As with the Beatles in Germany, Jacqui and Bridie had gone to America and come back a finely honed duo: indeed, they became the first professional female folk duo in the UK. They knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses and were able to build upon them. Returning to their weekly folk club, it was evident that they needed bigger premises. When the duo entertained a luncheon club at a Unitarian church in Mill Street in the Dingle, the minister offered them his church hall for a weekly meeting. That is how Jacqui and Bridie came to be at their best known venue, the Domestic Mission.
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Unlike the Spinners’ club which had moved to Gregson’s Well at the top of Brunswick Road, the Domestic Mission was unlicensed. Young teenagers could be admitted and so Jacqui, Bridie and their friends performed for an audience from ages 15 to 80. Indeed, theirs was the only folk club in the area to cater deliberately for a family audience. It was less rowdy than some clubs and the patrons were coming for the music. However, they might lose the audience during the interval to the pub.
J&B on stage
Maybe it was always thus with Aunt Nellies playing the pianos in the parlour, but the 1960s was a decade when the people started making music. Almost anyone who could sing or could play an instrument was encouraged to do so in public and there was a vast rise in beat clubs, jazz clubs and folk clubs throughout the country. Following a TV documentary, Liverpool was called The Singing City and Daniel Farson’s “Beat City” cements this point.
Bridie recalled in 1984, “When we came back from America, we found the Seekers were in the charts with Judith Durham’s lovely voice. They sang some folk songs and it was interesting that were getting national acclaim and something was happening to folk music. The Spinners had gone fully professional while we were away and we got on a TV show with other folk musicians called Hootenanny. Folk music was becoming very popular. The main difference between pop and folk was that folk songs made you think a bit.”
Despite their nationwide popularity, both the Spinners and Jacqui and Bridie determined to continue their weekly nights in Liverpool. Being close to the community enabled them to develop their repertoires and they would use club nights to try out new material. Several of the folk artists, including Jacqui, played guitars made by a local musician, Stan Francis.
Folk clubs were springing up all over the country and at one point there were 28 different ones on Merseyside. You could be out every night at a folk club. Geoff Speed, who has presented BBC Radio Merseyside’s Folk Scene with Stan Ambrose since 1967, ran his own club in Widnes: “Liverpool was one of the first areas where folk clubs started mushrooming. No doubt it was the success of the Spinners club plus the fact that there were so many songs from Liverpool itself. People love hearing songs about where they lived”.
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Tom Paxton. A very young looking Tom doing a turn at the folk club. Tom Paxton
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Jacqui and Bridie’s Folk Club 50th Year and Final Night
The programme. We were delighted to see our names on the same bill as the likes of Mississippi John Hurt, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee and Gordon Lightfoot.
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