48 Facts About John Hasted

John Barrett Hasted was a British physicist and folk musician.

John Hasted was born in Woodbridge, Suffolk, on 17 February 1921, the son of John Ord Cobbold Hasted and Phyllis Barrett.

John Hasted was a pioneer of radar development and an atomic physicist, but he was a pioneer and mainstay of the post-war English folk music revival, a founder and champion of the skiffle movement, and a passionate advocate for both traditional and political folksong.

John Barrett Hasted obtained a scholarship to study at Winchester College, where he won the science prize for developing a method of measuring velocity and distance by means of reflected sound waves, which in effect is a principle later used in radar and sonar technology.

John Hasted won a scholarship to study Chemistry as an undergraduate at New College, Oxford.

In 1942 John Hasted was transferred to the active war zone of North Africa.

John Hasted was deployed as a specialist wireless maintenance officer and was responsible for installing the upgraded radar equipment in Alexandria and later in Malta.

The upgraded system John Hasted installed could actually monitor them from the moment they took off from Sicily.

John Hasted later took part in the Italian campaign, serving in the same regiment as Dr Donald Hughes, a musician-educator who would play a part in the post-war folksong revival.

John Hasted returned to Oxford as a doctoral student working on microwave physics.

John Hasted studied with Lindemann at Clarendon Laboratory, which is part of the Department of Physics at Oxford University.

Alongside his interest in atomic energy, John Hasted continued his musical pursuits and in 1946 he happened to hear an Almanac Singers' vinyl record that a friend had picked up in New York.

John Hasted realised that involvement in politics would hinder his studies and career so he put them aside for a time.

John Hasted completed his doctorate successfully and later moved to London where he met other music-minded enthusiastic people who were interested in his ideas of attempting to combine folk music and left-wing politics.

John Hasted met and married Elizabeth Gregson, who was studying English at St Anne's College, Oxford.

John Hasted obtained a post in the Physics Department of University College, London, where he carried out detailed research on ions and on atomic collisions with Sir Harrie Massey who was Quain Professor of Physics and head of the University College London, Physics Department.

John Hasted worked with other researchers and succeeded in establishing UCL's reputation as a major centre for atomic physics.

John Hasted eventually found a Martin guitar, an American manufactured instrument with an established pedigree for quality.

John Hasted then wrote to People's Songs, an organization founded by Pete Seeger, Alan Lomax, Lee Hays, among others on December 31,1945, in New York City, to "create, promote, and distribute songs of labour and the American people".

John Hasted asked them for copies of mimeographed instructional materials on playing the acoustic guitar compiled by Pete Seeger.

John Hasted took the opportunity to research local folk songs and he learnt a number of Serbo-Croat folksongs which he eventually incorporated into his musical repertoire.

The simplicity of the song made it easy to follow and it did not take long for John Hasted to add a further verse to it and encourage the British youths to sing along.

John Hasted was a regular participant in Workers Music Association summer schools, these were held at Wortley Hall, near Sheffield after a group of local trade union activists identified the hall as a possible educational and holiday centre and established a co-operative which succeeded in purchasing the hall for those purposes.

John Hasted wrote a column about the London folk scene and contributed songs that he had written.

John Hasted looked around for new songs from other political folk singers across the country.

John Hasted reviewed publications by other stalwarts of the folksong revival, such as Ewan MacColl's small book of industrial songs, The Shuttle and the Cage.

The folk music revival seemed to be gaining strength when in 1954 John Hasted founded a folk club called The Good Earth.

John Hasted had great enthusiasm for traditional jazz which meant he followed the activities of the Ken Colyer Jazz Band, which had now begun to feature a skiffle group in its club dates.

John Hasted was one of the earliest champions of skiffle and wrote enthusiastically about it in his irregular "A Singer's Notebook" column in Sing.

John Hasted saw skiffle as a do-it-yourself music that appealed to city youth, a modern and urban form of folk music that could give traditional vernacular song a new lease of life and yet serve the labour movement.

John Hasted found himself straddling these extremes, as he loved the music of Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie, but he favoured the melodies of traditional ballads and the heritage of industrial song.

In 1955 the choir was invited to the Warsaw International Youth Festival, and John Hasted went as its conductor.

In 1956, during the Suez Crisis, there were a number of demonstrations in London, and John Hasted, participating in one of these was singing protest songs in Whitehall when his trusty Martin guitar was broken by an overzealous policeman.

John Hasted did not let this setback stop him, he set out to build his own twelve-string guitar, an instrument that was unobtainable in Britain at the time.

John Hasted used the remains of his Martin guitar and parts from another old six-string.

John Hasted continued championing it as an expression of the desire to "rebuild a living, urban people's music, and an audience for it".

John Hasted still had time to pursue his musical interests, and while in New York he met Millard Lampell of the Weavers and folk-guitarist Jerry Silverman and visited Woody Guthrie in hospital in New Jersey.

John Hasted convinced some friends to work with him on this project, namely Donald Hughes and Pat Shuldham-Shaw.

John Hasted sided with Bertrand Russell who supported the use of Gandhi type methods of civil disobedience.

John Hasted was described by many as having an inspiring personality, his sincerity and courage to stand up for what he believed in, be it his politics or his music, infused all those around him with his own incredible energy and enthusiasm.

John Hasted was modest about his own abilities, and that won him a large following among left-wing youth, skifflers, and young folksingers.

People that heard him sing said he had a good voice, but John Hasted was averse to being recorded as a singer because he felt self-conscious about his 'educated' accent which he believed was not the right for interpreting the folksongs he loved in the purest, most authentic form.

John Hasted was competent instrumental musician as a guitar and banjo player and a good singer, however it was his influence on the younger generation of English folksingers that was most important, he was a pioneer, a leader who inspired people and the effect on the music scene was huge.

John Hasted had many proteges, most of whom at one time or another were members of either the London Youth Choir or his skiffle group.

John Hasted was energetic in his involvement with both "the Party" and "the movement" which took a lot of time and effort.

John Hasted continued to build upon his academic success and published many papers in scientific journals.

John Hasted decided to leave the hustle and bustle of London behind and moved to St Ives in Cornwall.

John Hasted had very fond memories of the 1950s, he wrote: "I always had happy groups and happy choirs, a stimulating nightlife, and more laughter and tears than in the rest of my life".