Fordyce Maxwell: 'Just what compelled this doctor to don a Stetson and sing about lost love?'

Published on Saturday 28 February 2009 18:47

I DIDN'T get the chance to ask because he was too busy signing CDs and cracking wry jokes for fans so I still don't know why Dr Samuel Hutt chose Hank Wangford as his stage name. A puckish sense of humour, I suspect, because in a rowdier good old boys crowd than he had in our local village hall a bit of capital letter transposition would be likely. Even compulsory.

I might also have asked why a man of mature years – that is, older than me – has juggled for so long a career as an NHS family planning specialist with nights of travelling the country wearing a Stetson and fancy waistcoat to sing about lost love, lost dreams and penury with the occasional acerbic aside about politics. Clue: he performed at trade union benefit concerts during the miners' strike of 1984.

You might, of course, turn the question round – I hope you do, otherwise I can stop writing – and ask why we were spending Saturday night listening to a couple of hours of what Hank himself called the most melancholy, indeed miserable, branch of music. He probably meant to add "Except for Wagner and Schoenberg" but forgot.

Good question, because the old joke about country music is that if you sing any one of its million songs backwards you get your dog, job and wife back. True, but Hank's response to such criticism has been to perform at every gig – "No hall too small" – a song for all those people who think that country music stinks.

He claims that when he introduced the song, in those words, at a recent community centre performance a received pronunciation voice from the audience said politely: "Thenk you." He saw that as a victory.

He and his partner, the excellent vocals, banjo and guitar man Reg Meuross, who probably hasn't changed his name, sang softly and clearly so that the stories of life's disasters could be appreciated even at the back of the hall. They included near-classics such as 'I'm Leaving Walking Backwards So That You Think I'm Coming In' and 'How Do You Know You'll Miss Me Unless I Leave?'

Or maybe that was a couple of his joke titles. The real ones included 'He Forgot To Tell You He Was A Married Man' and 'It's Me Or Elvis'. I wasn't taking notes, only soaking in the atmosphere and laughing more often than at the last two Shakespeare comedies I've been to.

That's because the man who wrote 'Mr And Mrs Teardrops', 'Moping To Mopping" and 'Whistling In The Dark' takes his writing and music – but not himself or the subject – seriously, telling his audience: "We urge you good people to keep patronising us as we're going to continue patronising you."

I liked this man with a self-deprecating approach – and a sense of humour with a style more Willie Nelson than Steve Earle – who has brought misery with humour to more than 220 packed village halls throughout Britain in the past few years.

Subsidised? Yes, by Highlights, a community touring scheme, so we got two hours of top entertainment for 6 compared with, let's see, 45 for Shakespeare or what would have been 52 for the opera we decided not to go to. Good on you, W… I mean, Hank.