Cliff Hall: Singer with the pioneering multiracial folk group The Spinners

Among their many achievements, The Spinners was the first multiracial singing group to have a major success in the UK. Cliff Hall, their West Indian singer and guitarist, brought many songs from the Caribbean to their repertoire and although they are known as a Liverpool folk group, only one of The Spinners, Hughie Jones, was born in the city.

Hall was born in Oriente Province, Cuba, of Jamaican parents, in 1925. He studied in Spanish and English schools, but after his mother died, he returned to Jamaica with his father, who worked on the plantations. His father could not afford further education and when Cliff was in his early teens, he began working on the land and then moulding breezeblocks and milking cows.

During the Second World War, RAF personnel visited the West Indies on a recruitment drive, and after claiming he was older than he was, Hall came to Britain for training in November 1942. He was based in Hartlebury, Worcestershire and travelled the UK delivering aircraft parts. He met a Scottish girl, Janet Massie, whom he married in 1947, and they had three children.

In 1953, Hall was working as an electrician in Leeds and he was sent to the atomic site at Capenhurst in Cheshire on a job. There he met Tony Davis, who invited him to hear his jazz group in Liverpool, and Hall was soon joining in on bongos. This led to the formation of The Spinners with Hall, Davis, Jones, Mick Groves and, initially, a girl singer, Jacqui MacDonald. In 1962, they released their first album, Quayside Songs Old and New, but the record company was uncomfortable about promoting a multiracial group and put a cartoon on the cover, in which they all appeared to be white.

Their first album set the pattern, being a mixture of long-forgotten folk songs and new compositions. On it, Hall sang three concert favourites, "Woman Sweeter than Man", "Matty Rag" and, his own take on British cooking, "Liverpool Girls". "My first wife couldn't cook the dishes I liked at first, but I called the song 'Liverpool Girls' so as not to offend her," Hall once told me.

The Spinners released many albums during the 1960s including concert performances from Liverpool, Folk at The Phil (1964), The Family of Man (1966) and even, with a sense of desperation, Another LP by The Spinners (1967). They sang the theme to the 1967 film Funeral in Berlin, starring Michael Caine. They had no hit singles, although "Dirty Old Town", "In My Liverpool Home" "Black and White" and "The Family of Man" (a song for world brotherhood written by Karl Dallas) were all popular over a long period of time. "I always thought that 'The Family Of Man' is a lovely song and a very important one," said Hall. "I wish politicians would think of it before they wage war on each other."

Hall explained the group's sound: "My voice is a little soft, and it is also the lowest of the lot. I've got to get right up to the microphone to sing whereas Tony could stand two foot back and still be too loud." In 1965, when they were recording an album, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders asked if they could borrow Cliff for a few minutes and he added the deep-voiced "love" on their Top 10 single, "Game of Love".

By the 1970s, The Spinners were appearing regularly on television, but they were easy to mock as they were the group that fashion forgot. I have seen the BBC's files on their TV series, and whereas Cilla Black for her show had dresses from top designers, costing up to £200, The Spinners had to make do with a budget of £25 for yellow jumpers for a six-week series. When they wore the same jumpers on a concert tour, the BBC sent them a bill for their usage.

More seriously, many purists felt that their cheerful and very entertaining performances of folk songs lacked the bite of the originals. For an easy laugh, the folk-rock band Fairport Convention released an album in which on the back cover photograph they were pictured reading The Spinners' songbook. However, The Spinners did much to popularise songs which had been forgotten and their work for shanty festivals is to be particularly applauded.

The group were totally at ease with both their audience and themselves on stage which made them a delight to watch. All four of them knew how to introduce a song and how to react to asides from the rest of the group, which also included "Count" John McCormick on double-bass. Above all, the story of The Spinners is the story of friendship. They never lost contact with their audiences either and they would dutifully return to Liverpool each week for a folk evening at the Triton pub or Gregson's Well. "We were entertaining them, but they were entertaining us" is how Hall put it, and through maintaining their roots, they were able to add significant songs to their repertoire like Jack Owen's "Mist Over the Mersey".

In 1988, The Spinners disbanded with their album Final Fling, although there was the occasional reunion. When recovering from a knee operation, Hall, who had been widowed twice, decided to recuperate in Australia. When he was on tour with The Spinners, he was always delighted to meet people from Liverpool and he would note their addresses and send Christmas cards. When he got to Adelaide, he found that one of their fans, Dorothy, was a nurse from Birkenhead. She helped him recover and they subsequently married.

Spencer Leigh

Clifford Samuel Hall, singer and guitarist: born Oriente Province, Cuba 11 September 1925; three times married (two sons, one daughter); died Adelaide, South Australia 26 June 2008.