 |
|||||
|
1968 |
|||||
|
In January 1968 the first batch of Morris recruits met together to take the initial faltering steps that would lead to the formation of a proper Morris side: The Nottingham Dolphin Morris Men.
The original members included Roy Harris, Colin Shaw, Ian Stewart, Lawrence Platt, Roy Dyson, Ian Stevenson, Alan Burke, and a youth who stayed for only a few weeks but left his mark by suggesting kit should include black shoes with cardboard ‘buckles’ painted silver. Apparently Roy Harris had some choice words about the buckle idea and whether it was what he said or some other factor, the youth didn’t stay and even his name has been forgotten with the passage of time, but the memory of those buckles lives on!
John Baxter joined at the second or third practice. He had been at the YMCA at a regular Monday evening EFDSS dance session where he had hoped to strike up with the ladies. The EFDSS group went to the pub round the corner, The Dolphin, after their meetings. John Baxter got talking to the Morris Men and decided to join them instead.
Roy Dyson’s letter of 1969 to Ewart Russell, stated ...
So there was now a group of men, a room to practice in, and a pub to adjourn to after a hot, sweaty, airless practice. The name ‘Dolphin’ was adopted as the club name although in reality the pub was used only a few times (maybe only three occasions) according to Colin Shaw. Colin says that the Dolphin was, ‘A most depressing place whose demise was probably quite timely. I have rarely felt less welcome in a pub - just old locals staring at us’.
Below there is a photograph of the Dolphin Inn taken on October 9th 1947 with the then landlord ‘Charlie’ Blacknell and his daughter Joan on her wedding day. By the time that the Dolphin men used the pub the name board carried the name ‘Dolphin’ only, having dropped the ‘Inn’ along the passage of time.
Photo supplied by Rob Skermer grandson of Charlie Blacknell
Early practices were tight for numbers, but it meant that everyone danced everything and often they occupied their own place in the set and got used to dancing in that position.
The distinctive Morris club badge of a ‘Dolphin akimbo’ was based on a picture that hung on the wall in the Club Room at the Dolphin and the colours of red and green apparently inspired by the colours of Nottingham buses! (This information came from Colin Shaw but it is perhaps not mere coincidence that the colours of The Wessex Morris Men were red and green but in reverse!)
Colin recalls that ‘the picture Looked nothing like a Dolphin, but there was general insistence that the badge should look like that. As the great art student it was, of course, my job to make the first lot of badges. My sewing skills came in really useful! '
Below is a copy of the original picture that inspired the badge, and Colin Shaw’s original felt badge itself. The badge is very crude and basic but it can be seen that it is a faithful attempt at copying the shape of the ‘Dolphin’ that inspired it. There are so far no tales of Colin’s legendary stitch work being in great demand. The mark II felt badge was bigger and with a cleaner outline to the Dolphin.
In April 1968 it was decided to make the arrangement more formal and so a club was formed, a constitution written and officers sworn in. Colin Shaw became the club’s first Squire and foreman, and Roy Dyson the first Bagman.
The constitution was completed and dated 20th May 1968 and states:
Dolphin’s present at the Constitution meeting are recorded as: ‘Messrs. Colin Shaw, Roy Dyson, John Baxter, Laurence Platt, Alan Burke, Ian Stewart, and Tom Cooper’. The meeting was ‘at The Station Hotel, Kegworth and later at The Old Schoolhouse’. According to Colin Shaw, the constitution was not welcomed with universal approval or applause but he insisted that the side had one. Basically Colin drew up the document and with a few amendments it was agreed by those present.
Ian Stewart offered his house, the Old Schoolhouse at Kingston-on-Soar and practices moved there sometime in 1968.
Monday night was still initially the night of choice. The move to Kingston was a success and even after the schoolhouse was no longer available (because Ian decided to refurbish the practice room and clear the hanging cabbages!) the side moved to the local village hall and still practice there in 2008. The association with the ‘Dolphin’ was firmly established so the sides name remained unchanged even though the after practice activities moved on to the Station Hotel, Kegworth
Colin Shaw recalls, ‘I think that it was probably late spring that we went out to the Schoolhouse (and found lodger Bob [Hine] doing the gardening). Oh dear, we're a man short. And that was it for him! I also remember that JB [John Baxter] organised a grand spitting contest in the playground.
Bob had an interest in art and in 1971 drew this picture of the Old Schoolhouse and used it on his Christmas cards in that year.
In 1969, Roy Dyson was to write, in a letter to Ring Bagman Ewart Russell, ...
‘The men meet at 7.30 p.m. on Monday evenings at the Schoolhouse, and dance until about nine thirty. The Squire and Foreman, Colin Shaw, teaches the dances drawing upon his experience with the Wessex Side. Music is provided mainly by Ian Stewart on the button accordion and by Laurence Platt on the concertina (and) melodeon. To date we hold no intention of specialising in any of the Cotswold traditions, being more interested in widening our experience of Morris as a whole. However, there is a strong possibility that some longsword may be introduced during the forthcoming year’.
Neither longsword nor the wearing of the letters N.T.M.C. on the baldricks ever came to pass.
