Derek Stanley William Sarjeant, 1930–2018
Born and brought up in Chatham, Derek Sarjeant started playing the trumpet at the age of 15. He played with various jazz bands in Kent and formed a group called the Golden Gate Jazzmen. He was then swept up in the skiffle craze of the 1950s, took up the guitar, and started singing in a skiffle group. He started the first folk club in Kent, at Chatham, in 1956. In the early 1960s, he moved to Surbiton in Surrey to take up a management post for the South Eastern Electricity Board. Here he set up the very successful Surbiton and Kingston Folk Club, which ran weekly from January 1962 until the mid 1970s.
In an obituary tribute on Mudcat, his one-time musical partner Graham Bradshaw recalled that the folk club
reflected the interest in the folk boom of Greenwich Village at the time, and Derek booked many American artists that were making the trip over to the UK at the time. Doc Watson, Paul Simon, Tom Paxton and Julie Felix were just some of the names.
The club was famous for its eclectic policy – Bluegrass, blues, trad jazz, traditional folk from all parts of the British Isles could all be seen. Derek was responsible for bringing over some of the Blues greats – Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee (already mentioned), Rev Gary Davis and Jesse Fuller (who made his farewell appearance at Surbiton when people like Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton and Donovan were in the audience to see the great man). I also remember a very young Scottish lad called Rod Stewart who was brought along by Long John Baldrey one night.
Diz Disley was a regular at the club and when he persuaded Stephane Grapelli out of retirement to re-form the Hot Club de Paris group, it was Surbiton where they made their debut, before going on to tour the world’s concert halls.1
Sarjeant was also a popular performer on the folk club scene. He recorded four EPs between 1962 and 1963, including Man of Kent, which included ‘A sailor coming home on leave’, a song he had collected “from an old seaman in one of the Medway Towns”. His album Derek Sarjeant Sings English Folk was released in 1970, followed the following year by the eponymous The Derek Sarjeant Folk Trio LP, with Graham Bradshaw and Hazel King. Derek and Hazel subsequently performed as a folk duo, and they married in 1977. Derek retired to Bridport in Dorset, and died in April 2018.
- Graham Bradshaw, Mudcat, 21 April 2018, https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=163988 ↩︎
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