The Songaminute Man: How music brought my father home again

‘Where’s mine?’ she asked.

‘In the kettle. You can make your own,’ he replied.

The hurt between Ted and Iris still ran deep in him, so he clutched on to a new daily routine to bring him order and structure. He wasn’t remotely interested in finding a new girlfriend and instead started spending time with his brothers – down at the club and out and about. His brother John remembers: ‘After he came out of the Army, Ted would spend hours polishing his shoes – so much so that you could see your face in them. If I was going somewhere with the school, he’d show me how to tie my tie. He’d say, “Come here, you. You ay going out like that. I’ll show you how to do a tie,” and he’d sit there and show you how to do it.’

Friday night was the real performance though – everything had to be absolutely perfect and even his handkerchief would be pressed and placed across the top of his jacket pocket in a neat line.

Before he went out, Ted would make sure that Hilda had given him the once-over: ‘What do you think of this, Muv?’

‘Looks alright, Ted,’ she would reply.

Then he’d head back upstairs to finish getting ready. A few minutes later he’d be back in the kitchen with the handkerchief refolded in a different style – this time with three points to it.

‘You think this one looks better?’ he’d ask.

‘Well, yeah, it’s alright,’ Hilda would say, not really paying attention.

This performance would usually repeat itself until Maurice looked up from his newspaper and bellowed: ‘FOR CHRIST’S SAKES, it’s a bloody handkerchief!’ But in spite of this, he was delighted to see his son looking the part. He’d watch Ted walk out of the front door and up the path with quiet delight, often turning to his wife and saying: ‘Look at him, our Hild. He walks down that street thinking he’s a bloody millionaire! He might not have a penny in his pocket but he’s singing and whistling to himself like he hasn’t got a care in the world.’

A well-turned out appearance became one of Ted’s defining features. His quest for the perfect ‘look’ often meant that if he didn’t have the outfit he wanted, he would simply borrow from his brothers in order to create the right ensemble. His brother Colin was the usual target: ‘I remember one time I’d just got paid and bought myself a new top from Burton’s one Saturday. I’d come home, “had my tea and then Ted goes, “Col, can you lend me half a quid?” I said, I can, but yam gotta start looking after your money a bit better, our Big.” Anyway, me and Micky Felton went up the Adelphi and then afterwards we popped into the Star and Garter for a drink. Who was sitting at the bloody bar? Our Ted, smoking a little cigar with half a Guinness … and wearing my bloody new top. I didn’t say anything and asked him if he wanted a drink. The next day I asked our mum, “Did Big have my new top on last night?” “No,” she’d say, and would always cover up for him. He could do no harm in her eyes!’

In fact, Hilda was happy to aid and abet when it came to Ted ‘borrowing’ his brother’s clothes – if he wore one of Colin’s suits the next day, she would brush it down and hang it on the line to air it out.

Despite being a regular at The Cora and the many other pubs in Wednesbury, Ted would hardly drink. ‘You could buy him half a shandy and you’d be pressed to see if it had gone down by half an inch by the end of the night,’ says John. ‘On the nights that he was singing, he’d have a glass of tea – everyone used to think that he’d be drinking neat whisky. That’s what kept him so fit.’

Despite the banter about Ted’s love of the finer things in life, family loyalty was everything for the McDermotts, and Ted led the way in making sure they weren’t disrespected. He had a bit of clout locally – a good job at the factory, a successful Army record and a great voice that dominated the local clubs. A few years after coming back from the Army, he continued this tradition while defending his niece, Lorraine. She was the daughter of his brother, Fred, and his wife, Edna. From a young age, Lorraine had suffered with a slow eye, which meant she had to wear a big patch over her glasses to correct it. One day she went to play at a friend’s house – it was the Spooner family and they had lived on the same street as the McDermotts since Ted was a boy. All the children had grown up together, playing out and getting into all sorts of scrapes, and their parents went to The Cora together on a Friday night.

