Ian Reynolds (left) meets Mavis and Jack Lee

I‘LL OWN UP NOW, lest there be any doubt. I’m a big fan of Jack and Mavis. Without these two, I - for one- would never have had the chance to experience the music I came to love. And if that sounds like sugar-coated award ceremony ‘speak’, tough. It’s true.

If there was any justice in the world, J&M would live in some mansion - preferably within hobbling distance of Nashville - and tonight’s interview would be with some style icon from ‘Hello’ magazine and not this scruffy, unshaven oik from NWBN. But there ain’t no justice in the world, so there I was in their cosy end terrace on the edge of Heywood.

“The Way We Were!” 1955

Jack’s 72 now, and due to have a hip replacement operation in April. But it’s he who shambles to the door to let me in, roaring with laughter. He’s the picture of health, despite everything. With his huge, snow white beard and his jolly, musical laugh; he’s the Father Christmas from central casting. Mavis is a bundle of energy, as ever. She’s already had a hip replacement, but she teaches line dancing twice a week, so there’s hope for Jack. I’ve known these two for over 20 years and I’ve never seen them apart.

Jack and Mavis have bounced through life like a pinball. Hardly anything they’ve done was planned; things just seemed to happen to them. No wonder, when they formed a group with daughter Anita and banjo player Bob, they called it ‘Hap-Hazard’.

Jack was a late starter as a musician.”My brother had a guitar, but he couldn’t do it. After he died, I sort of inherited it. I also inherited the cub pack he’d been running.” There’s barely a trace of whistfulness in his eyes at the memory of this distant sadness, but Jack ends his little pause for thought with a gag, as usual. “That guitar were’t first o’ many” he smiles. “Ee...” he remembers, “... and they were all crap!” He cracks up with laughter.” Any’ow, one of the boys said that his dad could play. I said: ‘Fetch him next week’. He was an ex-scout, so he came along and taught me all three chords! So I started a hill-billy group to play at scout do's. This was the early 50’s. It was Hank Williams stuff then. Then skiffle happened, and we were ready for it! We had a box bass and a rubbing board and we called ourselves ‘The Corncrackers’.”
Jack was 27.

And a great deal of fun was had by all. More proficient (and aware of a certain earning potential), Jack played rhythm guitar for a harmonica outfit called ‘Melharmonics’. It was in the bands’ breaks that Mavis and Jack first sang their songs. “Carter Family” says Mavis. “Dixie Darlin’, Hello Stranger, stuff like that. No-one had heard them then.” Jack - a fitter by trade - was working at A.V.Roe’s, and a mate volunteered to take the couple to The York Club in Manchester’s Bootle Street - the North’s first Country Club.

At the MSG Club, Manchester - note the mics!

“We’d take our instruments on the basis that if we did a turn we’d get in for free” Jack chuckles. “We were Rochdale’s Micky and Griff!” They became regulars, their diet of Carter Family and Jimmy Rogers proving popular with the punters. Jack began to bombard the BBC with requests for an audition. They had a lot going for them.

“I was unique” says Mavis - sublimely unaware that she still is unique - “Because I was a woman playing guitar and banjo. That was unheard of.” They got their radio break - that’s when they were described as ‘The North’s Number One Western Double Act’ - but, unfortunately, it was a one-off. Did they ever think of going pro? “I were just a housewife” says Mavis. “Besides, we weren’t on the phone then.”

Next came the legendary MSG (Manchester Sports Guild) club in Manchester. “We were the main turn on alternate weeks” Jack tells me. “We got £4 a night. But we’d turn up the next week, with our gear, as always. Jenks would ask, ‘Will you do me a couple of songs for thirty bob?’!”

“We learned a lot about running a club then” adds Mavis. But running a club would come later. Meanwhile, they travelled to working men’s club gigs in a motor bike and side car. “They didn’t know what’d hit them!”

Practising by the Fishermans Inn Club, Hollingworth Lake

We had a ‘Watkins Dominator’ amp” Jack continues. “One vocal mic and two guitars through it. Lovely!” Like everything else in their career, ‘club running’ began by accident. Jack tells the story: “The Kingsway in Rochdale was being run by Mike Harding and Peter Smith one week, and Tony Downes (of Two Beggarmen fame), the next. Anita was just a baby, but our 14 year old looked after her. First time we went out, Eddie and Finbar Fury were on. We took our gear - as usual - and we did a turn.

