Shirley Collins

Shirley Collins

Shirley Collins is a British folk singer from Hastings, England, born in 1935. She is associated with English traditional song and is known for her role in the English Folk Revival of the 1960s and 1970s. Her singing style is described as plain and austere, and much of her work draws on songs from her family background in East Sussex, especially material learned from her grandfather and her mother’s sister, Grace Winborn.

Early life and folk collecting

Collins grows up in the Hastings area of East Sussex with her sister Dolly Collins in a family that keeps traditional song alive. After leaving school, she studies at teachers’ training college in Tooting, south London, and becomes involved in the early folk revival there. In 1954, at a party hosted by Ewan McColl, she meets Alan Lomax. The two later begin a relationship and undertake a folk song collecting trip in the southern United States from July to November 1959. The trip produces many hours of recordings in religious communities, social gatherings, prisons and chain gangs, and features singers including Almeda Riddle, Hobart Smith and Bessie Jones, as well as the later discovery of Mississippi Fred McDowell.

Recording career

Back in Britain, Collins records a series of influential albums that help reshape English folk music. In 1964 she records Folk Roots, New Routes with guitarist Davy Graham, a landmark jazz-folk fusion. In 1967 she records The Sweet Primeroses, with Dolly Collins contributing portative organ for the first time. In 1969 she works with The Young Tradition, together with Dolly Collins, on The Holly Bears a Crown. Her 1969 album Anthems in Eden is widely regarded as her seminal recording. It presents songs about changes in rural England brought about by the First World War and uses arrangements by Dolly Collins with David Munrow and players from the Early Music Consort. The instrumentation includes rebecs, sackbuts, viols and crumhorns.

Collaborations and later work

Following Anthems in Eden, Collins records Love, Death & The Lady and No Roses in 1971, the latter with the Albion Country Band and a large number of musicians. In 1971 she marries Ashley Hutchings, after which the pair form the all-acoustic Etchingham Steam Band with Terry Potter, Ian Holder and Vic Gammon. The band’s repertoire comes from traditional Sussex music. She later records The Prospect Before Us with The Albion Dance Band, using a mixture of modern electric and mediaeval instruments. For As Many As Will, released in 1978, is the last studio album she records with Dolly Collins.

Recognition and later activity

Collins receives an MBE for services to music in 2006. She also receives a Gold Badge from the English Folk Dance and Song Society in 2004, becomes patron of the South East Folk Arts Network in 2006, appears on Black Ships Ate The Sky in 2006, finishes the album with a sung version of the poem “Idumæa”, and is awarded an honorary degree by the Open University in 2007 for a notable contribution to education and culture. In 2008 she receives the “Good Tradition” award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards and is elected president of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. Although she retires from regular public performance, she continues to lecture and appear on radio as an authority on traditional music.

Writing

Collins writes America Over the Water, published in 2004, about her life with Alan Lomax and the American collecting trip.