‘We did use to drink quite a lot. It made us play better’

9:20am Monday 8th June 2009

By Mike Pryce

PERSONALLY I can’t envisage it, but I have it on good authority that the Woodpeckers used to do a handy version of Elvis Presley’s It’s Now or Never, the 1960 chart-topper based on the Italian aria O Sole Mio.

As their line-up included a tin whistle, a washboard, a banjo and a tea chest bass, not to mention a chap playing the bones, you might see the problem I have.

Especially as on one fairly typical occasion while entertaining at a village fete, the fellow on tea chest bass toppled slowly sideways off the temporary stage, drunk. The four-foot fall from the farm dray to the floor did no apparent harm, because he scrambled his instrument back together, clambered back up and carried on playing. By then he’d missed a few bars, but no one seemed to either notice or care.

The Woodpeckers never bothered the pop charts much. In fact, they never bothered them at all. But in their home town of Pershore they were a legend. Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, the long back bar of the Talbot pub in the Newlands area of the town was packed to the rafters to hear them play.

There was Harry Boughton on trombone, Mick Cant on drums, Ray Izod on accordion, Jim Evans on tin whistle, Robert Carter on banjo, Ray Heeks on washboard, George Heeks on tea chest base and Tom Izod on the bones.

The year was 1968 and while the rest of the world was threading flowers in its hair, smoking Moroccan Woodbines and deep into messages of peace and love, the Woodpeckers were on a slightly different planet. Not for them the heady aromas of San Francisco.

“We did used to drink a bit, quite a lot actually,” said Ray Izod “Usually cider. That’s where our name came from.”

They were supporting the regional economy, no doubt, but that was really a by-product.

“Having a drink gave us more energy. Made us pay better,” Ray added. “Made us happy.”

And that was what the Woodpeckers were all about, having a good time. There was no other outfit like them around here.

There wasn’t an amplified instrument among the eight of them. Neither were they a proper hark back to the 1950s days of skiffle. If you want to get technical, they were almost a jug band – a form of music that has its roots in the American south of the early 1900s, when band members played instruments made of just about anything they could find, such as stovepipes, washboards, comb-andtissue and home-made guitars.

But I doubt that crossed the minds of the group of regulars at the Talbot when they decided to get together to play at the first Pershore Carnival.

By then Ray Izod was already an accomplished accordionist. As a Pershore lad he was fascinated by the sound of an accordion player who performed in the Miller’s Arms in Bridge Street.

He said: “I’d be about 10 at the time and too young to go in the pub, so I used to stand outside and peer through the window. It captivated me.”

Eventually the accordionist, Ted Amphlett, became aware of his young fan and gave him a secondhand accordion.

“Ted taught me the rudiments and I started off playing everything by ear at first,” Ray said.

He took his new acquisition to school, Pershore High, and played with a local Christian Fellowship.

Then, like his mentor and when he was old enough, Ray began playing in the local pubs.

He said: “I used to walk all over the town from our house in Orchard Road. I’d walk a mile or so carrying that accordion and back again afterwards. I wouldn’t do it now. An accordion’s quite heavy, you know.”

One of his regular gigs was the Talbot in Newlands and when, in 1968, Pershore organised a carnival to raise funds for a town swimming pool, customers at the pub decided to take part.

They got together and formed a band, playing an assortment of instruments/items on which they were competent to varying degrees.

They went down so well they carried on performing over the years, well into the 1980s before finally running out of steam. They played at fetes and parties, Pershore Carnival, of course, and pubs and clubs, although the Talbot was always their spiritual home.

“We never asked for a fee,” said Ray. “We just asked that whoever was running the event made a donation to charity.

“We played all sorts of stuff. I remember we did things like Cliff Richard’s Livin’ Doll, Rock Around the Clock, Elvis, even Al Jolson. It was good entertaining singalong.

We never played sad music. We always had a good time even if sometimes some of us were a bit the worse for wear.”

He later took accordion lessons from Evesham’s legendary Nick Capaldi, father of the late rock star Jim and head of the talented musical family, who taught him to read music. After the demise of the band, Ray went on to play with Ted Amphlett in a double act known as Ted and Ray. When that ended, he carried on as a solo performer, providing music at weddings, fetes, garden parties and the like.

Sadly the days of the Woodpeckers are long gone now, because they’d be a natural on Britain’s Got Talent. As it is, they had to settle for being a legend in their own backyard.