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SHIRLEY COLLINSPart Five of a five-part set of linked reviews of traditonal folk song concerning source singers and the folk revival. Click here for Introduction. < previous
Shirley Collins is a singer of the Revival, but one connected to the Tradition and close to it in style. She was born in Hastings into a big country family who all sang together. Many years ago I had taped some of her songs from a radio program on to my reel-to-reel tape recorder. At the time I had progressed little further than electric folk, never mind source singers, and a friend had to dissuade me from erasing the tracks! He predicted that I would grow to love this sort of music, and in time I did. It's good to see, then, my all-time favourite Shirley Collins album finally released on CD. It includes sublime folk melodies such as 'Lovely Joan' (which Vaughan Williams incorporated as an interlude into his 'Greensleeves Fantasia'), 'Just As The Tide Was Flowing' and 'Greenwood Laddie'. Her version of the 'Seven Yellow Gipsies' is accompanied by nothing more than hand-clapping. Suggestive of Flamenco, it drives the song brilliantly. The accompaniment on this album, particularly that provided by the late Dolly Collins on miniature pipe-organ, is extremely clever and a fundamental if not immediately obvious element in the album's appeal. It’s varied and imaginative but always sympathetic and never overpowering. The clapping was actually provided by Mike Heron and Robin Williamson of the Incredible String Band, whilst the album also enjoys the collaboration of Bram Martin, cellist on the Beatles' 'Eleanor Rigby' and 'She's Leaving Home'. The Revival never got better than this. In an earlier and more naive existence fuelled by adolescent idealism I used to believe that folk music could and should be revived as a basis of 'national culture'. I now recognise that we are lucky to recapture fleeting aspects of the 197Os, let alone the 1790s and earlier. Rik - 5 July 2001
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