Hitting The Guildford Music Scene In The Sixties With Blues Band The Crow Janes

Published on: 18 Nov, 2017
Updated on: 20 Nov, 2017

Dave Reading, former full-time journalist and a life-long lover of the guitar, recalls some early experiences at the birth of Guildford’s thriving Sixties music scene

It was Hank Marvin who started it for me. Hank Marvin of the Shadows! Alongside Lennon, Dylan and Cobain, the guy in the thick black specs and never-fading smile doesn’t look like the coolest of rock ‘n’ roll icons.

Dave Reading, back in the day!

But before the graffiti artists declared that Clapton was God, the title was held by Hank. As soon as I heard the pure, resonant sound that he created with his Fender Stratocaster, I just knew I had to get my hands on a guitar.

Throughout Guildford in the late 1950s and early ‘60s there were dozens of teenagers like me who were inspired to take up a musical instrument, motivated by rock ‘n’ roll legends such as Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Lonnie Donegan, as well as Hank.

On a Saturday morning we would head down to Barnes & Avis, the music store that stood near the bottom of Guildford High Street. Without knowing what was a quality instrument, we would mess around in the shop with those we could afford and those we couldn’t.

Some guitars would “feel” right, while others didn’t quite fit the bill. Either the neck was too wide, or the strings were too hard to hold down or else the sound was thin and lifeless. But eventually we would make our choice, perhaps based on the colour, and we’d walk out of the shop with our new pride and joy, along with a Bert Weedon Play in a Day instruction book (price: around five shillings). This was the birth of Guildford’s flourishing music scene that Nigel Enever chronicles so well in his 2009 book Guildford: The Rock’n’roll Years.

Actually my own sights had to be lowered at that time because of lack of cash. I bought my first guitar – a birthday present from my mum and dad – at a second-hand shop called Buyers that used to stand in Onslow Street near at the bottom of North Street (slogan: “We buy anything.”).

Buyers in Onslow Street shortly after it had closed. Picture by Dave Salmon, Geoff Burch Collection.

The shop was a kind of landmark, as prominent and as well-known as any of the major stores. It disappeared sometime in the 1960s and today there is a branch of New Look on the site. The guitar I bought from Buyers in 1959 was an acoustic Rosetti costing £6, which is something like £125 in today’s money. It must have sounded flat and tinny, but it made me feel like I could be a rock ‘n’ roll star.

At first I tried to work out how to play like Hank, but then one day that became uncool. It wasn’t just the Beatles who transformed the way we thought about music. There was a new surge of interest in the blues.

In Guildford, like most towns probably, there were a few kids who were ahead of the rest in terms of fashion and their tastes in music. One boy in our group – his name was John – had an older sister who had her finger firmly on the pulse and so John was the one we looked to for information on what music to like and what clothes to wear.

One evening he introduced us to an old vinyl album featuring black artistes with odd-sounding names like Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin’ Wolf and Buddy Guy. We’d experienced nothing like it. When we heard that album, we knew we needed a different approach. To play like those guys, you had to concentrate less on melody and more on feeling.

There were five of us in our first band. We called ourselves the Crow Janes after a Sonny Boy Williamson number, Crow Jane Blues. The guitar breaks were a bit Hank-like at first, but our harmonica player brought a touch of authenticity to the sound. At that time, there were a lot white, educated English boys who had fallen in love with American blues and when we began playing at local parties everyone thought we sounded like the real thing.

Tony Backhurst pictured in 1976 when playing with his band House. Picture by Andy Potter from the House website.

Our singer was an ex-Farnham Grammar Schoolboy, Tony Backhurst (later and still the front man with Guildford band House), who had a raw texture to his voice, which was just what we were looking for.

We rehearsed in a top floor store room of the City Cafe in Onslow Street, owned and run by George Reading, my grandfather. The staff working in the kitchen below didn’t quite get it. They were used to listening to the more sedate sounds of Jim Reeves and the Bachelors. They liked music you could hum along to.

Then we got our first real gig. The Cygnet café stood by the river in Millmead, in a building now used as offices. It was a dingy, shadowy place frequented by beatniks and would-be beatniks, who sat around on the floor looking cool, drinking Coke.

The place didn’t have an alcohol licence but you could smuggle in a bottle of cheap white wine and the proprietor, a rough diamond named Pete, would look the other way.

One of the attractions was the Bel Ami jukebox, which belted out obscure blues and R&B numbers by black musicians. It was the perfect place for us to play: standing in the shadows, we could pretend this was some sleazy Chicago nightclub. Nobody cared that we sounded a bit rough because that was how we were supposed to sound.

The Stormsville Shakers. Probably Guildford’s most successful and popular band in the 1960s.

The Crow Janes lasted just a few months. Eventually we were eclipsed by more committed (and more talented) bands like the Phantom 4, the Stormsville Shakers and the Primevals. These were the musicians who created the vibrant rock music scene that drew people from miles around for the best part of the 1960s.

Share This Post