John Roberts – Cornish Story

Author: John Roberts

John Roberts was born in 1944, in Truro, and attended Bosvigo Primary and later Truro School. In the Sixties he read Modern Languages at Cambridge and after a post grad year in Vienna went back there for a teaching qualification. As a teenager he was in a skiffle group at school, he then joined the Sapphires Dance Band which played its first gig in Trispen Village Hall. He remembers climbing up to feed shillings into the meter every hour or so when the power ran out! At University John moved into folk music and while in Vienna fronted a folk rock band called The Jesters. Back in Cambridge he joined the Southside Jazz Band as a guitarist, quickly changing to banjo on discovering that the guitar wasn’t loud enough (no amplification in trad jazz then of course). This band, interestingly, is still gigging fifty years on. John’s teaching career took him and his family from Radlett, via Dorchester and Faringdon, to Bath though they settled in neighbouring Wiltshire (couldn’t afford Bath). Significantly, for the last twenty years they’ve enjoyed regularly escaping to their St Agnes bolthole. In Wiltshire, it was back to folk rock: a group called Hokum Fokus which started in response to a challenge at a boozy Christmas party: “Bet you guys can’t get a band together!” Well, they did, though John recalls struggling through their first half hour slot at the village barn dance, having just got out of bed with a nasty dose of the flu: there’s dedication for you! Yes, the music goes ‘round and around and in the noughties some of the old folk band reformed as the Rough Street Jug Band. Their first gig was in France but then they calmed down and spent the next fifteen years plaguing the Wiltshire locals (although the band did do a gig in St Agnes a few years ago). Following a brief spell with Bath-based electric band The Howling Sheep, John is now back to his roots in Acoustic Blues and Ragtime – playing solo for a couple of pints in the local pub: foot-tapping songs with guitar and banjo accompaniment.

4 December 201721 January 2021

Music Kernow – A History of the Banjo

Music Kernow

In the fourth article in our Cornish music series, John Roberts regales us with the history of the banjo. You can find last month’s offering which focuses on the Goonhavern Banjo Band here. “The twang’s the thang”…or so it was according to Duane Eddy in 1959, referring to the sound of his electric guitar of course, but…Continue Reading “Music Kernow – A History of the Banjo” →