Sam Bennett born (1865-1951) from Ilmington, a frequent dancer and musician in Bampton, this photo dated 1920 Sam had the distinction of being called “a rotter” by Cecil Sharp. He was responsible for reviving the Morris tradition in the Warwickshire village of Ilmington. Although a fiddle player himself, he learned the tunes from a local pipe and tabor player, Tom Foster, who “no longer had enough teeth to hold the pipe in place” In the process of reviving the dances, Bennett did some improving and inventing along the way. To Sharp, this was inexcusable meddling; what he most treasured about traditional dance was that is was supposedly not the work of individual creativity, but of centuries of continuous evolution by the common, preferably uneducated people. Bennett was recorded in 1933 by a Harvard academic, James Madison Carpenter. Being a self-taught fiddler, and having learned his tunes directly from a piper, it is little wonder that his playing, though very rhythmic, was plain and unadorned except with frequent open-string drones.
Bertie Clark. Fiddle rear Harry Hampton (fool) Peter Alum, George Hunt, Bobby Wells cake Bertie (1877.-1958) was another Bampton Morris fiddler, but unlike Wells was not born into the tradition. He was brought up in London, where he worked at a railway depot in Camden Town. He had some violin lessons, and played in the railway staff orchestra. Sometime before the Great War he moved to Carterton, the village next to Bampton. When in 1926 Jinky Wells had a falling-out with his Morris side, and went off to form his own, Bertie Clark was invited to be fiddler for the original Bampton Morris; he initially learned the tunes from Cecil Sharp’s published manuscripts (presumably relations with Wells were such that he wasn’t going to teach them to Bertie himself!) Recordings of his playing made in 1958 appear on Rig-a-jig jig; dance music of the south of England from Topic Records’ "Voice of the People" collection. A listen to his playing is very instructive. At the time he would have been 81 years old, was quite likely well out of practice and possibly arthritic.
