Lloyd
Fellside record release: Ten Thousand Miles Away (November 2008)
Ten Thousand Miles Away: Warren Fahey review
Bert Lloyd Interviews (and recorded story)
When I got to London in late 1969 one of the first people I intended to meet in the folksong world was Bert Lloyd. I was a bit nervous but was armed with a book I thought he might not have yet seen, 'Folksongs of Australia' by John Meredith & Hugh Anderson. On the basis of that lure I rang him up and arranged to meet him at his home in Greenwich. That was to be the first of many meetings and discussion over the next dozen years. In 1969 and 1970 I recorded two interviews with Bert on my portable Akai X-5 reel to reel tape recorder. The first was at the urging of the historian Ian Turner who was visiting London, I transcribed it and Ian arranged for it to be published in Overland in 1970.
In that interview Bert responded to one of my questions in the following way:
"Folklore studies should no longer be limited to what's called spiritual folklore, that is the song and the tale and the folk speech, proverb, metaphor and so on, all of which is important. One or two people like Bill Wannan have done rather well with things like proverbs, metaphors, vernacular similes and so on, although much more needs doing there and it's a great field for folklore research.
But besides all that there is the recording of oral history from old timers - old timers' accounts of events, their recollections, which quite often take the form themselves of tales and which quite often only have a slender basis in fact because memory lapses have been filled in with imaginative detail. Indeed this may apply to bush workers particularly, because, owing to the nature of their occupation, they are inclined to be more ruminative and to turn things over and over in their mind. Recollections roll round one's head like a snowball and begin to attract all sort of elements which don't really belong to them but which fill the reminiscence up and make it more vivid, so that the accounts one may get from old-time shearers of shearers' strikes, for example, may be filled in with anecdotes from here and there which the blokes themselves have come to believe really happened at that time, even though they didn't. The collection of oral history belongs partly to the world of folk tale. It's up to the scientific folklorists to sort out fact from reconstruction. Anyway, that's a very important aspect of folklore too. The folk riddle - it's very much neglected in Australia, too; but all of those things belong to the realm of spiritual folklore."
Hold On Hamilton
I also recorded a concert of Australian folk songs Bert had organised at the Singers Club where he was joined on stage by Martyn Wyndham-Read and Brian and Phyllis Mooney. Towards the end of that concert Bert brought the house down with his bush story 'Hold On Hamilton', perhaps embellished with some of the 'imaginative detail' he'd mentioned in my interview. Nearly forty years later it still sounds pretty good. It's twelve and a half minutes long.
play mp3 or
The Horse Breaker and the Cockie's Wife
A shorter story from that night at the Singers Club. It's three minutes long.
play mp3 or
Doc Watson and Bert Lloyd (excerpt from Barrie Gavin's 1984 film 'Bert a personal memoir')
Bert Lloyd return to Australia (excerpt from Ken Taylor's 1970 film 'Ten Thousand Miles')
Bert Lloyd sings in 'Moby Dick' (excerpt from John Huston's 1956 film)