John Kirkpatrick
Album: Tunes From The Trenches: Songs From The First And Second World Wars
Label: Fledg’ling
Tracks: 15
Website: http://www.johnkirkpatrick.co.uk

Squeezebox maestro John has been delighting audiences on the folk circuit for decades, not just with his consummate mastery of all things squeezy but also with his forthright and lively singing and his unerring capacity for choosing prime material – and he’s written some inordinately fine songs too, ranging from boisterous to bawdy to sensitive and deeply pensive. And a whole album of a-man-and-his-box has never been too much for me!

Here for his latest album release, John has immersed himself wholeheartedly in the massive corpus of songs from the times of the First and Second World Wars, assembling a bulging kit-bag of goodies (not just for this recording, in fact, but also for a touring show). He demonstrates for our delectation and edification how the wartime ethos spawned two different kinds of material: firstly the popular hits of the day, designed to keep the spirits and morale high, and secondly the songs sung by service personnel on the Front Line. Often, the two strands collided where familiar songs were wedded to new words (sometimes significantly risqué or fruity ones!), and John’s selection gives exposure to a number of these highly entertaining variants. Some of these were almost insanely cheerful, and this aspect is accentuated by the augmentation of John’s voice and box on several tracks by a lusty “soldiers’ chorus” comprising his four sons. As in a family, the soldiers’ comradeship and spirit is celebrated by their communal singing, which draws the listener in too.

The entirely idiomatic nature of these performances is irresistible; it’s guaranteed to keep the smile on the face in the face of adversity, and yet within the intimate sense of nostalgia the sentiment is rarely in danger of being displaced by sentimentality – arguably the closest being I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier and the Down Forget-Me-Not Lane set that marries Flanagan & Allen and Sam Brown to Vera Lynn. At the other end of the spectrum, we can marvel in John’s vibrant and ebullient treatments of tongue-twisting patter songs like Sister Susie’s Sewing Shirts For Soldiers and other almost as wordy delights, the accomplishment of which challenges John so clearly relishes.

A special feature of this disc is the canny juxtaposition of familiar and unfamiliar repertoire. Standards like Pack Up Your Troubles, Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye and Keep The Home Fires Burning inevitably have their place in the well-constructed medleys, and there’s no shame in providing us with healthy rations of Run, Rabbit, Run, Browned Off and Lloyd George’s Beer to keep our voices fortified, while lesser-known gems unearthed by John here include Old Joe Mills, Never Mind The Food Controller and The Thing-Ummy-Bob – and the finale, The Last Mile Home, is an absolute belter. In short, this disc forms a veritable cornucopia of wartime songs that stands alone as one of the finest anthologies of its genre.

And the presentation is impeccable – typical Fledg’ling excellence – with ideally sepia-toned package and wonderful 20-page booklet containing full track notes sporting an abundance of copiously researched information and even a glossary of soldier slang. But here’s the sting in the tail; for as we read through to the end, we discover that the release was intended to be even more, and that it was a bit of a miracle that it was ever completed, for John’s dear wife Sally (who was due to add vocal harmonies to the recordings) suddenly took ill, and tragically died last November. Thus, a few of the planned items had to be withdrawn from the CD, and even the cheerier numbers will necessarily gain a deep poignancy, with the whole project now leaving behind a keen emotional resonance.

David Kidman