Hilary Athey writes…

Thank you for the credit over the initial picture I sent in of Paul on the Weyfest stage with Mungo Jerry for the first time in 30 years John, but can I point out that as well as being a Mungo fan, I am also a great Paul King fan and have been since 1970. Granted, unless it had been for Paul’s contribution to the music made by Mungo Jerry for those two years back in the early 1970s, then I would probably have never heard his music - except for that track called Plastic Jesus of course.

From hearing Paul with Mungo Jerry back in the early 1970s, I always liked the timbre of his voice in the social comment ‘Tramp’, during the vivid and bawdy ‘The Man behind the Piano’, the evocative stories of ‘Sad-Eyed Joe’ and ‘Little Louis’ and the poignant lament of ‘Hey Rosalyn’. Paul’s vocals gave Mungo Jerry a lighter and more melodic perspective to their music and, although it wasn’t to everyone’s taste, I grew to love those tracks as much as anything else recorded at that time. After Paul left Mungo Jerry and formed the King Earl Boogie Band, I bought their first album Trouble At Mill and it was a frequently played addition to my vinyl collection, I often wondered who Tim Evans was and ‘Bad Storm Coming’ was and still is prophetic. Of course, it contained the thwarted hit single ‘Plastic Jesus’ which was banned by the BBC but has been covered so many times by others, most notably by that most stalwart of festival bands – The Levellers.

Moving towards the 1980s and I bought ‘Live at the Limping Whippet’ but then I lost touch with what Paul was doing, life got more complicated, my musical tastes were broadening and I moved on from Mungo Jerry too. I still played their music occasionally but I’d lost ‘Mill’ and ‘Whippet’ in one of my many house moves some time in the 80s although they never really faded from my memory.

Around 1995, I found a review that mentioned ‘The Mill is Gone’ had been made by a reformed King Earl Boogie Band and bought that along with Paul’s solo ‘Houdini’s Moon’. They’ve been played fairly constantly since and one of my favourite tracks is ‘Listen to Reason’ from ‘Houdini’s Moon’. I’d assumed that Paul had retired from playing live music though so dismissed the thoughts of seeing him live from my mind.

Fast forwarding to this summer, the 40th anniversary of ‘In the Summertime’ and a chance checking of the net turned up this website www.paulking.info. I realised that Paul was still gigging and not too far from home so in July 2010, I saw Paul play for the first time along with Colin Pattenden and Chris Bryant as ‘Skeleton Crew’ at the Prince of Wales in Oatlands Village.

Whoa, I was pleasantly stunned at just how good Paul’s voice is live, the combination with Colin and Chris works really well and I was enrapt from the opening number. I recognised some of the tracks from Houdini’s Moon, some traditional standards and some that had been sung with Mungo Jerry but with Paul’s own interpretation. To my absolute delight, I ended up playing the zobstick for a couple of numbers. Have you any idea how ecstatic I was? – 40 years of fandom culminating in playing an instrument and standing right next to one of my heroes. I was 52 going on 12 all over again and bounding around like an over-enthusiastic puppy.

In the 3 or 4 months since finding out how much music Paul has actually made over the years, I’ve managed to replace the missing vinyl items and have collected a few more, bringing me fairly up to date with Paul’s output, and, with the amount of listening I’ve done recently, I can really hear how much of Paul was in the Mungo Jerry of the early days. The ‘Winds of Change’ Anthology gives a broad overview of Paul’s work, ‘Scraping the Bone’ and ‘Boogie Woogie, Skiffle and Blues’ are excellent to get the feel for Paul’s live performances with Skeleton Crew and there are some otherwise unreleased gems on ‘Last Supper?’ A digitised version of the King Earl Boogie Band - Trouble At Mill is also available on a single CD with Paul’s first solo album ‘Been in the Pen too Long’ and of course ‘The Mill is Gone’ is classic boogie woogie with an updated version of ‘Plastic Jesus’. The proposed rerelease of Paul’s ‘Eclipse of the Willow’ fan club tape on CD sounds good, different versions of various tracks plus some material I’ve only heard live is something for fans to look forward to. Thanks to John Burton for pointing me in the direction of ‘Live at the Limping Whippet’ being sold at a reasonable price, I’ve now got that and ‘Trouble At T’Mill’ back in my collection of vinyl too.

