28/01/2025
Sounding the Century: The Exhibition gathers paper ephemera, record sleeves, photographs and original artwork to highlight the life and achievements of Bill Leader, the prolific sound engineer and record producer. The experience of viewing is designed to complement the experience of reading Sounding the Century, the projected eight-book series by Mike Butler. The books and exhibition between them tell the whole story of the British Folk Revival.
Bill Leader was born on Boxing Day, 1929, in Newark, New Jersey, to Londoner cousins of Irish heritage. The Depression drove the family back to England and, during the Blitz, Bill’s father’s factory was ordered to evacuate to Keighley, West Yorkshire. Bill co-founded the Bradford branch of the Workers’ Music Association with Alex Eaton. This left-wing front believed in social change through music. Topic Records, its record label, existed to supply members with a monthly 78rpm record of Shostakovich and factory choirs or some such. Bill maintained the association upon moving to London in 1955 and volunteered to record folk singers for Topic. It was at just the moment when folk music was deemed a suitable vehicle for the workers’ struggle, and, coincidentally, folklorist Kenneth Goldstein identified a gap in the thriving US record market for British folk and commissioned lots of records from Topic.
Ewan MacColl and Bert Lloyd, the godfathers of the Folk Revival, were early assignments. John Foreman, who printed hundreds of folk songs and topical songs as the Broadsheet King, was documented hawking and singing his wares in Brick Lane (Bill always went to where the music was playing) in an early example of a Lost Leader. The exhibition unearths flyers for the forgotten ballad opera Christ the Worker starring Shirley Collins as the Virgin Mary, and uncovers an ocean of folkprint, including the only known copy of The Bristol Intelligencer, Angela Carter’s folk fanzine, and rare copies of The Rambler, Michael Moorcock’s folk fanzine. It revisits the night Bob Dylan played at Bill’s folk club at The Black Horse in Rathbone Place. Then Bill became the general fixer for Transatlantic label chief Nat Joseph, and supervised Nat’s baby steps in the recording studio. Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Pentangle, Young Tradition, The Humblebums, Sheila Hancock and Mr Fox were on the roster and Bill recorded them all. It marked another shift in the zeitgeist.
By 1969 Billy Connolly was using Bill’s flat at 5 North Villas (‘Leader Sound’) as a crash pad, and it became a magnet for musicians who wanted a) a doss for the night and b) to be entertained regally into the bargain. Two of these guests, Dave Pegg and Gordon Giltrap, have written memoirs which mention Bill in this connection. Giving a berth to Billy Connolly may well become Bill’s supreme achievement but he also launched two labels, Trailer and Leader, which between them birthed the cult classics Bright Phoebus, No More Forever, Unto Brigg Fair, Hearken to the Witches Rune, The Noah’s Ark Trap, Bandoggs, Billy Pigg The Border Minstrel a.o. When the labels folded he taught sound engineering at Salford University until retirement in 2005.
Sounding the Century: The Exhibition is a visual counterpart to the books. The scores of voices culled from hundreds of interviews are complemented by lots of images, and, if a picture is really worth a thousand words, and all the necessary information can be gleaned by reading the panels, it makes the books largely superfluous. Oh well!
The exhibition opens on 28th January and runs until 1st April at Manchester Central Library. Mike Butler will be Central Library’s de facto writer-in-residence during its run. He fancies himself as a living exhibit like Tilda Swinton at MoMA, except he won’t be sleeping in a glass box but scribing the remaining books in the series. If any exhibit sparks visitors’ memories (which they will, and not just for folkies), Mike will be well placed to receive them.
Bill Leader can be seen (and heard interviewed off camera) in this 1965 Watersons doc from 25:08 – 27:30…
Good lead Colin. I really must get myself organised to get to this. I really have no excuses!
You’ll find Maestro Mike a delightful and leisurely conversationalist.
Let me know when you plan to go @thecheshirecat we could have a meet up if you’d like.
Heading to PM right now.
I must have a visit too, I visited Bill’s house above Halifax in the seventies round about the time the Midgely Pace-Eggers were performing.
Looks like a fascinating exhibition.
Sounds great – must try to get to see that. Thanks for the recommendation Colin.
Shame it wasn’t slightly earlier. I was in Manchester last weekend
Was at this yesterday with @thecheshirecat still a work in progress.
Luckily a stateside friend posted a link to Mike Butler’s page on Facebook and a posting about the exhibition.
I’ve lifted his text from there which explains a bit more.
“Behold, the impersonal satisfaction of the artist who knows his work is good, just in case you were wondering what it looked like. I had just dressed one display cabinet of Sounding the Century: The Exhibition at Manchester Central Library when Eva documented the scene. Each cabinet, ten in all, has a theme. Cabinet 6 is about live music. You can see two pictures of Bob Dylan in the top left-hand corner (get out the magnifying glass: Bill is far left in the lower picture), John Foreman and Louis Killen on the grass at the first Keele Festival, a programme for the first Keele Festival and a Sing souvenir about the first Keele Festival (it was a landmark event), as well as programmes for Pentangle and ISB (‘U’ at the Roundhouse). There’s a ticket for Paul Robeson’s Transatlantic concert (which is too small to see); that took place in St Pancras Town Hall while the star was three and a half thousand miles away in New York, and a programme of a Paul Robeson concert in which the singer appeared in the flesh, with some original Paul Robeson artwork for a Topic disc. Oh, and a poster for a Dominic Behan play, Nothing to Declare. That’s cabinet 6, ‘Keeping It Live’. I’ll put the concluding touches to cabinet 10, ‘Bill’s Labels’, this morning. Currently there are no cabinets 1-5 because I’m sharing the space with an exhibition curated by Una Baines of artwork associated with her old band, The Fall. How we came to be double-booked is a story in itself and is probably not for a public platform like Facebook. Watch this space for a ‘Dark Unmoored’.
Anyway, it’s more than a stop-gap for the real thing, which is what I feared, and the full exhibition will appear in due course. I need to liaise with Una, who is a lovely person (she played a great free gig at the Library last Wednesday). Pending that happy restitution, I can move onto Phase 2 of Sounding the Century: The Exhibition, which, you’ll remember, involves me turning into a living sculpture and working on the remaining Sounding the Century books in situ. I feel somehow I am destined to arrive. I got lots of feedback while I was dressing the cabinets. No-one mentioned Bill Leader but I became a dab hand at giving directions to the loo.”
Oh and Chesh and I were stunned by the music part of the library. Biographies and autobiographies of rock pop jazz etcmusicians that I didn’t know had had bios written.
Indeed. To illustrate the breadth of the collection, adjacent autobiogs were Chuck Berry, Justin Bieber and Big Star. Given that we had both been discussing how many unread books we had in our houses, it was an enticing yet daunting sight.
Also, Colin, we had a friendly chat with a Dave Burrows who said he’d corresponded with you in the past.
Here’s a few photographs or possibly just one from the exhibition.
Unfortunately behind glass so trying to avoid the reflections, will take a sheet next time to eliminate them.