Candy Man & the Bathroom on Hold

 

In the late sixties, the BBC put out a lovely little series called Hold Down a Chord, Fingerpicking; where John Pearse attempted to educate the likes of yours truly in the arts of finger-style guitar playing: the mainstay of country blues, folk and country music. As you can see, I bought the slender, magazine-format book that accompanied the series. There was a volume one; as I remember it, in red: as this covered stuff I already had some knowledge of, I never purchased it.

Now, the only tune I ever learned from this book/series was Candy Man, by the very great Reverend Gary Davis: and then, I only learned to play it 'my' way, as ripple-picking is all I've ever really managed (book one of the series!) to grasp. Nevertheless, it opened my ears to his music, and I bought a couple of records of his that became a staple of our listening at a particular point in our adolescence.

To the bathroom, Robin! Our house in Winson Street was essentially a Victorian two-up, two-down with a box-room upstairs rear and an outside privy. Built onto the privy was a brick-built workshop, which housed Dad's tools and the lathe which I now own, but have still yet to recommission. There came a point in the late sixties (about the time of my buying the aforementioned book) when my parents wanted to try and sell the house - one problem: no bathroom - although the outside loo had been connected to the house some years before by knocking through the end wall of the kitchen; that was the limit of our facilities: a downstairs lavatory and no bathroom - not a great selling-point, even in those primitive times.

My Dad being my Dad, decided that the workshop would be the ideal location for a bathroom, next to the loo; so proceeded to move the workshop into the now redundant coal cellar and to block line and plaster the old workshop to make a new bathroom. Before anything was moved/plumbed in, this made a nice little billet for us lads to listen to music in and one of the first records we played in there was the first album I'd bought of the Reverend's, which I still have - a great record with great cover art. The bathroom however, was never finished: it held a bath in the end, which was never plumbed in and the house was compulsorily-purchased by the Council for demolition some years later, precipitating my parents' move to Council accommodation in Harborne, which turned out not to be a bad move, after all.