Eric Stott, 66, runs Swindon Folksingers’ Club. Believed to be the oldest folk club in the country, it marks its 55th anniversary with a musical celebration at the Ashford Road Social Club from 8pm on Friday. Eric lives in the town centre and works as a record dealer in the tented market

MUSIC has been a constant in Eric Stott’s life for as long as he can remember.

“I’ve always loved music – it’s always been there,” he said.

“There was always music in the house. My father played the mouth organ. On a Sunday morning, while the Sunday lunch was cooking, he’d get the mouth organ out and he’d just play away for a couple of hours – popular tunes, tunes from the forties, fifties and sixties.

“My paternal grandmother used to play the organ in the chapel at Leigh-on-Solent, and my mother sang in a local choir when she was in her teens.

“I’m lucky enough to have grown up in the radio age. We always had the radio on and that leaves an impression with you.

“Then of course, when I got to my early teenage years, that was the early sixties, when the Beatles came along, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks and the whole thing.

“I saw The Who at The Locarno. I saw Brian Poole and the Tremeloes up there. I saw Fleetwood Mac when Albatross was top of the hit parade. I saw John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton and Peter Green.

“I remember going to Bath Pavilion and seeing Canned Heat and the Moody Blues. I went to a festival there one summer and one of the groups was Led Zeppelin.

“I saw Jimi Hendrix at Newbury Corn Exchange when he’d just come over.

“We were all into soul music like Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, and somebody said there was a new black singer, come over. So we all went to Newbury Corn Exchange and it was Jimi Hendrix – a sound that just knocked us over. I’d never heard anything like it in my life.”

Eric was born in Gosport, Hampshire, the son of a long-distance lorry driver and a housewife who worked for a while at Garrard’s.

“We moved here when I was ten, in May of ‘fifty-eight,” Eric said. “We lived in Park South.”

Leaving Sanford Street school at 15, Eric spent 19 years with Vickers Armstrong, then had stints as a warehouseman or storeman with organisations including Intel and Woolworths.

After retiring at 63, he was invited by a friend, Derek Butler, to join him at Blood on the Tracks, a record shop in the tented market. With his lifelong passion for music, Eric wasn’t about to refuse. Blood on the Tracks is one of two specialist vinyl shops in the market, the other being IDL Records.

Eric wants to introduce more people to vinyl, which is making a strong comeback after being overshadowed for years by CDs.

“People come in and they say, ‘how long have you been here? I didn’t realise you were here,’ and I say, ‘two-and-a-half years...’ “Vinyl, I believe, has better quality. When they digitally remaster it and all that sort of thing, I think they lose something of the quality of the original recording. They compress it too much. I believe it’s a warmer sound.”

Blood on the Tracks is named after a Bob Dylan album and it was Dylan’s music that helped nurture Eric’s other musical passion, folk.

“In the early sixties, when I was 14 and 15 there used to be a radio programme on the old Light Programme that came on at about half past four. I used to get home from school and put the radio on.

“There was an American trio called Peter, Paul and Mary who sang Puff the Magic Dragon, which caught my ear. They followed it up with a song called Blowin’ in the Wind. Then they appeared on Sunday Night at the London Palladium and said, ‘We’re going to sing our latest single now, written by a young American singer-songwriter called Bob Dylan.’ “So I went and found out a bit more about this Bob Dylan, and found this Freewheelin’ LP which has got Blowin’ in the Wind on it.

“Reading the sleevenotes, he mentioned that for one of the songs he sang on there, he’d got the tune from a young English folk singer called Martin Carthy.

“I’d started working at Vickers by this time and I came across this chap called Ted Poole, who I discovered ran the local folk club.

“He said, ‘You know, we’ve got our own folk music in this country – you don’t have to listen to this American stuff all the time.’ “I went along to the local folk club and just took it from there, really.”

Ted Poole and his wife Ivy launched the Swindon Folksingers’ Club in 1960. The couple still attend and are expected to be at Friday’s anniversary celebration.

Eric is anxious to dispel stereotypes of folk music: “Somebody with their finger in their ear and all that sort of thing...”

He loves its inclusiveness and longevity. “One of the songs, Barbara Allen, is mentioned in Samuel Pepys’ diary. He says he went to a show and heard a singer perform it. There are hundreds of versions nowadays. Many of the songs are based on stories going back into the mists of time.

“You can have a song that’s 500 years old or a song that was written last year.”

There are currently about 30 members and the club meets on Fridays from 8pm at the Ashford Road club. All are welcome to come along and find out more.

“It’s not just the music,” said Eric. “It’s the whole involvement of the people I’ve met over the years through the folk world.

“We just want to keep the music alive.”

The club’s website is swindonfolk.org