On to Weyfest - I’d seen Mungo Jerry a couple of times during the summer and had already booked my ticket for Weyfest at Farnham – not a festival I’d been to before but I like to explore new places and it isn’t too far from home either. I’d heard rumours that Paul could be joining them on stage on the Friday night, it was an earlybird show for the festival, available only to those who were camping for the whole weekend (and selected day guests) and promised to be a great venue to end a busy summer of quality gigs for Mungo Jerry in celebration of the 40th year since their first hit record. Skeleton Crew were also playing the night before at the Prince of Wales, I had everything loaded for a great weekend of good music and relaxation and was set to party.

The preceding week though was a ‘will they won’t they play on stage together’ situation with announcements going up and down on line like a yoyo but in the end, I just determined that I would have a good time whether they got together or not. There had been some thwarted attempts at reunions in the past so no-one was holding their breath over it...

A dash to the Prince of Wales on the Thursday after work, I enjoyed it as much as the previous month, played the zobstick again, had a quick chat with Paul but I didn’t want to ask if he was going to play Weyfest – I ‘Aint Superstitious’...then home in readiness for Weyfest. One thing that was commented on was that Paul and Skeleton Crew performed ‘In the Summertime’ that night which he had never (apparently) played before so perhaps an auguring of things to come?

Weyfest itself – a great little festival with an eclectic selection of bands ranging from Curved Air, Focus and Wishbone Ash, through to The Stranglers via that grand old man of blues, Jackie Lynton and his amazingly obscene talking microphone stand – that stand must have been a pirates parrot in a previous life! Colin Pattenden and Chris Bryant play in the Jackie Lynton Band too and the live show is great entertainment, good music with robust humour – not for the fainthearted for sure. There is plenty of non-festival activity too, artists in situ to sketch you, face painting and other kids stuff, music lessons, reiki and other alternative practices, yoga sessions, rare breeds of livestock and of course the little steam railway that runs around the site perimeter. It’s absolutely charming and the woodland setting is unique.

There were some familiar faces from the Prince of Wales and we gathered near the stage front for the show. I’d previously wandered backstage with one of the other fans and had said a quick hello to Paul, he’d arrived in good time and was sussing out the layout, waiting for the members of Mungo Jerry to arrive. From the correspondence over the previous week and the uncertainty as to whether Paul would actually be playing on the Weyfest stage , I knew that there would have been no time for a rehearsal, so despite Paul’s talent, versatility and years of live gigging experience, it must have been quite a challenge for him to have the prospect of being on stage with a band who had played together for years, especially given the length of time since he’d had last been on stage under the Mungo Jerry banner. The other band members arrived, brief sound checks were done, the guys took their places on stage and Colin Webb, the organiser of Weyfest introduced Mungo Jerry. There were obviously a number of hard core fans in the audience by the clapping and cheering that went up, yells of Dorset, Dorset, Dorset as Ray was welcomed back to Weyfest then Colin turned to Paul, beckoned him to the mic and Paul introduced himself, not by words but by making his harmonica announce to the world that Paul was back! King King King King came the shouts from the audience, a broad smile emanated from Paul and Mungo Jerry launched into Open Up, Lets Roll Baby.

Halfway through this first song, Paul and Ray shared a mic and it was so good to see them together after all these years, taking turns on the single mic and Ray with his arm round Paul’s shoulders, with a big smile on his face and urging Paul to extract every last ounce of emotion from his harmonica. A couple more songs were played, Mungo Jerry were in full show flight with Paul contributing his fine harmonica playing.

