Folk Revisited: Shirley Collins returns to music & her 15 Favourite Songs

Listen to Shirley Collins' 15 Favourite songs, read our review of her comeback album 'Lodestar' (2016) and a live review of an incredible performance at The Roundhouse, London (2019)

Due to the length of our articles, I’m hoping to make this in two parts rather than three, but we shall see. In part 1, we start with Shirley Collins’ return to music in 2016, taking in her 15 favourite songs, a review of Lodestar, and a live review of a remarkable evening at The Roundhouse, London, in 2019.

In 2016, to celebrate her return to recording after 38 Years with the release of Lodestar, Shirley Collins, one of the most respected and legendary folk song collectors and singers, put together a special playlist for KLOF Mag, featuring fifteen of her favourite songs, which she also talked through.

I usually share my playlists across several DSPs, as this is specifically fifteen songs, and Tidal and Apple missed one each; I’ve only included the Spotify playlists below. You can also read our Lodestar review and watch a couple of videos from back then.

THE BALLAD OF SHIRLEY COLLINS trailer | BFI London Film Festival 2017 - YouTube
THE BALLAD OF SHIRLEY COLLINS trailer | BFI London Film Festival 2017

15 Favourites of Shirley Collins

The Playlist

Shirley Collins' Fifteen Favourite Songs - KLOF Mag | Spotify

Shirley Collins' Fifteen Favourite Songs·KLOF Mag

Shirley’s notes on the songs

1. BOGIE’S BONNY BELLE – JOHN KIRKPATRICK. Favourite singer, mighty musician, great song originally sung by a Scottish traveller
2. FAREWELL, FAREWELL – FAIRPORT CONVENTION. Heartbreaking song written by Richard Thompson after the Fairport road crash
3. MASTER KILBY – NIC JONES. Wonderful traditional song sung by the folk revival’s finest
4. BABES IN THE WOOD – THE COPPER FAMILY. Tender traditional song from the most well-known and best-loved Sussex singer family whose songs go back centuries
5. 61 HIGHWAY – FRED MCDOWELL. I was there with Alan Lomax in Como, Mississippi, 1959 at the discovery of Fred McDowell
6. RAINBOW MID LIFE’S WILLOWS – ALMEDA RIDDLE. Again, it was on the 1959 Southern Journey recording trip with Alan Lomax, where we met Almeda in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. She sings in that high and lonesome mountain style. A most poignant song, rivetingly sung
7. THE BANKS OF THE BANN – THE VOICE SQUAD. Three Irishmen singing glorious song in equally glorious harmonies
8. WITHERED AND DIED – RICHARD & LINDA THOMPSON. Richard a remarkable song–writer, and a soulful performance by Linda. Gorgeous!
9. HEART LIKE A WHEEL– KATE & ANNA MCGARRIGLE. Heart-breaking beauty in the song and the singing. Such unique voices
10. LORD GREGORY – ALASDAIR ROBERTS. Irish ballad sensitively sung without accompaniment by this fine Scottish singer
11. POLLY ON THE SHORE – GEORGE MAYNARD. Back to Sussex for this genuine traditional singer with this sea-battle song dating from the Napoleonic Wars
12. WILLIE O’WINSBURY – ANNE BRIGGS. Much-loved, greatly admired singer from the 1960s. She is best-known for her exquisite singing of this ballad
13. DEAR FATHER PRAY BUILD ME A BOAT – SHEILA SMITH. Sung by a 7-year old gypsy girl on an encampment a couple of miles outside Lewes in 1952. It’s so innocent, but the English gipsy style of singing is clearly there. This is just about the most charming field recording ever
14. AS I ROVED OUT – MARTYN WYNDHAM-READ. I knew this song and suggested to Martyn that he record it, as I knew no-one could do it better. Marvellous singing, fabulous arrangement by Iris Bishop
15. THE NIGHT THEY DROVE OLD DIXIE DOWN – THE BAND. What a great song, what a great powerful and passionate performance by the Band.

Lodestar Album Review

by David Kidman on 8 November, 2016

Shirley Collins should need no introduction to readers of this site. Folk singer of genuinely legendary status and one of England’s most respected song collectors – and currently president of the English Folk Dance & Song Society. Up to the cusp of the 1980s, Shirley enjoyed a stunningly prolific career that spanned more than two decades, from a formative period travelling across America on a field-trip collecting songs with Alan Lomax at the close of the 1950s, to a lengthy tenure as one of the most significant singers at the forefront of the English folk revival. Then all of a sudden in 1978 she found she could not sing. This – she found out later – was the onset of a severe type of dysphonia, which had been triggered by a mental condition brought on by a painful marriage breakdown and messy divorce. The fact that here we are today holding a newly recorded full-length album of Shirley’s singing is an absolute miracle and cause for extensive celebration.

Even as recently as three years ago, the very idea of this album would have been considered the absolute remotest, if not totally unlikely, of future possibilities, for Shirley had, repeatedly, publicly insisted that she would never sing again. But here she is doing just that, and (as Stewart Lee observes in his booklet essay), with a mischievous delight in defeating that expectation. Even so, it had taken a lot of persuasion and coaxing.

As anyone familiar with Shirley’s work will realise immediately when they place the needle on the outer grooves of Lodestar, Shirley’s voice is not what it used to be. But that’s neither a value judgement nor negatively slanted critical appraisal – just a plain statement of fact, for no one at the age of 81 can be expected to have the voice they had at age 43. Age has given a new depth to Shirley’s voice, a lived-in earthiness with a kind of gravitas that’s deeply knowing and is a corollary of a new vulnerability; the latter is consistent with having undergone four decades more of life experience and knowledge in the interim since her earlier work.

Live Review: Shirley Collins at The Roundhouse, London

by David Weir (5th February, 2019)

Fifty years since she last performed live at The Roundhouse alongside her late sister Dolly, Folk’s grande dame Shirley Collins makes a triumphant return, evidently having lost nothing in the art of stark storytelling over the preceding years.

This evening she’s welcomed with open arms by fans young and old. Proudly, she jokes about how she out-heckled one rowdy gig-goer that night. Both keen collectors, boldly upholding tradition in their own distinctive way, they own the stage with a humbling calm during their respective performances. Full of smiles for their supporting cast, they radiate warmth, embracing the listener and putting them at ease.

Shirley has talked about her dysphonia and the importance for her to serve the song and its past singers above everything else:
“What I have in common with the older singers is the songs have been with me for a long time, they just come out. You don’t have to dramatise them, because if you did, it would sound embarrassing. It would sound crass. When I sing a song from an old farm labourer or from a tenant farmer he’s behind my shoulder when I’m singing always, you know, and I want to do my best for them, as well as for the songs.”

It’s this unaffected delivery that helps transports the listener, evoking a real sense of being closer to the tune’s actual originator.