Sleeve Notes:
In July 1968 the Government said a final ‘no’ to the Bristol Port Authority’s farseeing scheme foa 3 new dock at Portbury just a mile or two from the natural habitat of Adge Cutler and the Wurzels.
There has been great groaning down Gordano way as the new scheme seemed more and more likely to be squashed. Up and down the West Country M.P.s, County Councils, Corporations and even Rural District Councils have been demanding, debating, declaring and discussing ways of showing this country what Somerset is made of.
At last, through the good auspices of EMI and in particular Bob Barratt, the West comes fighting back with another L.P from its greatest ambassador, ‘Cutler of the West’.
It all began with a typical Somerset protest meeting at the Webbington Country Club on the edge of Mendip. There could be no mistaking the force of local feelings that evening. Far into the night there were cries of ‘Long live the Portbury Dock expansion’ all, of course, in so strong a dialect that an outsider might have been forgiven for imagining he heard ‘I thought you said you ‘ad an extension’.
Throughout the evening the local W.I. representatives’ oftrevealed chant ‘We want another Port’ was mistaken by the barmaids for an order for more beverages, to the dismay of their curate, whose table was already loaded. Adge’s ‘WurpleDiddleIDoo’ set the mood of the occasion and as excitement mounted Aldermen could be seen lulling trance like to the floor murmuring such phrases as ‘This is going to show’e’” and ‘Cutler for P.M.’ Later Adge sang ‘Thee's Got’n Where Thee Cassn't I Back’n hassn't’ which very roughly translated means ‘Youre are not going to get out of this one very easily’ and deep regret was expressed that the Front Bench could not be there in person to acknowledge the dedication!
As Adge and the Wurzels led us rocking and rolling over Mendip to the strains of ‘Up the Clump’, we could not help wondering where this magnificent evening of protest would end. Westminster? The Palace? Would Somerset rise and occupy all Britain? Would we build dock after dock all over the land just to show them?
Or would we continue with the second side of the record?
As
you will know, if you've turned over Side 1, we continued.
I'm glad, because if we hadn't you would miss the eight
splendid songs on Side 2.
This really is a West Country record. There’s never been one like it; songs like Trevor Crozier’s ‘Dorset is Beautiful’ and Cyril Tawney’s ‘Five Foot Flirt!’ songs of the Somerset villages. like Kevin Sheldon’s ‘The Charlton Mackerell Jug Band’ and Adge’s ‘In The Haymaking Time’, and of course several in the unique Bristol dialect. No-one has ever put us on the map in quite the same way. Noone has been so dedicated a West Countryman.
And if this record has the success I think it will have, noone else need bother. Like his two previous L.P s. this one will be played wherever there are West Countrymen and wherever there are people who know the land.
It will bring a breath of fresh air to thousands of exiles and it will be treasured and enjoyed all over the world.
Adge is no stage countryman. He’s real. He’s Cutler of the West.
BRIAN
PATTEN
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