Allan Smethurst, The Singing Postman, earned recording success in the 1960s with a series of folk songs sang in his native Norfolk dialect, which he wrote himself. The most remembered was Hev Yew Gotta Loight Bor? which won an Ivor Novello Award in 1966, but never made the charts.I am not sure how popular he was outside of East Anglia, but I knew his songs whilst growing up as, living in Bedfordshire, we received local Anglia regional TV programmes. Well after his retirement from music industry in 1970, he would be used as a sort of cultural touchstone "You've heard of the Singing Postman, well here's the yodelling greengrocer", sort of thing.
After the 1960s he appeared to return to obscurity, apparently having spent all his money. He died in 2000, aged 73.
This blog was prompted by the purchase of a couple of his albums in a local charity shop (actually they give away their records for a small donation - as much as you can carry!). They seem to hold up a decent price on eBay, all on vinyl too; were they not released on CD?
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