Great Kiwi Folkies

"Frank was Australian by birth. He was a printer by trade, Working his way from handset type, through early electronic printing (Xerox etc) then back to real-bloke's stuff in Martinborough - he had an aged printing press, from someone like Colenso when I last saw him in the mid-70s.

Frank's major contribution to NZ folk music was running the 'Balladeer Coffee Bar' (ex the infamous 'Greendoor') in Wellington, from the early to late 60s. Well, to be honest, his wife Mary ran it, Frank spent more time singing!

Shucks, somewhere in the pages of the Balladeer, I saw a mention about Mitch Park 'introducing chorus singing' - Bunkum, he sat in the corner in the early days. Frank was the best one at getting us to exercise our lungs in the early 60s - mainly Oz and Irish 'rabble rousers'!

Frank mentored many folkies, and from his meagre profits, insisted on paying us (not very much). Here's a list of the names I remember, some of whom aren't listed on the NZ Folksong web site, that I can see. Warwick Brock (Band of Hope), Max Winnie, Jae Renaud, Arthur Toms, Val Murphy, Lynne Gifford, Frank Povah, Frank Sillay, John Sutherland (before he moved to NZ), Les Cleveland, etc... Even Phil Garland sang there once, when he was getting over R&R and starting to sing NZ Folk .. ;

Frank also started the (I think) first Folk Concerts in Wellington. "Folk Meets Blues" is the first I remember. In 1966(?) we did the first 'NZ Folklore Society' concert in a fairly big theater - broadcast live. It was just a few days after the General Elections, when Holyoake was re-elected. We snuck in "Kiwi Keith's Back Again" - NZBC had a hernia!

Methinks Frank was the biggest contributor to NZ Folk in the 60s.

... And Shirley McGregor continues

Early influences on the Wellington folk scene were Mary Seddon, and Max Whinnie first and foremost; he was an enthusiast who took others along with him. Frank Fyfe introduced a new flavour and his enthusiasm and hard work gave the unstructured "folk community" much-needed direction, and in the Balladeer Coffee Bar the nebulous beginnings of a Wellington Folk Club emerged. Memory says Max was a driving force for this. Earlier than that Joan Prior, Neil Colquhoun, Graham McGregor and only one or two others met in Nairn Street to play folk music and start a club. (That was in the late fifties and someone involved could probably tell you more exactly.)

The Balladeer was initially devoid of seating but equipped with palliasses on the floor. Soon there were wooden forms and I think trestle tables. There were a few wooden kitchen style stools for any musicians who could not perform standing. Frank was often serving coffee for most of the night but could be prevailed upon to contribute a few numbers which would leave Mary with rather too much to do as they were usually extremely busy. Amongst the artists I heard perform were: Phil Gardiner, Brok(once), Max Whinnie, Jay Renau?, Graham McGregor, Val Murphy and a host of others whose names have vanished with the mists of time.

As well as the famous Monde Marie, there was another "Folk" music venue very popular with the general public but judged disparagingly as "commercial" by discerning folkies, I think it was called the "Chez Paree." It was upstairs in the Embassy theatre building. I remember that there were often very competent musicians there but some were heavily "Pop" influenced and not considered genuine Folk musicians.

In the early sixties a lot of folkies belonged to, or were followers, of the Wellington Jazz Club, and blues and bluegrass were definitely folk music. A lot of folk music was American - protest and workers' rights type songs. Country and Western however was something else I think, and it still is.

Mary Seddon of Monde Marie

Mary Dorothea Seddon (1924-2000) was a person of great character and a vivid personality. She graduated 1946, B.A. Victoria University College and had an eventful life, including proprietorship of the cafe 'Monde Marie' in Roxburgh Street, Wellington, known for its contribution to the city's life and especially to folk music culture in the 1960s.She was a grand-daughter of Richard Seddon, Premier of New Zealand 1893-1906.

Internet discussion between Richard Mills, Helen Phare and Sharyn Staley, 10 Nov 1999

RM (reflectively): When I was 17, I once sang for eight hours straight at the Monde Maree in Wellington, for Maree whatsername - my own two-hour booked stint, and then covering the stints of the three subsequent artists who failed to front for their shows. Towards the end she was fortifying me with rum-laced coffees. It was all by ear - thank God for a transient audience.

HP: She was Mary Seddon if I remember correctly. I used to play there in the late sixties for $1 per hour and was grateful for the work. She used to feed us afterwards on cheese and tomato sauce sandwiches. Which I was grateful for also.

RM: That's the one. Used to be a great gig, fed a lot of folkies, and I wouldn't have been that accomodating for another, perhaps. It was my choice to sing that long - I just kept on filling in at her request as singers failed to front that day - dunno what happened, just one of those days. It was later things went sour. We prolly crossed tracks, you and I - I used to live at 2 Roxburgh Street, right beside it, for a while, but I went to Christchurch in, hmmm, 67?