“Next week we turned up again. The landlady collared us on the way in. She said: Mike Harding’s been on the phone saying he can’t do it any more, and there’s an audience and a turn upstairs waiting. Will you sort it out?’” At the end of the night they collected £4-10s-0d (£4.50) in a bucket and were dismayed to discover that the act had been promised a fiver. ‘See Harding for the other ten bob’ said Mavis.

The landlady promptly asked them to carry on, and so they did; at 2/6d to get in, the club was to become one of the North’s premier acoustic music venues.

Mavis, daughter Anita and Jack

If you play it in folk clubs, the audience calls it ‘country’. If you play it in country clubs, they call it ‘folk’. “We fell between two stools” said Mavis. Call it what you want, but they kept on playing it because they loved it. Mavis is in no doubt. They’re as famous in the folk world as they are in the country arena, but Mavis says: “We’re Western people us. Simple as that.”

Jack and Mavis’ five year tenure of The Fisherman’s Folk Club, at Hollingworth Lake, began, as always, by accident.”We used to be residents, if you like” says Jack.”The place was run by a bloke called Mike Reevers. Any’ow, he closed the club for Easter one year and never came back.” Sounds familiar?

They didn’t go looking for it, but they became icons of live music. Over the years, they’ve booked everyone you’ve ever heard of. Comics like Mike Harding (we used to pay him a fiver) and Bernard Wrigley; folkies like Tickawinda, John and Sue Kirkpatrick, and country acts like Bill Clifton (six times), and The Red Rector. They encouraged local acts, like Heather Whitaker, Dave Burland, Marie Little, Illman Riley. Oh, and those Silver Hill String Band boys, too. (It was Bill Hyde who first taught Anita the basics of the banjo.)

Best ever night? “That’s easy” says Jack. “Steve Read, who ran Edale when it first started, brought two unknowns to the UK, called Bill Keith and Jim Rooney. We’d never heard of them, but we decided to give them a go. When they walked in, they had a bloke with them we didn’t know about. He came into The Fish wearing a pink cowboy hat and a pink western suit. No-one had ever seen anything like it.” The boy with the bravura turned out to be a newcomer called Peter Rowan.” He stole the show” says Jack. “He was brilliant”.

Happiest memories? “Our three trips to the states,” says Mavis without hesitation. The couple’s trips always included a visit to Nashville. “One year we had a camper van, an ‘RV’ as they call them now. We went up to Niagara, and drove the long way down south. Every night, we’d park up in a trailer stop and get the instruments out. We’d start to play and sing for ourselves, but within minutes we had a crown round us. People would ask us where we came from, and when we said ‘England’ they were amazed.” ‘But you sound just like us when you’re playing’ said one onlooker. To Jack and Mavis, this was the highest accolade. As Mavis says; “We played all the way to Nashville, and all the way back.”

“We met Bill Monroe one time” Jack remembers.” A group of us went to the opening of his restaurant. When Bill came in, he came right over to us and made a fuss. I’ve still got a T shirt somewhere... We’d seen him play at The MSG, of course, but it was great to meet him personally.”

Jack and Mavis 1998
(Cover Photo, by Ian Reynolds

Age has not withered their obsession with music. They’re going strong as ever, running The Hobo’s Retreat at Heywood Conservative Club. Many audience members have followed them from their earliest days; from the MSG, through The Kingsway, (twice), and of course, ‘The Fish’. Few promoters have the respect of artistes in the way that Jack and Mavis do. ‘Just pay us what you can,’ they tell Mavis, who’s taken over booking the acts these days.

If they were starting now, with the opportunities that abound for musicians today, they would, in Mavis’s words, ‘go for it’. Fate had no stardom in store for them, but they have made a contribution to live music, especially around Rochdale, that cannot possibly be overestimated. And you’ll never meet a more unassuming couple.

Finally, are they Jack and Mavis or Mavis and Jack? “Mavis and Jack. We like that better, but a bloke running a club got it wrong one night so we just sort of went with it...”

No surprises there, then.

Ian Reynolds, Blackley, Manchester UK.

Updated 23rd Jan 1999