Alan Bell

Alan Bell was born and bred on the Fylde Coast of Lancashire and started singing in a church school at the age of four years - he has been singing ever since! After a period of singing American folk songs, followed by a period with a skiffle band, Alan joined two others to form The Blackpool Taverners in the early 1960's, who also ran the very successful Taverners Folk Club. The group became hugely popular and toured the clubs, concert halls and appreared in many festivals in the sixties and seventies. The group released several LP's and appeared on countless radio and telveision shows - and even performed on a Royal Command Performance.

Alan first started writing songs for the Blackpool Taverners, including "Windmills", "The Minstrel", "Alice White" and of course "Bread and Fishes", which was later recorded in Japan, amongst other countries. After the demise of The Taverners, Alan formed The Alan Bell Band and continued to write songs, often for other singers and radio and TV programmes. His suite "The Band in The Park" won the prestigious Radio Italia prize for broadcasting for Radio Lancashire. In addition his song cycle "Wind, Sail, Sea and Sky", written for the local choral society in the old fishing port of Fleetwood, where Alan lives, won great praise. Alan continued to write other suites and evtually he was featured on a BBC 2 Television programme titled "Alan Bell - The Man and his Music". In 2000 Alan won an award from the Local Heritage Initiative to wite a show telling of the life and times of ordinary people living on the Fylde coast between 1900 and 2000. It was titled "The Century's People", featured a choir, brass band, folk singers, musicians and narrators and was an enormous success.