‘Sooty’ Broughton has died. The name may not be familiar to everyone on the Blog but for years ‘Sooty’ kept the Railway Folk Club alive, not just in the old pub but in the Railway Social Club, the Festing, the Alma Arms etc.
He’d been poorly for a while but he was a bearded bear of a man who sang with the Shantymen and worked very hard to sustain folk music as a live experience in Pompey. On a personal note, he was a key figure in getting Reet Petite & Gone started in the early 1990s giving us floor spots in the really early days, then headline gigs there.
POMPEY POP 
March 11, 2013 at 9:46 pm
Was this the ‘huge’ man who used to play, sing and arrange sea shanties? I once saw them at the Dickens Inn in Saint Catherine’s Dock, near Tower Bridge.
March 13, 2013 at 9:18 am
It sounds like Sooty to me – Funeral is at Portchester Crem on 2nd April at 3.30pm