Obituary from "Dirty Linen"

Robert James "Bob" Copper (1915-2004), the patriarch of the singing Copper Family of Sussex, England, died on March 29 in a hospital in Brighton.  He was 89 years old.  He is survived by his children, John and Jill, and by six grandchildren.

Copper was one of the most important people in English traditional song, and came from one of the tradition's most influential families.  Coppers have been in Rottingdean, Sussex, since at least the time of Shakespeare, and have been singing for at least two centuries.  "I can always remember my granddad singing," Bob told Dirty Linen's Chris Nickson in 1997.  "He can remember his granddad singing.  That man was George Copper, born in Rottingdean in 1794." Bob also often recounted that in 1898, a collector named Kate Lee came to Rottingdean looking for folk songs.  She found Bob's grandfather James ("Brasser") and his brother Thomas.  After carrying their songs back to London, Lee helped found the Folk Song Society (which later merged into the English Folk Dance and Song Society).  The Coppers were honorary founding members, but Lee died only a few years later and no further collectors visited the family.

Bob Copper's young life was typical of his place and generation, though perhaps more than typically centered on stories and songs.  His first job was as a lather boy in a barbershop.  He used the opportunity to listen to tales of local life from people of his father's and grandfather's generations.  He joined the military in 1933, and on his release became a police constable in the seaside town of Worthing.  He maintained a deep interest in music, and visited clubs and cabarets to see performers like Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller.  In 1941, he met and married Joan Deal, whose parents ran the Central Club in Peacehaven, Sussex.  In 1946, he left the police and took over the management of the club.

Through these years, Bob continued to sing, usually with his father Jim, uncle John, and cousin Ron.  They sang in harmony, which was unusual in the English tradition.  To help them remember the words, they sang from a manuscript book started by Jim in 1936.  In 1950, when a classically arranged folksong was played on the radio, Jim wrote a letter that brought the family, and especially the charismatic Bob, to the attention of the BBC.  In August of that year, Bob and Jim sang on the radio, the first traditional singers to do so in England.  In Bob's words, the program director "decided to send people out in the field with recording gear all over the country".  One of these collectors was Bob himself.  Bob's own singing, and the songs he collected, were heard on Country Magazine, a lunchtime programe listened to by 12 to 13 million people.  It was a major step for English traditional song.

For the rest of his life, Bob Copper acted as a mediator, presenter, or ambassador of the tradition.  He did this on the radio and on record albums, solo and with the whole family.  He did it in the books A Song for Every Season (1971), Songs and Southern Breezes (1973), Early to Rise: A Sussex Boyhood (1976) and Bob Copper's Sussex (1994).  He did it at folk clubs and festivals, in England and around the world, including his own club in Peacehaven.  He was a definitive influence on many revivalist performers, including Shirley Collins and Peter Bellamy, and there is hardly a singer on the folk scene today who has not borrowed songs from Bob Copper.  On March 25, just four days before he died, he was awarded the MBE for his importance to English culture.

In a sense, Copper's death signifies the end of an era.  But in a more important sense it doesn't.  His children have been singing for years, and his grandchildren sing, as well.  Just as Jim's death, and Brasser's death before that, did not mean the end of the family tradition, neither will Bob's.  Bob sang:

"What's the life of a man, any more than a leaf -
A man has his seasons, so why should we grieve?"

The folk world will grieve, of course, but the songs will endure...  thanks to Bob Copper.

Steve Winick