None of that history mattered to Ted as soon as he saw Lorraine bolt through the front door in tears – he was in the front room and shouted out: ‘What the bloody hell’s happened?’ Lorraine didn’t want to say anything at first but eventually they persuaded her to tell them – it turned out that one of the Spooners had said it would bring bad luck on the house if Lorraine looked directly at her with her bad eye. Ted didn’t wait around to hear the rest of the conversation – he marched to their house, banged on the door with the force of a hurricane and, as Spooner opened the door to see what all the racket was about, he knocked him out with one clean punch. As he left Spooner out cold in the hallway, he shouted over his shoulder: ‘Dow you talk about our kid like that again.’

A few weeks later, Ted and Spooner were down at The Cora again having a beer and listening to music, no grudges held but a point made and a warning thrown out to anyone else who tried to disrespect his family.

Ted wasn’t scared of authority either, and if the people in charge were the ones upsetting anyone in the family, they got the same treatment. One day, when his little brother, Malcolm was only about 12 or 13 years old, he came home from school sobbing and with food around his face, saying that the teacher had shoved his head into his dinner because he’d refused to finish his vegetables. Well, Ted saw red immediately and went striding down the road to the school, to find this so-called teacher and see what he had to say for himself. As he turned the corner, he saw two policemen waiting and as he approached, they put out their hands to slow him down: ‘Steady on, mate, where you going? We know why you’re here but you need to calm down, OK?’ It turned out that as soon as the teacher realized the boy he’d attacked was a member of the McDermott family, he told the headmaster and decided to call the police in anticipation of trouble. It seemed that Ted’s reputation for protecting his own went before him.

It wasn’t often that the kids went home and confessed to being in trouble and receiving the cane, as they knew they would get an extra clip round the ear for being a pain at school. But something like this was different, especially with a family that didn’t take too kindly to any sort of disrespect. The teacher couldn’t apologize quickly enough to Ted, who simply replied: ‘It’s not me yam gotta apologize to, it’s my brother you need to say sorry to.’ Once the matter was resolved, the second policeman, a friend of Ted’s, took him aside and said: ‘If I were you, mate, I’d wait for him and I’d give it him. If that was my brother or child, I’d wait for him and I’d make sure he wouldn’t do it again.’ But Ted felt he had dealt with the situation – his sister Chris avows: ‘Our Ted wasn’t violent, he wasn’t like that at all, but he would always stick up for what was right. If anybody said anything, well, that was it. He wouldn’t let anyone put on we.’

***

In his early twenties, Ted was well known around the pubs in Friar Park for getting up and singing whenever he could. But despite working in the forge during the day, it was a chance meeting with an old Army mate, Tommy, that took his life in a different direction.

They were catching up over a drink one night, putting the world to rights, when Ted was offered an opportunity he couldn’t turn down. Tommy’s father worked at Walsall Football Club and had told him about the need for an announcer at the matches. Ted grabbed the opportunity with both hands – not only would it give him the extra pounds for his pocket, but it would also allow him free entry to the match as well as being able to put his vocal talents to good use.

After a quick training on how to use the Tannoy system, he soon had a regular gig every match day down at the club. As well as the standard announcements, he would entertain the crowd by playing records and reading out the raffle results. He was in his element. He slowly made a name for himself with the managers at the club, mainly as he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind, sharing ideas about what he thought would help contribute to the club’s success.

‘You gotta bring the women in more,’ he told one of the directors. ‘Get them in and the blokes will follow.’

It was a good idea. Soon the club was putting on a ‘posh’ buffet with drinks after the match. Music was the perfect accompaniment – which gave Ted the opportunity to perform alongside some big and brilliant acts. The platform was way more substantial than at the local clubs, the crowds were bigger and the nerves more palpable, but the adrenalin rush was just the same. The success of the events meant that Ted was given a full-time job at the club and put in charge of promotions, enabling him to leave the forge.

