Colin Randall writes: last Saturday, as deputy editor Andrew Curry reported here that morning, he and I took time off from Salut! Live duties to join 82,000 people at Wembley to watch our team Sunderland win a thrilling Championship playoff final.
Salut! Live’s latest Artist of the Month may well have jumped just as high as us when – wherever he was – he heard the final whistle had been blown, confirming promotion. Like us, Bob Fox is a lifelong Sunderland supporter …
Even among folk music’s many l0ng-serving stalwarts, few have more thoroughly earned Artist of the Month status than Bob Fox.
Bob Fox, from his own website
Singer, multi-instrumentalist and all-round accomplished entertainer, Fox has been active in music since 1972. He realised at school that he had rare vocal talent, joined the church choir and went on to combine folk club performances with studies to qualify as a teacher.
Over the years before becoming fully professional, he was something of a Jack of all Trades, working as a fencer and lorry driver among other roles.
But his rich expressive voice, faultless stage presence and comprehensive knowledge of the North Eastern coalmining tradition and its related music ensured he would never be short of work as a troubadour.
Solo, with Stu Luckley or Billy Mitchell, or with Mitchell, Jez Lowe and Benny Graham in Pitmen Poets, Fox has been and remains a great fixture of British folk. And what a magnificent repertoire; rather like Christy Moore, he excels in interpreting just about any song.
The ability to mix styles was especially evident on Dreams Never Leave You, which I made an album of year when reviewing for The Daily Telegraph. Its tracks ranged from the Beatles’ From Me to You to a sumptuous version of Ralph McTell’s From Clare to Here the song slipping seamlessly into the beautiful Irish air Mná na hÉireann (Women of Ireland).
Fox ribbed me at the time, thinking my original review did not read as if I rated it that highly. It is true that I said it was an invaluable introduction to his music for anyone inclined to explore the back catalogue - Nowt As Good’ll Pass with Luckley, How Are You Off for Coals with Graham.
But he was right; it was not an album-of-the-year sort of review. The truth was that it just grew and grew on me, ending up more often on the car CD player than any other recording.
There was no confusion over the Pitmen Poets' Bare Knuckle, easily my album of 2022 and, from it, The Workers’ Song - written by another Sunderland supporter, Ed Pickford – emphatically my song of the year.
Fox’s Sunderland allegiance is historical and emotional rather than active. He was a Roker Park regular as a boy but found Dr Who, and the desire to get home to Seaham in time for it, for an early rival for his affections.
All the same, I fondly recall seeing him at the Davy Lamp folk club in Washington, the one near Sunderland, and bragging to Mitchell – a Newcastle fan – about that afternoon’s win at the Stadium of Light (one that came courtesy of a shot deflected by a beach ball into the Liverpool goal).
Wherever Bob Fox was at the weekend, I hope the Wembley result reignited those boyhood passions.
And congratulations on a small but much deserved accolade from Salut! Live..
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