Colin Shaw, looking back, can remember: ‘The First dance was certainly Headington Bean setting – I had been out on my old motorbike cutting sticks (and my thumb) – these were decidedly green and didn’t last too long’. ‘We did a lot of Headington: `Blue Eyed Stranger, Trunkles etc along with odd bits of Adderbury and Bledington. Just enough to put a programme together! Since I was the only one who knew anything, we had to get by on what I could remember. This led to some embarrassment once we got out and saw other sides, since there were a few glaring errors.’ [Getting Upstairs was another dance from Headington that was taught at the beginning).
NTMC newsletter number 4 of April 1968 carried the following message:
MEMBERS REMEMBER… That we have a Morris team open to any one of the blokes that Wants to have a go. Sorry girls, you are not included in this very manly activity – well not during the actual dancing anyway! The team is making very good progress under the tuition and cajolery of COLIN SHAW. There is always room for a few more Volunteers, so step up me lads! We hope to be dancing in public by midsummer, watch out for us.
The annual Thaxted Ring Meeting is regularly attended by Morris Ring member sides at or about the first week in June. The Dolphin men, not yet admitted to membership of the Morris Ring and uninvited, went down to Thaxted in 1968 and gate-crashed it, fortunately not in kit, and it is recalled by John Baxter (JB): ‘On that occasion, we had arrived as spectators at the Ring Meeting, dressed in disreputable plain clothes – bursting with enthusiasm but very deficient in skill. Because of our habit of performing impromptu dances at the roadside, and the great quantities of drink we got down, someone had christened us “The road-side piss-artists”, a name which stuck’ .
John Whitelaw (Wib) recalls: ‘the mob, who in 1968 had taken themselves along to Thaxted, all but incapable of dancing and had generally caused mayhem in the pubs and around the village, had slept in hedge bottoms and generally earned the ire of the local populace’.
Colin Shaw remembers: ‘We certainly did a gig at Clifton College in '68. They had a folky do on and we did a spot in the late afternoon. I remember that it must have been before July as I went on from there to meet a girlfriend at the alternative folk club at the News House on Saturday nights’. Sadly no other evidence for this event exists, neither photographs nor documents.
Terry Paling became a Dolphin Morris Man in September 1968 and recalls, ‘The first time I danced in kit as a Dolphin was at the first Bathampton instructional. I’d only been to three practices and had to buy some whites etc with a couple of days notice. I was learning Bampton for the first time opposite Hugh Rippon’. Terry recalls that the instructional was in October of 1968.
John Whitelaw joined Dolphin in the September of 1968 and, recalling his joining procedure, says: ‘It was Friday evening…when I walked up the stairs of the News House, my first venture to the NTMC. Back again a week later and I became a member. During that evening those that would were invited to become Morris Men. Roy Harris, the club organiser, has this idea of a folk club that was more than just a once a week gathering for a chat and a song and the Morris was part of his concept. I had learnt and forgotten, a couple of dances at Junior School some 15 years earlier and, after a week to think about it, I was pointed in the direction of Laurence Platt. “Do you smoke?” he asked. “Yes”, I replied. He then GAVE ME a cigarette and a light and announced, “That’s the King’s Shilling. You’re now a Morris Man”.
John also remembers: ‘We were all very keen and danced in an aggressive manner. Being all novices proved to be a great advantage as we developed a style which was definitely ‘Dolphin’. Early practices were not necessarily well attended. 5 men Morris proved difficult, but we were adaptable and decided that we had progressed enough to be able to dance to a tape recorder’.
The earliest record of Dolphin actually performing out in kit is Saturday 9th November 1968 when a street collection permit was issued allowing collections to be made at: The Station Hotel, Sutton Bonington; Rose & Crown public house , Zouch; and at the junction of Rectory Road and Gordon Road, West Bridgford, between the hours of 12 noon and 3.00 pm. This event was photographed and reported in The Loughborough Monitor the following week. The newspaper reports...
The cutting shows the side at the start of a stick dance which was probably ‘Rigs of Marlow’ from the Headington tradition a favourite dance from that time. Ian Stewart is the musician and can be seen wearing the ‘musician’s top hat’. Ian had inherited the hat upon the death of his father and he and Laurence Platt would wear the hat only when playing, at all other times they wore the normal decorated straw hats. At that time Dolphin danced to one musician at a time so sharing the hat was not a problem.
In the evening the men danced at an NTMC ceilidh at the Memorial Park Pavilion, West Bridgford. For the first few years the Dolphin men danced at all the NTMC ceilidhs and it was normal to organise a day of dancing to coincide with the event. The men were young, fit and keen to dance out whenever they could, and to partake of an occasional pint of beer.
Bob Hine recalls that the membership at the end of 1968 included: Colin Shaw (Squire and foreman) Roy Dyson (Bagman) Ian Stewart Laurence Platt John Whitelaw (Wib) John Baxter Bob Hine Alan Burke Ian Stevenson (Terry Paling)
Bob recalls that, ‘We were quite tight on numbers and we tended to dance always in the same position, which helped with lines’. Bob doesn’t remember Alan Burke or Ian Stevenson ‘dancing many times with us’.
|
|||||
 BACK
TO PREVIOUS SECTION
|
GO TO NEXT SECTION |
||||
