Folk Club Member : Country Joe Phillips

During national service in 1955, I played and sang in a very early Rock 'n Roll band called The Scat Cats, but they always let me sing at least two country songs in the course of a gig.

When I was fourteen my brother came back on leave from Germany where he was doing military national service along with a lot of Americans forces. He had a 78 rpm record of The Lovesick Blues, which he’d bought from the U.S army equivalent of the NAFFI. From that moment I was completely hooked by Hank Williams music, I just wanted to play guitar and sing.

In the USA Elvis Presley, who was four months older than me, was equally as smitten, along with Glen Campbell, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Merl Haggard, Buddy Holly and an unbelievable amount of other singers, both professional and semi-amateurs like myself.

When I got married in 1960 I gave up singing and playing until that September evening in 1973 when I became a founder member of Bingham Folk Club. I am not by nature a clubbable type of person and I’ve never stood on a stage and sung a folksong in my life, that's why BFC has worked over the years, anyone can turn up and they will be welcome. They don’t have to be committed to folk music or feel they are “not one of the in crowd”. I am proud to have been in right from the start. It’s a much-underrated organisation.