Brian Cookman – Man Overboard
A mid seventies summer Sunday morning, Rob Mason and I, two hung over Geordie blues players desperately trying to keep out of the direct sunlight at the umpteenth Cambridge Folk Festival, open air stage starts. Wham! Who the f*** is the idiot in the striped blazer and straw boater looning around the stage and generally annoying people with his larger than life caperings? I wish that he would go away and let me suffer in peace, but find myself strangely drawn to him. He has a lovely old Dobro dangling from his neck, a harmonica harness complete with kazoo, and a voice like a foghorn! We may as well give this guy a try. Two hours later and some beer to fortify us we are enthralled by the effervescence of who we now know as some guy called Brian Cookman, never heard of him, but he isn’t arf good!
On our return home and to the blues club we help to run, the South Tyne Folk and Blues club in South Shields, we decide it might be a good idea to see if we can book this guy. I write a letter to him and offer him a pittance to come and play for us, he accepts. On his arrival at the club we realise that someone is going to have to put him up. I get the short straw, I don’t think we have a bed big enough! The gig is astonishing, he is great on the old jug band music and his own compositions moving and bitter sweet. What’s more, his sense of humour really clicks with the Geordie club audience, a notoriously hard group to amuse.
Brian and I become great mates, playing together at every available opportunity, my slide guitar and mandolin making up somewhat for his shortcomings as a guitar player, his words, not mine. We always have big fun. By now the “Hokum Hotshots” have reformed as a three piece with Rob, his brother Peter and myself. We do a tour with Brian and his old jug player Tony Knight as the “Shave ‘em Dry Jug Band”, completely mad, I still have some recordings of it and it makes me ill with laughter every time I listen back to them.
We find out about Brian’s pedigree as a musician, his first love of playing the banjo (a drum with a sort of stick fastened onto it!). The lovely old Dobro guitar that he bought from the widow of Cyril Davies, the grandfather of British Blues. His band “The Jug Trust” with Tony Knight and John Reed. His subsequent stab at stardom with “Bronx Cheer” - nearly made it that time, touring with Gallagher and Lyle, record deal etc.
Loads of gigs later and too many laughs, we have become very close friends and relish the opportunities we have to get together and play. Brian toured regularly up North and we venture South as often as we can. It was only a few months ago we were arsing about on stage playing mad old jug band songs to the delight of the audience and the great pleasure of the players. I will always remember his own description of himself – loud, confident and wrong! Oh, and by the way, if you can’t fight, wear a big hat!
Now he is gone, it’s not fair and I will miss him every damn day for the rest of my life!
To my old mate Brian, not really gone, just gone on ahead to the Whitewash Station in the sky.
Jim Murray - 'friend and fellow musician'