It was also a dream come true for Ted’s brother John. He was football-obsessed and took Ted’s job as an opportunity to be down at the club whenever he could. Ted had been there a few months when he came home one night shouting for John to ‘Get yer boots on! We’m a player short at Walsall and we need you to come down and play for a second team.’ John couldn’t get down there quick enough and played a blinding match – he wowed them all so much that they wanted to sign him up there and then. But doing so would have meant walking away from a steady job just when he was about to get married, and he had to pay the bills, not ‘run around a pitch for a living and hope it would fill the electricity meter’. These were obviously the days before players could earn a fortune and John became one of a long line of McDermott men who had to push aside their dreams for the sake of providing a roof over the heads of their loved ones.

Because the McDermott boys did pull their weight, they were never out of work despite the turbulent times, and Hilda felt proud to have raised them. As they got older, the priority was no longer pulling them out of bed for school, it was setting them all up with a good breakfast and clean clothes for a heavy day at work. One by one that responsibility became another woman’s, as each of the sons married and moved out.

Ernie, Maurice and Fred tried to make their money away from the factory; the three of them worked at a huge slaughterhouse, killing over 1,000 pigs a week. Ernie inherited Ted’s knack for spotting a way to bring home extras and always managed to snag a few slices of meat, making sure that his mum and the rest of the family had food. Like all families at the time trying to make ends meet, the McDermott boys loved to see how cheeky they could be when it came to sneaking extras. Each was full of charm and worked so hard that no one minded if they took a little on the side. It was the same story in every household, and if the boys put in the hours, bosses were happy to turn a blind eye. There are many stories about how Ernie once came home after work with a row of sausages wrapped around his waist, tucked under his shirt away from sight. Eventually, his brother Maurice became one of the deliverymen – which meant even more meat for Kent Road. ‘No one starved in our house,’ he used to say.

The gaffer of the slaughterhouse, Mr Hollinsworth, was a fan of the McDermotts, often saying to Fred as he left on a Friday: ‘Tek that for your dad’s tea’, and handing him a few slices of something for the weekend. Ernie and Maurice had other odd jobs, too – it was very much a family affair and they all did their bit to try and take some of the pressure off Maurice and Hilda whenever they could.

Although having a job for life would have provided some security, it just wasn’t like that in Ted’s part of the world in the late 1960s. You had to be nimble and willing to turn your hand to almost anything because things were changing all the time. So when work at the football club dried up, Ted had to weigh up the reality of working somewhere in town with fewer paying shifts just so that he could sing against moving on and taking more regular work with better pay. The need for a regular wage won the day and Ted, Fred, Morris and Ernie all ended up getting jobs with Wimpey, a company who were building new homes around the Midlands in places such as The Woods Estate, Bulls Hill and Hollyhead Road.

Ted got a job as a watchman on one of these sites and immediately earned himself a reputation as a loveable joker, sticking his head in the cement mixer and singing a tune, asking them what it sounded like. He was always singing and, just as in his Army days, constantly dreaming of other things. He always made sure he did the job in hand and was respectful to his co-workers and bosses, but he found it hard to concentrate on anything that wasn’t music, so the job was a godsend. The site in question was just down the road from his house, so he would have a quick look round to check everything was in order and then slope off home to learn his songs and watch TV (they’d only just been able to afford one, so the novelty still hadn’t worn off).

This all worked brilliantly for Ted until one day, as he sat with his feet up watching a TV show and eating his lunch, one of the local kids started banging on the door and screaming: ‘Fire! Fire!’ At first Ted thought he was pulling his leg and that maybe one of his brothers had sent the kid to wind him up, but then he heard the fire engines racing up the road. Ted had never run so fast in his life as he sprinted to the site to find it was indeed on fire. It was a disaster and the others couldn’t wait to tell his dad what had happened on Ted’s watch – it was one of those rare times when Maurice went mad at Ted – this was definitely something he couldn’t charm his way out of. His parents made it clear how unimpressed they were, as did his bosses. It all blew over eventually, but it definitely taught him a valuable lesson.

Ted’s wheeling and dealing became legendary – especially when he went through the phase of offering to put on bets for some of the blokes on the building site. He and his mate Georgie had more freedom than the rest to come and go from the site and were able to slip away to place bets for all the workers, who were almost religious about gambling. One day a chap gave them a double bet to put on. Ted was adamant they had backed the wrong horse and wouldn’t win anyway, and so he decided to keep the money instead.