SS: She still is Mary Seddon! She was certainly still alive a couple of years ago when I last had contact with her - she's in her 80s (or maybe 90s by now). I used to work in her kitchen, as did many of the folkies. We started around 6-7pm and some nights we didn't get away until 3 or 4 in the morning if a good singaround session started up, however she did feed us too and allow us free coffee. We didn't mind the hours as most of us wanted to work there for the music as much as the money.

Dominion 8 July 2000:-

SEDDON, Mary Dorothea.- On July 6, 2000. Daughter and devoted carer of Bea and Tom, only sister of Richard and Derry. Remembered as a first class teacher and gardener, battling Wellington cafe pioneer, film reviewer, and all round iconoclast - leaving as the magnolias are in full bloom. A Memorial Gathering will be held in Old St Paul's, Mulgrave St. Wellington on Monday July 10 at 2pm to say goodbye.

More Monde Marie

Mike Stebbings writes

I lived in Wellington around 1961-64 having come from Motueka as 16 year old.

At the time, I for a long while shared a top floor flat over Maitland Radio Coy in Cambridge Terrace? (or the other side) - (the eastern side from memory) with Max Winnie and Bruce McDonald (Film/TV Producer).

I also sang (although poorly) at the Monde Marie and the Chez Paree.

Dave Hollis? had a group playing PPM stuff, Max Winnie played a variety of music but mainly Blues/Jazz, Val Murphy sat around singing beautifully (Kumbaya) and looking sexy, Arthur Toms was there, and also a tall ginger haired and bearded guy who sang a variety of folk and tried other stuff including semi flamenco from memory. I cant remember his name, possibly because he didn't like me. May have been Rod, or something similar.

I remember my first seeing TV in a cafe somewhere near the bus terminal in Courtenay Place? down near the Empire Theatre and the show we watched was a Josh White Special.

Josh White came out 8-10 months later for a concert and sang in concert and at the Monde Marie. He actually came back to Cambridge Terrace later and sat playing the guitar with the "smoke behind the ear."

Another visitor to Mary's was a fellow by the name of Nick Villard, and the place would fill with females when he arrived. I think he came from Auckland or somewhere up that way. And there was also a trad banjoist by the name of Craig Berry, and his specialty was Satchmo style and "Mack the Knife" etc.

I used to do gardening for Mary, and she would tell me stories about the Monde Marie and the various personalities and "her people". Sometimes I would stay over at her house as I had no way to get back home with my guitar. I was always well fed all the time and I also remember the pasta dishes at the Monde well; for all intents and purposes she probably kept me alive.

The scene as I noticed somewhere, may have been getting "Poppyfied" at the time, but as a consequence, the Monde Marie saw some fairly heavy personalities including Judy Collins, Paul Stookey and Mary Travers, Josh White, to name a few, and there were numerous concerts at the Wellington Town Hall including Segovia, PPM, Julian Bream, and others that I will remember later.

I have a lot of fond memories of the time in Wellington, which ended when Max, Craig and I left for the Gold Coast in Queensland to sing for Keith (Dunstan?), the previous owner of the Chez Paree.

The Hamilton County Bluegrass Band: Dave Calder , Paul Trenwith, Colleen Bain (Trenwith), Len Cohen, Alan Rhodes, Lindsay Bedogni.

Dave Calder of HCBB

Dave Calder was a member of the Hamilton County Bluegrass Band

He also recorded The Black Swans in 1972 on the LP "Song of a Young Country"

In 1970 Dave and Panda Calder made an LP Come in Stranger (- now out of stock)
Side One: Come in stranger - Johnny Cash
Winters night - Gordon
Stoney's waltz - Trad (actually Ernest Stoneman)
Short grass - Ian Tyson & Sylvia Fricker
Nothing to it - Trad (actually Doc Watson)
Over the water - Trad
Highborn lady - Trad
Side Two: Rosalind my friend - Dave Jordan
Little Sadie - Trad
Come by the hills - Trad
Sugar on the floor - Trad
"Sonata" for clawhammer - Dave Calder
Waterbound - Siegel arr. Calder
The singing bird - Trad

"Dave and Panda went their separate ways some time ago ....Panda was in a group with my big sister when I was a little school girl - it was called Dale, Panda and Bernie."(Dale Polson and Bernie Cherry)

Before Bernie, Dale & Panda there was a similar formation with Dave instead of Bernie and they sang at 3NFF in 1967. Sharon S. has them on tape doing Wild Mountain Thyme - just loverly she says!

Dave came back to NZ for the HCBB reunion and he was also here for the Auckland FF at Kumeu this year (1999). He was talking about his job as a special education teacher in London. If you wanted to get hold of him you could ask the Trenwiths in Hamilton - write to HCBB, 9 Nixon Street, Hamilton.

Frank Fyfe, Mary Seddon, Dave Calder, Dan Bergin, The Waipango Billy Lickers, Tex Morton

Dan Bergin

He wrote great songs, including "The Man who Buried Somebody's Darling."

