Billy Cooper (1883-1964)
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Billy (William Frederick) Cooper was born on 15th December 1883 in East London.
Shortly after his birth the family moved back to Hingham, near Norwich, which had been his father’s birthplace and home. Billy had his first dulcimer by the age of ten, and as a young adolescent, teamed up with two other local lads who played music, Jack Bunn and Walter Baldwin. This trio were part of a pre-war black-face minstrel troupe and remained musical friends all their lives. As a young man he also hooked up with a travelling show for a while; Billy Bennington remembered it as a ‘menagerie’ and said Billy Cooper could earn 5/- a week playing outside the tent to attract audiences in.
His father was a bootmaker but Billy took a different route in life, going into service (he is listed as a “page boy” aged 17 in Hingham) and then working for an ironmonger’s business in Bury St Edmunds, where in 1908 he married Emma Robinson. During this period in Bury St Edmunds, he travelled around playing fiddle for dances accompanied by his sister-in-law on piano (probably Mary Robinson) and then in 1915 he joined the Suffolk Regiment, managing to keep on playing music, becoming corporal in charge of the fife-and-drum band and playing the dulcimer for army church services. After the war, the family returned to Hingham and he worked in Norwich as a shop assistant in Wallace Kings’ furniture store. By the 1930s, he was running a greengrocer’s shop in Hingham itself, which he continued to do for many more years – although Billy Bennington always said he never knew him do a proper day’s work! He also ran a chip van, which was pulled by a donkey.
Billy learned to play the dulcimer from his father, Frederick Cooper who led the Hingham and Watton Band and played both dulcimer and concertina. Billy did not read music but was renowned for having a very large repertoire of music including dance tunes and popular songs, though by the 1960s he commented that he did not know too much of the ‘new stuff’. He was very adept at tuning and could retune to match a piano or other instrument in a matter of a few minutes. He played with sticks for the faster tunes for stepdancing and so on, but plucked the strings with his fingernails and thumb to play chords for accompanying sing songs.
In his later years he would often spend a week or so at a time with friends and relatives in Wells-next-the-Sea and Docking – these holidays seem to have revolved around playing music in the pubs, particularly the Ship in Wells. He was also on the radio programme ‘Scan’ in 1959, on Anglia TV in 1960 and 1962, and won a talent competition at Yarmouth Winter Gardens in 1961.
According to his daughter Flora, he would go in to the Eight Ringers in Hingham every day of the week to play, with Daisy Girling accompanying on the piano: ‘All we knew about him was the dulcimer … that was his life.’
In 1959, Billy was introduced to Mervyn Plunkett, who had already met up with fiddler Walter Bulwer from Shipdham. Mervyn, together with Reg Hall, had played with traditional musicians in Sussex in an informal band and it was decided to do the same – and to record it – with Billy, Walter, and his wife Daisy on piano. Several recording sessions took place in 1960 and again in 1962. Publishing the recordings was a fraught process, with tapes going missing, then a limited edition of ninety-nine albums was released in 1965 and eventually, in 1976, the seminal album ‘English Country Music’ was released, which had a huge influence on a new generation of musicians interested in finding their English musical roots.
Russell Wortley, who was involved in the recording sessions, corresponded with Billy Cooper and his wife between 1960 and 1963 and it is clear that Billy relished their friendship, in particular the challenge of finding dulcimers for people, restoring and tuning them, and he was always interested in any sort of ‘dulcie’, whatever state it was in.
Billy died at the age of 80 on 19th January 1964 and so never saw the recordings published.
Reg Hall’s notes from the Topic album TSCD607 ‘English Country Music’: Notes-on-Billy-Cooper-from-ECM-CD
Chris Holderness’s article on Billy Cooper: http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/cooper
There are quite a few recordings of Billy Cooper available:
Billy Cooper was recorded by Russell Wortley, Sam Steele, Mervyn Plunkett, Paul Carter and Bill Leader several times between 1959 and 1962 and several albums include material drawn from these recordings.
Here is a taster of Billy playing Old Towler. It’s a bit of a party piece, and was in fact a song published in the first decade of the ninteteenth century. It’s on the album I Thought I was the Only One: follow the link below to find out more about this and other albums featuring Billy Cooper.
Billy Cooper’s dulcimer
More photos and information about Billy Cooper’s dulcimer
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