Librarian and local historian Olivia Smedley gave a talk at Sandbach Library last week to a capacity crowd of people who remembered music legend Cath Jones.
Mrs Jones was a local dance band leader and music studio owner. For many years she supplied the people of the area with not only records, sheet music, instruments and other items connected to music but also gave lessons in playing the piano and accordion and played for local dances in the area.
Many local married people can say they met at one of her dances and a few of those were listening to the talk on Wednesday (ITALICS writes Stewart Green).
Her music shop was also an Aladdin’s cave for music fans, with thousands of albums on sale, and for many youngsters was the place they bought their first albums.
Ms Smedley gave a brief history of the local celebrity, starting with her family and ending with her death in 1998.
Her roots lay with Ford and Sons, “cabinet makers, upholsterers, and complete house furnishers, designers of artistic furniture, repairing, antiques a speciality”.
In “Kelly’s Directory” from 1896 and 1901 there were two Ford “cabinet makers” – Frank Ford on Green Street and Samuel Ford in High Town. According to a 1906 advert there was also a shop in Middlewich Road, Sandbach.
By 1906 Albert Ford had broken away from the main company and had opened a shop in Hightown advertising “Complete house furnisher, music and musical instrument dealer”.
In 1910, Arthur Ford (piano tuner) and Frank Ford (antique furniture dealer) were at 7, Middlewich Road, and Frank was still there in 1938 when it was advertised as a furniture broker / sales.
Cath’s father Charles Ford was born on 26th February 1882 and died on 16th May 1935. His wife was Anne (nee Black) who was born on 23rd September 1883 and died on 26th July 1971. They had eight children including a son called “Little John” who is buried with them in St Mary’s Cemetery in Sandbach (no dates so he may have died at birth) as well as Cath, who had been born in Sandbach in 1919. She had a brother called Harry, later a violinist.
Young Cath went to a private school next to the Old Hall at 59, High Street run by Miss Henrietta A Harris, which opened before 1914 and ran until about 1938.
Her father Charles Ford died when Cath was either 16 or 17 in 1935, and by 1938 Charles Ford and Son had moved to the shop at 17, Congleton Road with Cath – and possibly her brothers – working in the shop continuing their father’s business.
What happened to the furniture business is not known but things changed when Cath married Wilfred Jones in 1939. The couple lived with Cath’s mother Annie at Sunnydale, 19, Congleton Road, next to her dad’s workshop and shop.
In August 1947, Cath opened the record shop as the Cath Jones Music Studio, selling the old 78s and sheet music. Always interested in music, she learned to play the accordion and piano and by 1947 had formed her own band, which would play at dances all over the area.
The first of her bands was called The Merrymakers and later the Cath Jones Band or Cath Jones and Her Band, and it played on a regular basis for dances from the 1940s through to the 1980s at various locations including a regular booking at Bradwall Village Hall, Goostrey Village Hall and the town hall in Sandbach, where she held a regular Christmas Eve dance.
By 1952 she was playing for dances in Holmes Chapel and other local towns. Her band at the time consisted of William (Bill) Owen, Wilf Jones, Charlie Owen, and herself.
Regular bookings were now coming in with the Sandbach branch of the National Farmers’ Union filling a lot of dates in the diary.
The band would play for regular dances often starting the evening with a class in the latest dance and then a varied selection of music until the last waltz.
Former band member Derek Reece was in the audience for the talk. He played with Cath from about 1956 and was often given the task of making sure all the girls had a partner for the last waltz. Cath used to tell him to pop down to the dancefloor at the end of the night to make sure everyone was on the floor.
In 1960, Derek married a girl he met at a dance at Goostrey Village Hall after he had been asked to make sure all the girls had a partner!
On 17th June 1961 the Leonard Cheshire Home on The Hill was opened to the public for the first time, with a garden party in the grounds of the building – Cath and her band supplied the music in the evening with Charles Kelly, a member of Sandbach Urban District Council, acting as MC.
During intervals, Cath would often put an old Dansette record player in the middle of the dancefloor to keep the dancing going for those who wanted to dance non-stop. At other times she would let the band stop for a drink while she played several tunes – not for dancing – including Scott Joplin rags.
Sandbach mayor Coun Ann Nevitt, who was also at the talk, revealed that when she married Jim Nevitt in 1963, Cath’s band played.
In January 1966, Coun Ernest Condliffe held his (Sandbach UDC) chairman’s ball at the town hall with music by Cath – and so good was the dancing that an eight-foot square lump of plaster fell from the ceiling of the boardroom below! Thankfully no-one was in the room at the time.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s her record shop’s reputation for stocking rare recordings reached as far afield as the USA and a number of local celebrities visited the shop, including Mike Sweeney (BBC Radio Manchester), Mike Adams and Chris Savoury (Signal Radio “Grooving” / BBC Radio Shropshire and BBC Midlands Radio “Record Collectors”) and BBC Radio Stoke’s Jack Ward.
Jack (b 1908) was a regular visitor to the shop to purchase sheet music for his “Dial a Tune” radio show. The programme lasted for 12 years.
By the 1980s Cath had many regular shop assistants and friends popping in on a regular basis, one being John Burgess, who initially just went in for a chat – he lived alone on Newfield Street – was eventually given a chance to work in the shop – unpaid – at whatever with hours he wanted to work. John joined regular assistant Stewart Green as an assistant eventually taking over (with pocket money) after the shop when Cath and Wilf were playing at a lunchtime or long distance gigs.
During this time Cath was asked to a garden party at Buckingham Palace because of the charity work she had done and her contribution to the town of Sandbach.
Not only did Cath and Wilf bring back some wonderful memories of Buckingham Palace but also – wrapped up in tissue paper – she acquired some daisies from the lawn!
It was a good swap because she also carved decorations on clocks (put together by a friend called Harry Worth), one of which was taken to the garden party as a wedding present to Prince Charles and Lady Diana in 1981, with their initials carved onto the back.
On 18th April 1983, Wilf died leaving a big gap in Cath’s life. After his death she spent less and less time in the shop and gave up playing for dances, preferring to do carvings for the clocks and to compose tunes at home.
Eventually a friend called Brian Elsby persuaded her to start playing again with the North Staffs Music Hall Association, with which he was involved, and the two of them spent more and more time together at various events not only with the music hall society but playing at care homes and other venues.
By this time the record store was suffering from the new compact discs hitting the sale of LPs and 45s, meaning Cath’s stock was increasingly aimed at the collectors’ market. Profits dropped as the new CDs started to appear in supermarkets and by the end of the 1990s the shop was only surviving because of the money Cath had accumulated over the years.
The North Staffordshire Music Hall Society changed its name to the Cath Jones Music Hall Show Group as she became more involved with its musical direction.
On 29th August 1998, Cath died of a heart attack.
Before her death Brian and Cath had got engaged, and he was listed as her fiancé in her obituary.
A service was held at St Mary’s Church on 4th September 1998 followed by an internment in the church graveyard where she was buried with her beloved Wilf.
Brian Elsby and John Burgess did their best to keep the shop open but on 29th February 2000, 18 months after Cath’s death, the shop shut its door for the last time. By now all the collectable stock had been sold and those recordings left were purchased in bulk by a dealer for a knock down price.
There are not many shop keepers anywhere who are remembered after so many years with such affection.
Her legacy was not only for her dances but also that first record purchase for a youngster or discovery of a track that no-one else had.
Even the sheet music Cath sold had memories for numerous professional musicians, leaving an indelible mark on the many lives of customers from Sandbach and further afield.