Diana Balham 2004, writes:

Dan Bergin was a gentle man from a 1930s Wanganui Irish Catholic childhood, an art-school ingénue, firewatcher, deer-culler, whaler, drainlayer, writer, singer and one of the most exuberant raconteurs most of us have never met. He also loved his ceilidhs and his home hosted many a good knees-up over the years.

Living with his wife Wendy in Ellerslie, Auckland, in his seventies and taking morphine to control his pain, he was still an adventurer who refused to go quietly.

He featured in Jack Perkins's 2004 Spectrum documentary on National Radio, Hell on Earth was the Meat Deck of a Whaler.

He swore that his antics inspired a number of anecdotes in his pal Barry Crump's classic A Good Keen Man. "After three years on the firewatching, I then went deer-culling," he said. "That was in the Ureweras. It was a marvellous place. As long as you kept your tobacco dry, you were right."

Then the hell of a whaler's life working out of the Great Barrier Island in the 1950s. "Someone would accidentally puncture the whale's stomach and the smell was horrific. Each whale had barrel-loads of parasites and they'd be wriggling around on the deck"

And his Irish Catholic childhood. "Uncle Tom would come in with his pea, pie and pud and wake us up, light the candle in the bedroom and she would listen to hear the clock strike 12 before she would eat the meat pie. Being a Catholic, she didn't eat meat on Fridays. And I can remember her gazing searchingly into my uncle's face and saying, ŒYou haven't touched the clock, have you, Tom?', in case Tom had put the clock on a half hour, so that he could get to bed.

"I remember mother's mother, she never made five feet
yet she made a dozen kids in her bed in Dublin St
And when I was a little lad I shlipped in her big bed
We hardly made a bump that you would notice."

Dan was a man who loved to dance and to fill his house with singers and musicians; a man who had seen hardship and hell and retained his essential humanity. Thanks Dan. Go raibh maith agat agus síochán leat.

The Waipango Billy Lickers

Tex Morton

Condensed from Tex Morton, Boundary Rider in New Zealand on the Edge.

New Zealander Tex Morton lived a life of breath-taking achievement, attaining mastery, fortune, and huge international fame in several careers: a recording star (300 songs), singer-songwriter, stage artist (touring sensation in North America, Europe, Australasia), circus entrepreneur, best-selling comic writer, Hollywood screen actor, and world authority of hypnotherapy with a Doctorate from McGill University.

He was named Robert William Lane when he was born in Nelson in August 30th 1916.

He began playing the guitar early, and at 14, born to run, left home to launch himself into show business. By the age of 16 he was playing in a travelling band and made his first recordings -the first hillbilly and western songs to be recorded outside America. The 20 or so sides were pressed by a Wellington company onto aluminium discs, which could only be played with a hardwood or bamboo thorn needle. They were played extensively on New Zealand radio and are now priceless.

In 1932 he took a new name, Tex Morton, from a sign seen on a Waihi garage, and toured the length of New Zealand. In Bluff at the end of 1932 he departed for Australia, beginning as a busker in Sydney with an old suitcase and a battered guitar. But the Depression made work hard to come by. Morton was forced to take any job on offer, working on the then-being-built Sydney Harbour Bridge, singing outside bars, and doing stints as a drover and shearer.

Tex then drifted up to Queensland and for three years led a rough and tumble life there. In 1935 he returned to Sydney where he hustled the Columbia Gramophone Company for an audition. He won a talent quest and recorded eight singles.

But in 1936, broke and disappointed that his four year foray into the Australian entertainment scene had been unsuccessful, he arrived back in New Zealand,

Here he was confronted by the surprise of his life: life size cut-outs of himself in record stores all over New Zealand, promoting "Tex Morton, the Singing Cowboy Sensation". His recordings had become an overnight success without his knowledge. Morton found himself an idol, mobbed in the streets from Palmerston North to Perth.

The young singer's years of sleeping under bridges, riding on goods trains, performing in circuses and singing in the streets had miraculously paid off.

During the mid to late 30's Morton flourished as a recording star. He recorded 68 tracks in the next four years. His style had matured to a distinctively Antipodean sound. Lyrics reflected much of the harsher side of life during the Depression years, with titles like Yodelling Bagman and Wrap Me Up in my Stockwhip and Blanket.

Some of his most famous tracks dealt with his earlier experiences (and those familiar to many of his fans) as a "boundary-rider", hitching free rides on the trains. The most notable, Sergeant Small, was about a ruthless Queensland policeman who tracked down fare evaders. This song was banned in Australia.

Riding down from Queensland on a dirty timber train,
We stopped to take on water in the early morning rain,

I saw a hobo coming by, he didn't show much fear,
He walked along the line of trucks, saying any room in here.

Then I pulled the cover back saying throw your blankets in,
He dropped his billy and his roll and he socked me on the chin.

        Chorus
                I wish that I was fourteen stone and I was six feet tall,
                I'd take a special trip up north, to beat up Sergeant Small.

He took me to the gaolhouse, he got me in the cells,
I realised then who he was, it was not hard to tell.

I've worked for Jimmy Sharman, and at fighting I'm no dunce,
But let me see the fellow who can take on five at once.