Ray Barns worked on the site with Ted and knew that he hadn’t placed the bet and so was keeping an eye on the race for him – the next thing you know he’s bursting through the doors to where Ted was quietly having a cup of tea on his break and shouting: ‘Ted, Ted! That horse has only gone and bloody won 100 to 8!’ They all dashed back to the betting office, praying the next horse wouldn’t win. It was neck and neck and went to a photo finish. Ted and Georgie were panicking because they were about to lose a month’s wages each. Luckily for them the horse lost; it was probably one of the closest calls he had.

Moving forward, Ted’s varied career included working for the council in the gardens, often driving home for his lunch in a dumper truck he’d ‘borrowed’ (despite not having a driving licence), and then working for the water board. He wasn’t beyond enlisting the younger kids to earn extra cash either, telling them to keep their eyes peeled for a leak in the street, as he would get paid extra for spotting any and reporting them.

Weekends were still a time for Ted to let down his hair and now that he was that bit older and had more spare cash, he would travel further afield than The Cora. He started popping up to Taffy Griffiths Coach Station on Crankhall Lane in Wednesbury. He’d ask the coach drivers where they were headed and if he fancied it – usually Blackpool or Worcester – would find a spare seat and off he’d go. He didn’t have a grand plan but was happy to travel where the wind took him. Not shy of talking to strangers and in search of a new adventure, he would pal up with someone on the coach and end up singing in an unknown bar or club, where they’d often have a collection for him, before heading back on the first coach the next morning. After a while most of the drivers got to know him and would let him sleep in the back of the coaches – sometimes they’d even wait for him to make sure he had a lift back home. Blackpool was a regular holiday destination for many of the lads on the estate, though perhaps a less popular choice just for a night out, but Ted had no qualms about going further from home for more singing experience, sometimes even entering talent shows and winning. Hilda never knew if he was coming home or not, but she learned not to fret if his bed was empty in the morning.

‘He never looked on the bad side of life,’ says Ted’s brother-in-law, Tony. ‘No matter what you talked about, he’d always make it cheerful. It was as if all the troubles of the world could be on his shoulders but he was always out smiling. He never worried about a thing.’

One thing that Ted did learn early on was that even though singing wasn’t ever going to be his main job, it could still bring in some cash, and he’d often tell his brother Maurice: ‘If you can get up and play an instrument or sing, you don’t need any money when you go out’ cos they’ll have a collection for you afterwards.’ This was particularly true in The Cora, where the crowd were brilliant at showing appreciation for great singers: it spoke volumes that there was always a collection for Ted whenever he got up to sing.

Chapter 5

Ted remained close to all of his brothers – even as time marched on and they married, inevitably making their own lives outside the family home. He and Ernie were particularly tight, but so many of their scrapes and stories will remain untold – swallowed by the ravages of Alzheimer’s in Ted’s case and Ernie’s early death from cancer in 2012.

Ernie probably knew more about the inner workings of Ted’s mind than anyone else and their bond meant that he could see beyond his brother’s cheery persona and ability to always see the good in any situation. Ernie’s friends used to describe Ted as someone who could pick up any conversation and make it upbeat, but there was far more to him than that and his brother knew it. The frustration of not being able to make his passion a full-time job disheartened Ted as he got older and the opportunities slipped further away. He was most definitely ahead of his time and there was an honour in wanting to pursue it, but there was also the reality of responsibility and Ted knew he couldn’t escape that; no one could.

But no matter how much real life kept elbowing its way in, Ted remained committed to music. Whenever a new record came out, he would go straight up to Paradise Street in West Bromwich and he’d return home with both the record and the sheet music, so that he could take it to the pub and ask the pianist to play it while he sang. One of his favourite record shops was Al Cooper’s – he knew the owner and was always popping in and out whenever he could. In the cellars Al had all the old records from years back that he hadn’t managed to sell; all the real classics had a little stamp on them – 2d – which was about the price of a pint of beer. So Ted would be down there for hours listening to Al’s record stash, drinking tea and singing along – it was his ideal way to spend the day.

