Don’t Monkey With my Gun

Now here’s a revelation. Recorded forty years after he made those defining albums for His Master’s Voice back in the 1960s, Steve Benbow emerges from the shadows to remind us that here is a performer and entertainer who has been shamefully neglected by the recording industry. There was a time when anyone who wanted to make a record just had to have Steve Benbow as accompanist.
He was far and away the best guitarist of his time, flashy and dazzling when required, but capable of deceptively simple arrangements when it was appropriate to the song.

So it was that Steve accompanied such unlikely soloists as Ewan MacColl and
A.L. Lloyd, and Lloyd even wrote the liner notes for at least two of Steve’s HMV albums, bringing to the albums a scholarship which, some contended, was incongruous in view of the nature of Steve’s performances.

For no-one would ever call Steve Benbow a musical “intellectual”. His style was that of an entertainer rather than the introverted purveyor of a tradition. He knew his folk songs, but he made no pretence at following in the footsteps of the old singers, or of emulating them as some of his contemporaries were too eager to do. He was a sort of English Burl Ives. He simply sang a good panoramic selection of songs in a good voice in which all the words were clear, and he played an unobtrusive and flawless guitar accompaniment for them.

So what had changed between then and now?

Well, we’re all a good deal older. For most of us that’s just an irritating accumulation of aches and pains and lost hair; but for a singer it can be catastrophic. Loss of the voice is a singer’s worst nightmare, and loss of breath control is an added anxiety.

If some of the youthful sparkle has gone out of Steve’s voice, he more than makes up for it by having acquired a new voice full of character, and it gives him the ability to take on a new repertoire. Sure, some of his old songs are in here, and some of the songs are a bit breathless and some of the notes are a struggle, but there is more than enough here to compensate. Now we can hear the guitar: in the HMV days, it was drowned out behind the Johnny Scott band and chorus. And we can hear how a skilled musician can bring maturity to his performances.

There is a lot to enjoy on this album, from the title track (the line from an old Gene Autry song in the Jimmie Rodgers style), through fine versions of Lay Me a Pallet on Your Floor to The Hell-bound Train and Down and Out Blues – his voice is now perfect for this one!

But best of all is his very moving version of the old Devon song Widdicombe Fair, usually sung at breakneck speed as a show-off piece, but here sung wistfully in a voice that seems to be breaking with emotion. And sure enough we can see right away that the song has been abused for all those years. Galloping through the tongue-twisting lines is the easy option for a singer, but you need the maturity of Steve Benbow’s voice to make the song really come alive. A masterly performance.

And there’s the usual selection of nonsense and comic songs that were always a part of Steve’s programmes –The Burglar Man and The Threshing Machine among them, complete with Steve’s characteristic wicked chortle. A typical rounded collection, then. A salutary reminder, as I say, of a singer too long neglected. Maybe someone has a stack of unpublished tapes of Steve’s work stashed away somewhere. If that’s the case, can we look forward to the missing years being filled in, and the Steve Benbow catalogue being extended as it should have been long ago?

John Paddy Browne

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