Home Forums Memories of Pat Shaw Jeremy Morfey

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    Jeremy Morfey
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    As a teenager in the early 1970s I often went to Sing for Pleasure events including six summer schools at Easenhall and three trips to the Vaison-la-Romaine Choralies, which Pat was heavily involved in. Some of my friends find it curious that my two main interests are choral music (I belong now to the Elgar Chorale) and Morris dancing, since there are few connections between the classical musicians and the folkies, but in fact it was Pat Shaw that got me involved with both, and I remember well dancing Lads-a-Buncham Adderbury at a Morris workshop led by Pat as part of the Vaison Choralies in 1971, when I was 15. I also remember in 1975, after he’d got back from the Appalachians and he’d just written the Levi Jackson Rag, which he played at the evening ceilidhs he led at Easenhall. My mother also knew Pat Shaw very well, and he used to drop by for a meal when he had a gig in the locality. She is 90 now, but still active with music. One thing Pat did was to write catches – little bits of verse which when set to a round spelt out someone’s name. I recorded one he did for Imogen Holst. He then did one for my mother which went: “Hay fever may be caused by diesel fumes. It can not be cured by morphine – try strong black coffee.” Another person who knew Pat quite well from Sing for Pleasure is Chris Green, who set up Colony Holidays in the 1960s. He must be pushing 80, but has a younger wife about my age, who runs a singing group at the local adult education college. They live in Malvern, not far from me.

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