Old songs connect region to its roots

NEW BOOK CELEBRATES LIFE OF SINGER JOE WILSON

THANKS to generations of Newcastle United followers, The Blaydon Races can lay claim to the title of top Tyneside song.

But scoring highly and not far behind is Keep Your Feet Still Geordie Hinny by Newcastle songwriter and performer Joe Wilson.

With its rollicking chorus, it offers an insight into what life was like for many at the lower end of the Tyneside social scale in the 19th century.

The song tells of two men sharing a bed in a lodging house – out of economic necessity – and how the restless feet of one disturbs the dreams of the other. And those dreams are the only respite from the tribulations of the waking day.

Keep Your Feet Still is one of around 360 songs, recitations and poems by Joe Wilson, which portray North East working class life and culture.

Joe Wilson is the subject of a new book by retired lecturer Dave Harker, who has studied this field for 50 years, having graduated from Cambridge University in English and completed a PhD on Popular Song and Working Class Consciousness in North East England.

The Gallowgate Lad: Joe Wilson’s Life & Songs, is from Wisecrack Publications.

An earlier book examined the life of another North East performer, Ned Corvan, who wrote at least 120 songs and was a contemporary of Geordie

Billy Mitchell and Ray Laidlaw

Dave Harker, left, with two of Joe Wilson’s Canadian great-grandchildren at the singer’s grave in Jesmond Old Cemetery