Playing music at Al’s and at home took the edge off everything, even the fact he had very little money. He’d drive the household – particularly Maurice – mad as he repeatedly stopped and started tracks on his home record player, writing down the lyrics line by line so that he could learn them off by heart and sing the song all the way through over and over again. Maurice could often be heard shouting, ‘For Christ’s sakes, Big’ Un! If you’re gunna play it, play it!’ A new track would be learned every Saturday without fail, then Ted would get dressed up and go down to The Cora to perform it. He had his finger on the pulse and never executed the same track twice. He’d always make sure he listened to up-and-coming songs right away, often sending his younger sister, Joyce, down to Woolworths with enough cash to buy a new record and a bag of broken biscuits as a reward for helping him out. In truth, ‘that bloody record player’ (as it was known) could have blown up the house, as at the time there were no plug sockets upstairs. That meant Ted running the cable to the record player through a light – essentially running a naked wire straight from the light fitting in the ceiling. It was just as well that no one was aware how dangerous this was, because it definitely took the idea of dying for his music to a whole new level. In fact, although Ted was known for helping out in any way he could, the one area that he was encouraged to keep away from was DIY. Hilda lived in fear of him trying to fix anything. She learned to keep quiet when anything went wrong in the kitchen, particularly if it involved the electrics. If Ted became aware there was a problem, he would drop everything, roll up his sleeves and say to Hilda: ‘Right, what do you need me to do?’, insisting until she felt she couldn’t say no without hurting his feelings. The whole house knew what a disaster he was and Malcolm, Gerry and Karen would often hide behind the kitchen door, laughing as Ted got to grips with the job in hand. Often, if he didn’t have a plug, he would just feed wires straight into the socket with a couple of matchsticks wedged in to stop them falling out.

The worse of this ‘Heath Robinson’ behaviour was reserved for the new family washing machine. When Hilda was finally able to throw out the tin bath and afford a proper washer (that didn’t involve wringing out wet sheets until her hands were shredded to ribbons), it was among was the happiest days of her life.

Although the new machine revolutionised Hilda’s life, it kept breaking down – it was second-hand and had been bought through a friend of Maurice’s at The Cora. That meant there was no real way of getting it fixed in a proper shop, so Ted would often volunteer to see if he could sort it out. Hilda would try and hold her tongue as she watched him take the whole thing apart, screw by screw, parts scattered all over the kitchen, messing up the floor that she had just cleaned. It would take him hours to put everything back together again but, without fail, there would always be one piece left over. Danger and lack of expertise withstanding, it was Ted’s way of trying to be useful, and deep down Hilda loved the way he devoted himself to making life better.

It was around this time, in 1964, that Ted started hanging around the Pebble Mill studios in Birmingham, where the BBC was based. He met a lot of great people, all music lovers like him, all trying to turn their passion into something more, but there were three guys in particular who Ted, aged 28, met at this time and who would go on to transform his life: Ben Beards, Geoff Thompson and Fred Timmins. They were in similar situations to Ted – particularly Ben, who had a day job as a machinist at Wilkins and Mitchell in Darlaston, near Wednesbury, to provide for his wife and three young children. Despite the pressure on him to bring home a decent wage, he also played the piano accordion and used his skill to earn extra cash and help pay his mortgage. Geoff, a 30-year-old drummer, joined him, and the two of them got a regular gig at a pub over in Bilston, where they were joined by Fred, a 22-year-old guitarist: they billed themselves as ‘The Starliners’. Ben cleverly fitted his accordion with a microphone, allowing him to play the bass line and giving them a unique sound. Now and again he would get Fred to do a bit of singing, alongside playing his guitar, and this eventually led to a regular Thursday-night gig at the Friar Park Labour Club. The performances went down well but they didn’t quite have the audience on their feet clamouring for more. Fred’s vocals were OK, but not standout, and they knew deep down that was holding them back – what they needed was a real star to belt out the lyrics. They were in luck when one night, as they took a break during their set, a handsome and well-dressed bloke with perfect hair walked up to the stage and asked: ‘Can I sing wi ya, mate?’