Country at the Heart of the City: Music, Heritage, and Regeneration in Liverpool
2005; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 49; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/20174352
ISSN2156-7417
Autores Tópico(s)Cinema and Media Studies
ResumoHank Walters is a familiar and charismatic figure within the scene of Liverpool, a maritime port city of 439,000 that lies on the northwest coast of England. I had heard a lot about Hank before Kevin McManus and I were first introduced to him in 1990 when conducting ethnographic research on the musical life of Liverpool, and we subsequently met with Hank on many occasions to watch him perform and to talk to him about his involve ment with music. Hank is an accomplished player of the accordion, guitar, bagpipes, and piano,1 and a skilled raconteur with a wealth of jokes and anecdotes with which enjoys regaling his audiences. He likes to de scribe himself as the father of music in Liverpool, and on the sleeve of the LP Liverpool Goes Country, released by Rex Records in 1965,2 Hank is referred to as The Daddy of them all. Hank was born in 1933 into a Protestant, working-class family of seafar ers. He grew up listening to American music, which became popular during the 1920s, because his grandfather had a collection of Jimmie Rodgers records acquired during shipping trips to America, but loved to remind us about the moment in 1949 when first heard the Hank Williams song Lovesick Bluesplayed on a jukebox in a local caf?.I just went ecstatic he told me, and from then on spent his Saturdays at a local record shop and his income on Hank Williams.3 While stationed in the Middle East during his National Army Service, Hank formed his own band named Hank Walters and the Dusty Road Ramblers.The band continued after Hank left the army and started working on Liverpool's docks, and by 1957 they were performing at Liverpool's Cavern Club. One of Hank's favorite and oft-repeated anecdotes is about the time that first met John Lennon at that club and told him that didn't much like his music, and that the Beatles wouldn't get anywhere unless they got on with it and played country (in McManus 1994:12). Also in 1957, Hank established his own weekly music club in a city center
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