ADGE CUTLERis quite rightly a legend in the West Country.
He is still talked about and remembered with huge fondness so many years after his untimely death in a car accident on May 5, 1974.
He formed and fronted the band The Wurzels in 1966.With his thick Somerset accent, Adge played on his West Country roots and sang of cider making, farming, muck-spreading and local villages, often with a comic slant.
Releasing their first song in the 1960s, Drink Up Thy Zider became a regional favourite, hitting number 45 in the UK charts.
The group continued and in fact had their biggest charthit - I've Got A Brand New Combine Harvester, sung to the tune of Melanie's 1970s hit Brand New Key - two years after his death. Decades later The Wurzels continued to fill venues and play to enthusiastic audiences.
Alan John Cutler - known as Adge because of his initials, A. J. - was born in Portishead, Bristol,in 1931 and brought up in the nearby town of Nailsea.
Leaving school aged 14 in 1944 he had a number of jobs and also completed National Service. After being demobbed more jobs followed, including a spell at a cider factory. He was also writing and performing music and said it was 1958 when he wrote Drink Up Thy Zider. His first paid gig was at Liverpool's Cavern Club, long before the Beatles made it famous.
In 1961 he worked as road manager for Somerset clarinet player Acker Bilk.
After a spell of living in Spain Mr Cutler took demo tapes of his self-penned songs into the offices of the John Miles Organisation and told the pop manager of his idea to create a West County band to compete with the psychedlic pop bands of the 1960s.
The idea of Adge Cutler and The Wurzels, as they were called, was conceived and John Miles remained the band's manager until the 1980s.
Mr Cutler's songs imortalised towns and villages of Somerset like Nempnett Thrubwell, Stanton Drew and the Avonside village of Pill.
In 1972, Adge married wife Yvonne, and they moved to a house a few miles north of Nailsea.
Tragically, Mr Cutler died two years later after crashing his MG sports car near Chepstow in the early hours, on his way home from appearing at the Crystal Rooms in Hereford.
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