TO my knowledge Paul McCartney has never set foot inside St John the Baptist Church at Crowle, which lies between the lofty views from Climer Hill and the tangled depths of Bow Wood in deepest Worcestershire.

But his voice has. At least it has in the person of Kevin Dowson who is neither the fifth Beatle nor a McCartney impersonator but an advanced skills teacher in music at Droitwich High School.

Kevin doesn’t look like the Liverpool Knight and I’m not sure he’d handle a full throttle version of Long Tall Sally but give him Let It Be to echo around the church rafters and you’ve got the real deal.

Hearing the result on CD with acappella backing from his new singing group was a moment and a half. The track came from the first concert of Crowle Singers, a fairly ordinary name for some extraordinary talent.

I’d been tipped off about this ensemble by someone who heard them sing in the church recently in aid of the fabric fund but the story turned out to have rather more legs than I imagined.

True, it does centre around the enthusiasm and musical skill of a man who has been on the staff of Droitwich High for 28 years, but it also involves a school reunion, madrigal singing and the hidden side of the sports reporter who covers the goings-on at Worcester City Football Club for this paper.

Steve Carley sings bass with Crowle Singers, which from now on will entitle him to lead the songs on the team bus.

Steve is one of Kevin’s former pupils and was a member of the school’s madrigal choir, producing videos and DVDs of the tours it did abroad. How he got into journalism after studying A-level music could be a story all on its own and possibly make him unique in a newsroom quite capable of fracturing any karaoke machine.

Kevin Dowson, on the other hand, was always destined for a career in music.

Born in Hull, he took piano lessons from the age of seven and after A-levels in music, maths and physics, was accepted into the Royal Academy of Music and graduated in 1980.

While at the Royal Academy he developed a love of choral music alongside appreciation of the more popular styles of the day, especially the work of Birmingham’s Jeff Lynne and the Electric Light Orchestra.

“Jeff Lynne I consider a genius,”

he said. “I loved the production on the ELO records. How orchestras, particularly strings, cellos and violins were used alongside the more routine pop line-up.”

Here you could already see a marriage of musical forms that manifests itself today in the Crowle songbook.

After the RA came a year at teacher training college in Exmouth and then in 1981 Kevin joined the staff at Droitwich. He brought with him his liking for choral music and almost straight away set about forming a madrigal choir.

Now you might reasonably assume a madrigal choir at a state high school stands about as much chance of getting off the ground as a hot air balloon tied to a tree. But it says much for the enthusiasm of the young teacher that not only did Droitwich Spa High School Madrigal Choir flourish, it positively soared.

“We ran for 23 consecutive years,”

said Kevin. “We toured Austria, Italy and Spain twice.

“We usually had about 20 members but at one time it got up to 40. Although that was a bit too many. It stopped in 2003 when no one wanted to carry on.”

In the meantime he had also been involved with Droitwich Community Choir for 10 years and was gaining something of a reputation as Worcestershire’s Simon Cowell after launching the County Pop Icons contest in 1998 for emerging young talent in Droitwich, Malvern and Worcester.

With five categories, Pop Icons continues to attract hundreds of entry tapes each year, which are then whittled down to 24 for a finals night. Several of the finalists have then gone on to audition for the X Factor.

Then three years ago, the suggestion came up for a madrigal choir reunion. And why not, there were plenty of former members around. About 50 people turned up for the evening.

“Two years ago we performed what was intended to be a one-off reunion concert at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Droitwich,”

said Kevin.

“It went down so well that last year we did another.

“Then we formed a smaller group of nine, people who found it easier to get to regular rehearsals and sang on a few occasions like weddings and carol services.”

Crowle church was offered as a practice facility and in September the newly named Crowle Singers – they must get a more inspiring title – performed an hour long evening in aid of church funds before a packed audience.

“It was a mix of choral works, madrigals and more modern works like Let It Be and Blue Moon,”

Kevin said.

I’ve heard the result and it rocks you back. Greater things surely await. Although that shouldn’t really come as a surprise because I doubt Kevin Dowson would have put his name to it unless he knew it was good.

After all, like the lad from Walton, Liverpool, he’s been around a while.