Dave Goulder gives his life story.

Original Track ID

SA1962.80.A2

Original Tape ID

SA1962.080

Summary

Dave Goulder gives his life story.

Contributor's full name is John David Goulder, and he is aged twenty-two [1962]. He was born in Greenwich, London, and evacuated to Nottingham during World War II. His father was a foundry worker in Chesterfield (previously a farmworker) and a native of Nottingham. His mother was a Londoner.

He left school at fifteen years old, then spent six years working on the railways, before travelling abroad. He always managed to avoid National Service in the army.

Arriving the previous year in Paris with only twenty pounds in his pocket, he found he was able to make a pound an hour by singing popular songs in the streets of Montmarte and Pigale. He stayed there for nearly a month, before continuing south to Lyon, where he had a friend.

Moving again to Spain, where he found people lived very frugally, he met a German who told him that Casablanca, Morocco, was a wonderful place to go. So he crossed over to Tangiers by ferry from the south of Spain, then hitched lifts to Casablanca with only 14/6d left to spend, causing him to steal bread and oranges. He heard that the film 'Sodom and Gomorrah', starring Sewart Granger, was in production at Marrakech, and so tried to find a job working on the film. However, a group of Swiss people managed to take all the jobs before he could get there. He then took to begging in the streets of Casablanca, before finding a job working his passage to Rotterdam on a ship. He managed to earn enough money to pay his fare back to England form Holland in the summer of 1961.

Arriving back in England, he stayed for a while with Richard Deegan, an Irishman who had taught him several songs while they both worked on the merchant ship.

Since then, he has been touring the country, singing on the folk circuit, though he doesn't particularly want to become a commercial folksinger.

Item Subject/Person

Goulder, John David

Recording Location

Language

English

Genre

Information

Collection

SoSS

Source Type

Reel to reel

Audio Quality

Good