Jimmy Powells Music

When I met Jimmy Powells in the year 2000, I had been singing solo acapella in local folk clubs for two or three years  before very recently joining up with a guitarist at Cramlington, John Baston. I think he may have taken pity on me always standing up to sing my strange songs on my own! I had done a bit of singing in my teens at the marvellous youth club I attended, Centre 64 in Blyth, Northumberland. Then in my twenties I had a couple of seasons in Beaconsfield Operatic society in Blyth, where I sang alto.

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I met Jimmy while visiting my friend, Gerry Tapscott, who sang at Cramlington Folk Club with John Redpath. John had invited Jimmy to join in with them for the Folk club's open-air concert for BBC Music Live.  As Jimmy has already said, we started talking under his golf umbrella and life changed forever. John Baston had to take a back seat, poor soul, as of course Jimmy obviously wanted to take over on guitar. I had been trying to learn that instrument for a couple of years. It didn't take long for my new partner to declare that "I would never be able to play guitar". He was dead right. I was one of those people who, whilst not being tone deaf, just didn't have what I call "The Ear". I couldn't hear chord changes. Jimmy, on the other hand, can hear and play complicated tunes with ease. He had made several wonderful mandolin CDs and had two recording contracts, all without knowing a note of written music.  

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When we started to rehearse together I had a lot to learn and sometimes it was hard going. But we had so much in common, including our exacting office jobs. Jimmy knew instinctively what key I needed to sing a particular song in. Before, singing on my own, it had been a case of trial and error!  We quickly began to get a repertoire of songs together, by far the most of which were in the Americana genre. We began singing in Cramlington and Ashington Folk Clubs.

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At the end of 2001 I moved in with him and his two lovely sons. By the end of 2002 Jimmy had devised his Famous Faces musical quiz show and we did that at least once and sometimes up to three times a week. Life was hectic!  In the show I kept each team's scores and sang with Jimmy. Jimmy maintained that our audiences (mostly over 60) liked the old songs. I found myself singing One Day at a Time and Blue Moon. Another favourite was Pal 'o My Cradle Days. Even, somewhat cringingly on my part, Que Sera Sera.

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For the Folk clubs, I came by a wonderful CD by the late American singer Kate Wolf. I loved the tone of her voice and soon picked up some of her songs, principally Here In California' and my favourite, Across the Great Divide.

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I've had a wonderful life in music with Jimmy. Being eventually able to take up the double bass and in recent years the ukulele bass has added an extra dimension. Jimmy is the real musician in our set up though and I am eternally grateful I met him that fateful day twenty years ago.

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Carol Powells March 2020