October 2023 Speaker
October's meeting was attended by 71 people, probably the largest number we’ve had in the hall for a while. The excellent turnout was rewarded with an excellent speaker, Mike Grillo who gave what can only be described as a truly enjoyable and brilliant in-depth talk on the story of country music entitled 'Your Cheatin' Heart’.
There was plenty of toe-tapping as Mike led us through many decades of different country music genres; starting in the 1920s with its original inception in the southern Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee and in Atlanta, Georgia through to worldwide country music as we know it today. He stopped along the way to tell us about the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Honky Tonk bar rooms and the singing cowboys of 1940's Hollywood, the Rockabilly artists like Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins and the more recent Country Pop fusion singers Shania Twain, Carrie Underwood (American Idol winner 2005) and Taylor Swift.
Mike handpicked some evocative tracks to illustrate the musical journey. His wife Ruth had put together a visual presentation which brought the story alive. There were plenty of familiar names of yesteryear country artists to reacquaint ourselves with and some we hadn’t heard of. There really were too many names to mention, singers of those memorable and timeless songs that will be around far longer than those of the present day. It’s true they don’t make them like they used to ...
Mike himself has been a successful showman since the 1970s with his music tours, but took that sage advice to 'get out whilst at the top’ and so after selling out his shows in 2016 he decided to call it a day. Nowadays he still writes songs (he’s on Spotify if you want to listen) and speaks to many groups about his great love for and incredible knowledge of music and its legacy.