Graham’s Story - the KGB years … and so much more!
When Danielle and I moved from Northern Ireland to Crawley in 1970, so that I could take up a language-teaching post at Thomas Bennett School and Danielle an offer of a place on a PhD course at Sussex University, among the first people with whom we became friendly were two young colleagues of mine, a young Physics teacher called Graham Porter and a young ( we were all young in those days! ) PE teacher called Kay Ashberry. Kay and Graham had already discovered a shared passion for Simon and Garfunkel, so when I heard them sing a couple of their songs at the staff Christmas party that year, the path ahead was clearly set!
It only took a very few meetings for us to decide that we had the makings of quite a decent trio along with quite an overlap in musical tastes. All three played guitar tolerably well, Graham had additional talents on banjo and tin whistle and, best of all, our voices blended nicely.
Remaining - two small problems - a name and a venue!
After considerable soul-searching, believe it or not, we hit on the highly original idea of calling ourselves KGB, basically just our own initials. It did entail a certain degree of risk - after all, there was already a group with that name in existence and with a not very enviable reputation with which we were not entirely sure we wanted to be associated! However, we soon found that most people were amused rather than threatened by it, and it did allow us to use the catch-phrase : “We have ways of making you sing!” which proved over the next few years to be very true.
We eventually found a pub landlord who was prepared to give us his upstairs room for free once a week on the prospect of a decent increase in his bar takings. I don’t think he ever regretted it! Crawley Folk Club was founded there and then. We ran it weekly at the Locomotive in Three Bridges Road throughout the early 1970’s, had tremendous fun ourselves, gave a lot of people a lot of pleasure, and in the process brought many of the biggest names in folk music at the time to the club - Martin Carthy, Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger, Sydney Carter ( remember “Lord of the Dance”?), Dick Gaughan from Scotland, Dave Burland the Dalesman, Bob Davenport, that wonderful gravelly-voiced Geordie, Eric Islott, the “singing shantyman” from Bristol, Robin and Barry Dransfield, and countless others, including a young Irish tenor from Coventry called Sean Cannon, who went on to become a longstanding member of the Dubliners. ( It was from Sean that we learned the beautiful Bill Caddick song “John O’ Dreams”. ) We also ran a couple of pretty big concerts - one at the Inn in Tilgate Park with Martin Carthy and the Watersons, and one at the Hawth Theatre with Ralph McTell.
All of this required a lot of organisation and behind-the-scenes work. On top of the regular Tuesday club-night, we would meet a second night in the week to practise and build up our repertoire. Musically, we contributed pretty evenly and blended well, but it was characteristically Graham who arranged bookings of guest-singers and contacted agents (in other words did all the “hard” work). Kay and I were more laid-back in our approach, for Graham everything had to be “just right”. We might tease him occasionally but we really appreciated his attention to detail, his painstaking rigour, his insistence that everything had to be done to the highest possible standard and his preparedness to put in whatever it required to achieve that - good lessons for life too!
Although music was perhaps what brought us together in the first place, our friendship with Graham and Deidre grew into something much, much more. Once we discovered that our wedding anniversaries were within a day of each other in July, we always celebrated them together, and that was symptomatic of the close bond we all felt. We met Deidre’s parents quite early on, got on very well and spent many happy moments in their company, jointly encouraging and admiring (maybe occasionally helping?) as Graham and Deidre developed a lovely garden after they moved into their new home “Wayside” in Horsham. And of course our children all came along within a few years of each other …
Norfolk seemed a very long way away at first, but the strong bonds of that early friendship have never wavered over the years, and indeed got a boost when our elder daughter, Natalie, opted to do her degree at UEA. Over the years, we have always kept in regular contact and managed to mark major landmarks in our respective lives. We have fond memories of a jazz-cruise on the Broads for G & D’s Silver Wedding and the sumptuous party at Squirrel’s Leap for their Ruby Wedding ( How come they seemed to be so close together?) and we were just delighted that they were able to be with us to celebrate our own Golden Wedding in France in 2015.
Golden memories indeed! Graham and Deidre have been a special part of our lives.
Unfortunately there is not a single photo of KGB, but if you fancy a little musical trip down Memory Lane, there are some slightly scratchy 1970’s cassette-recordings in the Music section.
Enjoy!
