June Tabor is an English folk singer from Warwick, United Kingdom, born in 1947. She is known for a long solo career and for collaborations that place her within British folk, folk-rock, chamber folk, contemporary folk and sea shanty traditions.

Early career

Tabor gives her earliest public performances at the Heart of England Folk Club in the Fox and Vivian pub in Leamington Spa in the mid-1960s. By the late 1960s, an appearance at the Sidmouth Folk Festival leads to further folk club bookings. Her early recording work is mainly in traditional unaccompanied singing, and one of her first appearances on record is on the 1972 anthology Stagfolk Live. She also appears on Rosie Hardman’s Firebird in 1972 and The First Folk Review Record in 1974.

Solo work and collaborations

Her first album under her own name is Airs and Graces in 1976, following a 1976 collaboration and tour with Maddy Prior as Silly Sisters, supported by a full band including Nic Jones. She later works again with Prior under the name Silly Sisters. From 1977, Martin Simpson joins her in the studio for three albums, and after he moves to America she later works with him again as a guest guitarist on 2000s albums. After Simpson’s departure, she begins working closely with pianist Huw Warren.

In 1990, Tabor records Freedom and Rain with Oysterband, then tours with them. Rykodisc issues a limited-run promotional live album the following year. Her 1992 album Angel Tiger includes “All This Useless Beauty”, a song written specifically for her by Elvis Costello. In 2011, she and Oysterband release Ragged Kingdom, which is named Album of the Year in the fROOTS critics poll.

Quercus and later work

Since 2006, Tabor has worked with Huw Warren and Iain Ballamy in Quercus.

Awards

She is named Folk Singer of the Year at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2004 and again in 2012.

Selected albums

Her solo albums include A Quiet Eye (1999), Rosa Mundi (2001), An Echo of Hooves (2003), At the Wood's Heart (2005), Apples (2007) and Ashore (2011).