Impressing the Brummies

Time: Evening, early 1960s.
Place: Upstairs room in the Stage Door Club, Birmingham, England (despite the name, it was a coffee bar).
Present: Numerous Brummies, mostly in couples, looking unimpressed by anything. It's something young Birmingham people do so well. Their attitude (back then): "Impress me if you can - but we both know you won't."

In walks a man significantly older than the usual crowd, with a banjo of all things. Worse, he starts to play it. The crowd remains "cool" and unimpressed. Maybe two or three of us recognise one of the tunes in his opening medley. At the end a few clap, politely, stopping with quick embarrassment as they realise you just don't applaud middle-aged banjo players when surrounded by your "cool" mates.

The banjo player, undeterred, announces the names of the tunes he's just played. We were right - the last one was Cripple Creek.
Then he tells the crowd they're going to sing. Sing? That's not cool, that's what your parents do round the piano in their local pub, usually when they've had an un-cool few too many pints of beer. Worse, he announces he wants them to sing in four-part harmony. An African song. In some African language. For heaven's sake...!

We wait for the assembled caffeine addicts to either:

a) throw him out of the window
b) boo him off the floor
c) walk out

or (the most likely)

d) ignore him to death. They could do this superbly, back then.

We squirm with empathetic embarrassment as he first divides the crowd into four groups, then sings the first of the four parts he wants them to sing. Whoever this fellow is - a Yank of some kind by his nasal accent - he's going to die a death worse than any Sassenach comedian doing a Monday matinee at the Glasgow Empire.

A few feeble voices join him. "Great!" he roars. "Now let's hear it from group two!" This time, a slightly stronger response. "Third group!" he yells, singing along with them. By the time group four tries their part, the people in the other groups who didn't sing when it was their turn join them. He jokingly chides them for singing in the wrong group, then does another run-through.

Amazing! They're eating out of his hand. He's got them singing in a language they don't know, in four-part harmony, and they're loving it. They can't get enough! He plays and sings for over an hour and they won't let him go. Who is this amazing man? "My name's Pete Seeger," he responds.