I was first introduced to the delights of Mavin James via Music For Mentalists, a CD compiled by Mick Dillingham and Nick Saloman of the Bevis Frond. It’s a great compilation, but by far and away the best track on the disc is Together In Iceland by one Mavin James.
Together in Iceland was originally the B-side to My Dad, Mavin’s third single, issued by Havasong Records, of Rochester, Kent in 1986. There's something utterly beguiling about Mavin's delivery of the A-side; it's a sweet, naive little ditty that you could easily imagine being performed by Clive Dunn. However, nothing can prepare you for the B-side. Drenched in reverb and redolent in blippy organ sounds, Together in Iceland comes across more like a lost Joe Meek masterpiece than the mid-80s electro-pop you would assume Mavin was going for.
Through the sleeve notes to his singles we get to learn a little about Mavin, and with a mixture of self-mockery and self-aggrandisement he lets us into his rather odd world. Once fined 15 shillings for having left his car more than 20 minutes in a 15-minute waiting zone (something Mavin does not refer to once in his sleeve notes, but it’s just about the most interesting thing about him prior to the launch of his recording career), on the back of the My Dad sleeve he informs us of how he came to be living in Rochester and how he started writing and performing, but it is via the notes on the reverse of his first 45, the oddly titled He-Be - Har-Be/Me Me and You, we begin to learn something of the great man’s formative years (reproduced here exactly as they appear on the sleeve itself):
'Mavin James was born and at the age of only two years following the positioning of his high chair near the piano, soon found he could master the theories of music. Within a very short time original melodies were flowing from his toes and his future seemed assured. However the advent of shoes ruined this promising career and he was a has-been at the age of two and a half.
'Later in his life having found that fingers play better than toes he continued to play piano but eventually settled on playing the organ to the consternation of his family and friends. Discounting the first fifty tries which didn’t really count he sat down to write and play his debut record and at first try completed He-Be – Har-Be, Immediately following up with his disco ballad Me-Me And You, which is particularly suitable for close dancing when you’re in a don’t care mood.’
On that first 45 Mavin was joined by the Venatics, a band whose members are listed on the label as Russ, Joan and Neill. I assumed at the time that these people were related to Mavin in some way, and I now know that Russ was his son, Gary Russell Hirst-Amos. The single’s flip, Me Me And You (a ‘disco/ballad’ apparently), is a sweet little love song with some nicely atmospheric slide guitar touches, but disco it most certainly ain’t. The production values on this first single are a cut above the rest of Mavin’s catalogue – he’s clearly gone into a professional studio and had some help with mixing and multi-tracking. Sadly, or perhaps happily for lovers of the perverse and peculiar, the rest of his catalogue – including second single You’re Just Like a Bubble In Wine/Nothing to Do - was recorded direct to two-track: no overdubs, no guest musicians or backing vocalists, just Mavin and his trusty Bontempi organ.
Mavin, on the surface at least, appears to have been a rather lovely middle-aged guy who simply wanted to make the world smile a little. His fourth and last single, The Soldier on His Horse was issued in 1988, and by that time he had run out of steam. The flip side features an instrumental version of the plug side, Drum Beat and Music Track, and in the sleeve notes Mavin refers to the fact that this is only the seventh song that he had written and recorded. Perhaps more recordings followed, but nothing appears to have been released. Maybe somewhere in Rochester there is a battered old cardboard box containing the tapes of his unreleased album?
It could happen, as that’s exactly how I managed to get hold The Soldier on His Horse. Neil Pearce, the son of one of Jim’s friends, found a box in his late father’s garage with a handful of Mavin James 45s inside, including the copy of The Soldier on His Horse you can hear here. Perhaps one day, just like Joe Meek, someone will purchase a tea chest full of material at auction and slowly piece together a fuller picture of Mavin’s creative genius. What was once the home of Havasong Records, Mavin’s label, is now a car park; not that that fact will upset him. For the truth of the matter is that there never was a Mavin James.
Born in 1931, Jim Amos, or, to give him his full name James Mavin Hirst-Amos, was - according to drummer, songwriter and graphic artist Bruce ‘Bash’ Brand – ‘a television tube repair man by trade… who claimed on numerous occasions that he once wrote a song for Georgie Fame.’ He was, Neil tells me. also a keen snooker player and a bit of a gambler. Switching his first two given names and assuming the nom-de-plume Mavin James, Jim set up his own company – the jauntily-named Havasong – to publish his own compositions. Havasong swiftly mutated into a record company of sorts, issuing the four Mavin James singles already mentioned and working with a number of local acts, chief among them the Prisoners, the Milkshakes and the amazingly prolific Thee Headcoats – the last two of which featured Billy Childish and Bruce Brand.
Jim Hirst-Amos died in 2003 (wife Jean joined him in 2012), blissfully unaware of the notoriety his records would one day gain in collectors’ circles. I hope he’s up there somewhere, sitting at his organ, watching over us all and smiling. I know that his grandchildren are proud (and rightfully so) of his recorded legacy. Maybe, if they ever get to read this, his family will open up those boxes sitting in the corner of their garage and dust them off.
Download Soldier HERE
Download Drum HERE
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