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Mother's Club Carlton Club Ballroom Erdington

I used to go in the 60's, when it was the Carlton. Think we've all met before!

Ann
 
Ann, Did you go to the El Toro Coffee Shop that sold Espresso Coffee. It was a few doors down from the Carlton Ballroom? It was the place to go in the late l950's when espresso bars started opening up.
 
No Jenny, I didn't live that side of town. But the Carlton was on our weekly list. I think we had to catch at least two buses to get there, but that didn't matter then.

Ann
 
Jennyann,AnnB,fancy you being the other two goodlooking girls there in the 50s.LOL.

Jennyann I also went with my friend Margaret she lived in Shortheath road and I lost touch with her over 45 years ago,Margaret Sparrow.
 
Right on Alberta.....My friend Margaret McNickle also lived in Short Heath...
Court Fam Road. Did your friend Margaret Sparrow have a sister named Carol?
 
This is the alley way at the side of the old Mother`s club today, I seem to remember, that there was some metal steps connected to the building,
Dave
 
Dave, there is a thread about all the old night-clubs and Mothers is mentioned quite a bit.
 
Dave, I worked on the door for Mothers AKA The Carlton AKA Carlton Johns Agency. I remember a short flight of metal stairs. I think there was about six steps altogether. When you climbed them and inside you were in the bar area.
 
I saw Elton John there one night, just before he hit the big time.
I experienced my 1st LSD experience there that night.
 
met my wife at mothers club 1966 dave dee,dozy,beaky,mick&tich were playing still happily wed great memories
 
Mothers

Erdington

mothers.jpg


Mothers as it is today. The club was the top floor above both shops.

This was a favourite haunt of mine,
and a significant part of Brum Beat life,
including my own.
The club opened 1968 and closed 1971.

1mothers.jpg


In this time over 400 acts performed there,
incuding many 'Super Groups'
Here are just a few:
Led Zeppelin, The Who, Pink Floyd, Family
Alvin Lee

Other bands were like an 'who's-who'
Taste, Liverpool Scene, Fleetwood Mac, Edgar Broughton Band, Traffic, Free, Roy Harper, Blodwyn Pig, Strawbs, Fairfield Parlour, Quintessence, Steppenwolf, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Jethro Tull, Jon Hisemans Colosseum, Nice, Tyrannosaurus Rex, The Who, Fairport Convention, King Crimson and hundreds more.

041269.jpg


Pink Floyd recorded part of their album Ummagumma at Mothers on 1969-04-27.

John Peel, who was present, was moved to say,
In a moment they unfold sonorous layers one on the other in a sinfonico bang; to another block, incredibly melancholic sounds that are intersected between them as plants of dying galaxies lost in time corridors and space.
Click to expand...

The Who performed Tommy and Traffic's world debut took place at Mothers along with fledgling rock bands like
Black Sabbath playing some of their earliest gigs there.

What they said:
John Peel:
People are amazed to hear that for a few years the best club in Britain was in Erdington.
Click to expand...

Roy Harper:
Oh blimey - that was the first club outside London that meant anything at all and that's why there's been this long association with Birmingham. I played there about six times between 1968 and 1970. I have always enjoyed playing here.
Click to expand...

Mother's was acclaimed as one of the most significent
Progressive Rock clubs in history
 
Hi, Very interesting to read your 'Club Reviews'. We lined up at Mothers to see Canned Heat but was unable to get in.

Do you know of The Belfry? We saw some great bands there, The Who, 'Peter Greens' Fleetwood Mac, The Move, Thin Lizzy and many more, great times, Kat
 
Thanks for that Ethan that was my favourite club and was chatted up by Steve Winword and hadn't a clue who he was till my friend Nickie told me. It was on a night off from my now husband.:rolleyes: Jean.
 
There were a couple of Mothers reunion gigs a few years back.One at Ronnie Scotts club on Broad St and another at the Robin at Hall Green.Both were great nights and well attended.Some guys there were in the process of putting a book together and were asking people to write to them with stories about the place.
Apart from all the great bands,my enduring memories of the place are warm cider,moisture running down the walls and just how many people packed into one small room(no health and safety regs back then,eh).

:cool:
 
By the late sixties many music fans were tiring of mainstream.......MOTHERS was the answer to our prayers.......
I travelled in from Aldridge to see Jethro Tull......Peter Greens Fleetwood Mac (Great Blues band) and John Mayalls Bluesbreakers......The place was always packed to the rafters so in
retrospect i,m glad there wasn,t any fires.... This Year (42 years later) we saw John Mayall again here in Australia.
Mothers certainly has a place in ROCK/BLUES History!
On a nostalgic note my late Mum used to play the piano there when it was the Carlton Ballroom..
 
I have had a memory flash of sorts. It was in the very late 50s and all through the 60s when I was paid by Mothers Club to be a doorman, although as I have stated previously I rarely actually worked on Mothers door. Myself and another man were paid to take in the beer kegs left by the brewery wagon. This activity was in addition to door work and debt collecting mainly from fish and chip shops. As I understand it the Mothers bar staff put the empty kegs outside and the brewery collected those when delivering the full ones. It was the full kegs we used to carry up a short set of iron stairs, as you enter the building from this point I seem to remember there was I think a sort of bar one side but there may have been one on both sides. As all this was fifty years ago and remember, it was just a normal part of life for me, it does not stand out in the memory like a german bomb dropping or an aeroplane strafing your house.
 
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Mothers only took that name in the late 60's (67 or 68 from my memory) before that it was called The Carlton.
It did have an iron staircase - presumably the fire escape - which went up from the alleyway to the first floor where the club was.
 
I have said before that when 'The Carlton' became 'Mothers' I did not fancy the doorwork there. The new owner a man whose name was 'John' but I won't post his surname, also started 'Carlton Johns Agency'. As an agency, he set quite a number of the birmingham bands/groups on the road to stardom. What a lot of people do not know is the fact that many famous groups played their first night at Mothers for free. If the crowd liked them they got paid for all future appearances, and they would perform on a cicuit of about a dozen venues all run by the man who owned Mothers.
 
Another Birmingham Group was Lemon Tree, they played all the venues on Carlton Johns circuit and The Ivy League played most of them although I don't think they were a 100% Birmingham group.
 
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Stitcher said:
I have had a memory flash of sorts. It was in the very late 50s and all through the 60s when I was paid by Mothers Club to be a doorman, although as I have stated previously I rarely actually worked on Mothers door. Myself and another man were paid to take in the beer kegs left by the brewery wagon. This activity was in addition to door work and debt collecting mainly from fish and chip shops. As I understand it the Mothers bar staff put the empty kegs outside and the brewery collected those when delivering the full ones. It was the full kegs we used to carry up a short set of iron stairs, as you enter the building from this point I seem to remember there was I think a sort of bar one side but there may have been one on both sides. As all this was fifty years ago and remember, it was just a normal part of life for me, it does not stand out in the memory like a german bomb dropping or an aeroplane strafing your house.
Click to expand...

Sticher
Did you know a chap called Ernie Marston who was the Doorman at the Queens in Erdington during the sixties, used to be a very good friend of mine but lost touch (also worked on the pumps at stockland garage).
 
Hello nickcc101, no I am sorry I can't help you because although I worked for Mothers, I was not actually at Mothers very often. They ran a number of venues all over the city and myself and another man went where we were needed.
 
Prior to being openend and called 'Mothers' the venue was 'The Carlton Ballroom' and that is the reason for the new owner calling the agency for up and coming groups Carlton Johns Agency.
 
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