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Talk to Terry
about early times in his life and you discover that he has always
sung, even as a small child. Although born and raised in the East
End of London, his mother came from an Irish family. This in turn
resulted in a Catholic school with most of his friends being Irish.
He later married the sister of a friend, whose family came from
Cork. This connection was to prove important. His musical education
otherwise, was the somewhat common one of jazz, skiffle, American
folksong, and back to English/Irish song.
This was followed
be several years with the London Critics Group, working with Ewan
MacColl and Peggy Seeger. During this time, many recordings were
made, along with radio broadcasts and much concert and club work.
Holidays were spent in the west of Ireland, soaking up the Sean
Nos singing of the Connemara area. Mixing this with many hundreds
of hours listening to the finest of the English and Scots traditional
singers resulted in a range of influences on his own singing.
Terry can frequently
be found around the London Irish pubs playing fiddle in the sessions,
but always comes back to his first love of the songs and ballads,
the singing of which has taken him to many European countries, along
with other farther flung places such as Newfoundland and Cuba. He
also has an interest in the Broadside ballads, particularly those
connected with the history of London. He runs a singers workshop
and has a large collection of books and recordings which is available
for study.
Like many other
singers in the solidly traditional arena, he does not particularly
like studio recording, with its attitude of striving for technical
perfection whilst frequently losing the meat of the song, but prefers
a small circle of friends and `going for it! `. This results in
every performance of a song being different and not too 'fixed',
but as Terry would say, "That's as it should be ". Terry works as
a Chemical Scientist and still lives in London, with the following
generations of the family never far away.
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