+++additions aug 2025: ch. 1: the early days ('35-'60) - media (bbc 1973 tape) - voices (a.hutchings - h.wood - s.collins - d.amram) - gofundme link: >a biographic website about folk singer Royston Wood< - donations welcome!+++
"I can't help believing that playing polyphony is not a waste of time--on the contrary it allows one to converse with music, and because there are no words you can say what you like! I believe myself that it helps always to feel an amateur (at least at heart) rather than a professional. Amateur is after all from 'amo': I love. And that should defeat everything else (easier said than done in this commercial world)."[2]
Francis Athelstane Baines (1917 - 1999)
English double bass player, composer and autodidact player of various early music instruments - played the hurdy-gurdy on Royston's abortive solo album in 1971
“I think I’ll be happy to work in folk clubs until I’m 90, if I can still sing.”[3]
Royston Wood (1935 - 1990)
who would have been 90 years old this year (2025).
“When it comes to recording real traditional material the golden rule is: don't take them into the studio! It's better to go to them because they are more at ease. What I usually do there is to record - wherever I can - in their own homes."[5]
Bill Leader (* 1929)
American-English folk music producer and engineer, and pioneer of high-quality home recording - produced the album Galleries of Royston's first group, The Young Tradition, in 1968 - more information on www.soundingthecentury.com
a life in music
(1935 - 1990)
"I think in terms of chords, probably more than other melodeon players. A lot of melodeon players play really fancy single note tunes. They are brilliant, they’re like virtuosos, but I tend to think more like playing the guitar in a way. When you play guitar, you can play a tune with chords, can’t you?"[4]
Tony Hall (* 1941)
English melodeon player, folk singer and occasional guitarist - played the melodeon on Royston Wood's and Heather Wood's album No Relation in 1977
"It seemed to me then that, looking back on the old days, the two pillars of social life in any village were: one, the storyteller; and two, the songster. And you’d go into any tap room in any village, up to, say, 50 years ago, and you’d find one or the other, or perhaps both. And around those two people the whole social life of the village revolved.”[6]
Bob Copper (1915 - 2004)
Folk singer and folklorist - sang in The Copper Family, and inspired the foundation of Royston's first group The Young Tradition
“I really enjoy singing unaccompanied harmony, because you can do things with voices that you still can’t do without instruments. There’s no way that you’re gonna get, for instance, an instrument that will decorate a note as beautifully as Louis Killen or as Annie Briggs can. They just don’t respond in that kind of way."[7]
Heather Wood (1945 - 2024)
English folk singer, bookkeeper, music tech manager, amateur cook and many more - and Royston's main collaborator in The Young Tradition and No Relation
"What is beautiful stays beautiful."[1]
David Amram (* 1930)
American composer, arranger, conductor, hornist and pianist (and many more) - friend and informal collaborator of Royston's since the 1960s
Sources:
[1] David Amram interviewed by the author, April 2025
[2] Francis Baines - 100 Years, by Antonie, November 30 2017, from the weblog Classical Music Diary, retrieved: August 5 2025
[3] Royston Wood interviewed by Owen Jones in early 1977, printed in Albion Sunrise, No. 5, editor: Owen Jones, 1985
[4] Tony Hall interviewed by the author, May 2025
[5] Bill Leader interviewed in the Melody Maker, early 1972
[6] Bob Copper interviewed by Stan Ambrose on 'Folklines', BBC Merseyside, late 1973
[7] Heather Wood interviewed by Edward Haber on 'The Piper in the Meadows Straying', WBAI Radio, December 1977