Going back to 1971 was the song Lady Rose. I’ve heard this song sung by both Paul and Ray live and their versions are quite different now as their individual styles have devolved away from that original Mungo Jerry sound but it worked, the timings balanced and it was as if they’d last played it 30 days before, not 30 years. Paul was using his acoustic guitar by now, strumming away just like that young man motoring down the river in the boat some 39 years ago (see the Lady Rose video on YouTube). A showcase track from Paul next, Going up the Country/Midnight Special, which I’d heard both on Mungo Jerry records and also live at Skeleton Crew gigs. Paul’s harmonica was superb with the very up-tempo guitar playing that is distinctively Paul’s live style, the band followed him well and Ray joined in with some stunningly ballsy blues voice accompaniment ‘to Paul’s harmonica. Paul took a break after this for a couple of Mungo Jerry rock and roll numbers, rejoining them for No More Woman Blues on the harmonica. Everyone wants to know why I sing the blues – a solid traditional blues song with the joy of Ray and Paul as two fine and complementary harmonica players playing together, an unfamiliar song to Paul but with nods from Ray and guidance from the other band members, he knew when his solos were coming up. Ray then played that distinctive opening riff from ‘In the Summertime’ as a teaser. A big cheer went up when Ray thanked Paul again for joining him on stage then the band tripped into ‘In the Summertime’. Paul was playing the banjo and for the first time in all the Mungo Jerry and Paul King gigs I’ve been to, I heard the live version played nearer to the original than I’ve ever heard before. The audience erupted, dancing and singing along, I looked behind me to see a sea of happy faces bobbing up and down in time to the music – that seminal song never fails to uplift people and it always leaves a smile on everyone’s faces. So simple, so happy-go-lucky, (so politically incorrect for the 21st century but somehow it doesn’t matter) – it still brings a sense of freedom and carefree living which is so important in these days of stress, pressure and materialism. The song led into the finale of Roadhouse Blues/Nutbush City Limits then it was over, 75 minutes of good solid, well played music from a band who know how to put on a good show.

Colin Webb came back on the stage, obviously delighted at the performance and the audience reaction, thanked everyone for coming to Weyfest and urged us to have a good time. If the opening evening was anything to go by, that was assured and, in hindsight, it was!

We drifted away, the day visitors back to their homes, the campers to our tents to party a little longer or to get some sleep. I spent a while with neighbours then chose the latter, my tent was warm and comfortable and I wanted to get an early night.

As I drifted off to sleep though, I could hear the sound of a harmonica playing from the direction of the Leatherhat lads’ camping area– I wondered whether had Paul joined them for some wind-down boogie time? Well, if he had, he deserved it. It can’t have been easy after all the ‘will they won’t they’ uncertainty and also the length of time since both Paul and Ray had been on a stage together but the gig happened, the fans were delighted and it proved that whatever has happened in the past, it is possible to move on to be amicable and to create better things.

What would I like to see next though? Maybe Paul King and Ray Dorset having an informal jam, the two of them away from the spotlight in a smallish gig – that really would be a session and a half....perhaps with some of the musicians from both of the current bands – a kind of Skeleton Jerry (now that sounds like a character from one of Paul’s songs!). Otherwise, I would like to see the full Skeleton Crew band playing on a decent sized festival stage where they could let rip with plenty of space for people to dance and boogie – I wonder if that could be arranged somehow, somewhere in 2011? I’d be queuing for a ticket if it was!

Playlist Weyfest 2010…
Open Up
Let's Roll Baby
Rock Me Mama
Dust Pneumonia Blues
Lady Rose
Going up the Country/Midnight Special
Baby Lets Play House
Alright Alright Alright
Long Legged Woman Dressed in Black
No More Woman Blues
Why I Sing the Blues
In the Summertime
Roadhouse Blues/Nutbush City Limits