The Wurzels are an English Scrumpy and Western band from Somerset. The name of the band was dreamt up by founder Adge Cutler. It is short for mangelwurzel, a crop grown to feed livestock. They are known for using British West Country phrases “ooh arr!” and calling young people “young ‘uns” in songs. The Wurzels were formed in 1966 as a backing group for, and by, singer/songwriter Adge Cutler. The first recordings were made live in the ‘Royal Oak Inn’, Nailsea in December 1966.
During the latter half of the 1960s, the band became popular regionally, and the release of the single “Drink Up Thy Zider” in 1966 led to national fame and it reaching number 45 in the UK. The B-side, “Twice Daily” was banned by the BBC for being too raunchy. A number of live albums were recorded at local pubs and clubs, filled with Cutler-penned favourites such as “Easton-in-Gordano”, “The Champion Dung Spreader”, and “Thee’s Got’n Where Thee Cassn’t Back’n, Hassn’t?”, together with songs written by others and some re-workings of popular folk songs of the time.
Cutler’s death in a car crash in 1974 marked a turning point in the history of the Wurzels. Deprived of the main song-writing talent, the remaining Wurzels recorded The Wurzels Are Scrumptious! in 1975, an album containing many favourites from the back catalogue, including a number of previously unrecorded Cutler-written songs. In order to continue the surviving band needed its own songs, and these mostly took the formula of re-written popular pop songs of the time with the lyrics changed to include the usual Wurzel themes (cider, farming, local villages, Cheddar Cheese, etc.)
In 1976, the Wurzels released a cover version of “The Combine Harvester”, a re-working of the song “Brand New Key”, by Melanie, which became a UK hit, topping the charts for 2 weeks. The band quickly followed its success with the release of a number of similarly themed songs such as “I Am A Cider Drinker” (a rework of Paloma Blanca which was written by and had been a hit for the George Baker Selection and also covered by Jonathan King the year before) which got to number three in the UK chart, and “Farmer Bill’s Cowman” (a reworking of the Whistling Jack Smith instrumental “I Was Kaiser Bill’s Batman”).
