Dunedain 1996 final performance

[wes williams]

I was fortunate to be able to attend 'The Fighting Cocks' folk club in Kingston, Surrey roughly 1970-1974. One of the main groups there were Dunedain and they featured  Mike Huxley on melodeon,concertina, etc. They had a reunion in 1996 with lots of their songs accompanied by concertina, but in this performance, John Rodd does most of the concertina work. If you'd like a bit of a feel as to how many folk clubs were back in the 1970s, here's the video (~1 hour 20 mins and only 79 views so far in 7 years, so probably never linked here!).

 

Dunedain 1996 final performance

 

Mike played a new Crabb anglo, but I don't remember hearing John play concertina until later, when he worked with Shirley Collins and various 'Albion' line ups.

 

[Dan Worrall]

Wes,

Thanks for posting this. I am the current owner of the concertina that John Rodd was playing there. It has a 9 fold bellows that Rosalie Dipper made; you can see it expanded on the video. It's a 38 button Jeffries CG, which I obtained from Alex West a few years ago. Nice instrument. Not sure why Rodd quit playing concertina; in his Morris On days he was quite the player.

[Alan Day]

I knew John well he attended The Black Horse  Nuthurst Sessions in Sussex a number of times and saw him at Kingston Hospital where he worked. John was then a superb player and very precise. He got interested in Cajun Music . I think he went to America, but lost all contact with him.

Al

[wes williams]

John was a very good player on many instruments back then. There was a lot of cross pollination with the group 'Gryphon' (who included Richard Harvey, now one of our major UK composers) and I think I remember John playing a crumhorn back then as well, and you can hear this (Estampe) from 'Folk on Friday' on the same site as the 1996 recording.

 

But if my memory hasn't failed, I seem to remember a conversation where John was going to get a concertina, but it was going to be an English. Thank goodness he took up the anglo later!