Spinners, The

The Spinners were a folk group from Liverpool, England, who formed in September 1958. They variously had four albums in the UK Albums Chart between September 1970 and April 1972. One of them, Spinners Live Performance, spent three months in the listing and peaked at No. 14.

The band began as a skiffle group with a mainly American repertoire, until they were prompted by Redd Sullivan, a seaman, to include sea shanties and English folk songs. They started out as the Gin Mill Skiffle Group, which included guitarist Tony Davis and washboard player Mick Groves. The group played the Cavern Club, Liverpool for the first time on 18 January 1957, with the Muskrat Jazz Band and the Liverpool University Jazz Band. They played there on a number of occasions during that summer. In September 1958, they became the Spinners.

They became popular by reviving some of the greatest folk music and singing new songs in the same vein. Although sounding like traditional English folk songs, some of their material was in fact composed by Jones, such as “The Ellan Vannin Tragedy” and “The Marco Polo”. One of their best known songs, particularly in their native Liverpool, was in “My Liverpool Home”, written by Peter McGovern in 1962. Cliff Hall also introduced traditional Jamaican songs to their repertoire. One of their albums was called Not Quite Folk.

The surviving members of the group, often with bass player/musical director John McCormick, continued playing at various venues such as Exeter, Buxton, London Olympia, Orpington and Liverpool as the “Spinners Legends”. A plan to finish off with a two concert appearance at the Liverpool Philharmonic in spring 2020 was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But on 2 and 3 October 2021 after 63 years in showbusiness the trio played their final concerts in the Music Room at Liverpool’s Philharmonic Concert Hall.

They produced over 40 albums, and made numerous concerts and TV appearances. In 1965, after seeing the group perform in Liverpool, BBC producer Trevor Hill invited them to appear in a new BBC One series called Dance and Skylark, aboard an old sailing barque owned by presenter, bosun Stan Hugill. In 1970 they were given their own television show on BBC One that ran for seven years. The Spinners Christmas Special attracted large audiences. They also had their own show on BBC Radio 2. They retired in 1988, after thirty years together, although they led the community singing at the 1989 FA Cup Final and played some Christmas shows in the early 1990s. Mick Groves and Hughie Jones still occasionally perform, although Cliff Hall retired to Australia, where he died in 2008. Tony Davis returned to playing jazz after retiring and also hosted Tony’s Tradtime on Jazz FM. He died in 2017. [Wikipedia]

Discogs Spinners Discography