Shirley Collins - Sweet England (1959) MP3 CBR 320Kbps / 118 Mb | 18 tracks | Covers (600 dpi) British Folk | Topic Records TSCD815 | RAR 3% Rec. | Time: 45:20 “ The first CD reissue of Shirley Collins' debut album, recorded when she was 23, and still uncertain of herself. The album received a critical walloping on release, and it took another few years before Collins felt ready to record again (successfully, this time, in tandem with Davey Graham). It took a good decade before Sweet England itself began to be accepted as a key recording in the folk revival. It's easy to understand why the record struck an unsympathetic note -- Collins' vocal approach has a fragile, almost maudlin quality to it, presenting a raw sadness even when the songs themselves are light-hearted... The first CD reissue of Shirley Collins' debut album, recorded when she was 23, and still uncertain of herself. The album received a critical walloping on release, and it took another few years before Collins felt ready to record again (successfully, this time, in tandem with Davey Graham). It took a good decade before Sweet England itself began to be accepted as a key recording in the folk revival. It's easy to understand why the record struck an unsympathetic note -- Collins' vocal approach has a fragile, almost maudlin quality to it, presenting a raw sadness even when the songs themselves are light-hearted. Combine that with the bare arrangements, which depend on simple five-string banjo, and the result is a difficult listen -- the immediacy of much of the work being done in the folk revival is missing; Sweet England demands repeated listening, which becomes hard work indeed. Ironically, however, Collins' approach has more in keeping with folk tradition than many of the folk revival performers (one of the closer comparisons might well be A.L. Lloyd, another performer who was often not immediate in his impact.) Topic has cleaned up the master recordings as best they can; listeners will notice some flaws, and a very small degree of distortion on Collins' vocals. ~ Steven McDonald, AllMusic Shirley Collins, though almost unknown in the United States, was an immensely important figure in Britain's early-'60s folk revival and the golden age of British folk-rock in the late '60s and early '70s. She is one of British folk's most golden-throated vocalists, and one of its most eclectic, handling traditional fare, Renaissance music, and folk-rock. Any discussion of her recordings must also note the important contributions of her non-singing sister, the late Dorothy Collins, who was co-billed with Shirley on several albums. Dorothy, who played keyboards, also devised the arrangements for the albums of Renaissance-influenced folk that the pair released to high critical acclaim in the late '60s. Shirley actually made her first album way back in 1959 for Folkways. For a time she was a companion of noted folklorist Alan Lomax, whom she accompanied on trips through the American South that produced some of the most widely praised field recordings of traditional American folk music. In 1964, she helped point the way for a more eclectic approach to British folk music by recording with guitar wizard Davey Graham on the album Folk Roots, New Routes. Shirley made her true mark when she teamed with sister Dolly to offer several albums of medieval-based folk music. The most widely hailed effort in this direction was 1969's Anthems in Eden, a suite of sorts combining traditional material and original instrumental interludes. 1970's follow-up, the similar Love, Death & the Lady, was just as good; both albums, interestingly, appeared on the Harvest label, a company most noted for its British progressive/underground rock acts. The affiliation wasn't as unlikely as it might appear, for Shirley had already helped direct British folk-rock acts such as Pentangle to traditional folk material. Therefore, it wasn't a total surprise to find Shirley Collins turn up in bona fide folk-rock groups, particularly as she had married Ashley Hutchings, a key early member of both Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span. With Hutchings, she sang in a couple of the mid-'70s most traditionally oriented British folk-rock outfits, the Albion Country Band and the Etchingham Steam Band. ~ Richie Unterberger, AllMusic Shirley Elizabeth Collins MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire, born 5 July 1935, Hastings, Sussex, England) is a significant contributor to the English Folk Revival of the 1960s and 1970s. She often performed and recorded with her sister Dolly, whose accompaniment on piano and portative organ created unique settings for her sister's plain, austere singing style. Biography Shirley Collins and her older sister, Dolly, grew up in the Hastings area of East Sussex in a family which kept alive a great love of traditional song. Songs learnt from their grandfather and from their mother's sister, Grace Winborn, were to be important in the sisters' repertoire throughout their career. On leaving school, at the age of 17, Collins enrolled at a teachers' training college in Tooting, south London. However, in London she also involved herself in the early folk revival and in 1954, at a party hosted by Ewan MacColl, she met Alan Lomax, the famous American folk collector, who had moved to Britain to avoid the McCarthy witch-hunt which was then raging in America. Lomax and Collins made a folk song collecting trip in the Southern states which lasted from July to November 1959 and resulted in many hours of recordings, featuring performers such as Almeda Riddle, Hobart Smith, and Bessie Jones and culminated in the discovery of Mississippi Fred McDowell. Recordings from this trip were issued by Atlantic Records under the title "Sounds of the South", and some were reenacted in the Coen brothers’ film Oh Brother, Where Art Thou. The experience of her life with Lomax and the making of the recordings in religious communities, social gatherings, prisons and chain gangs was described in Collins's book America Over the Water (published 2004). Back in Britain, Collins proceeded with her own singing career, and in a series of influential albums, she helped to introduce many innovations into the English folk revival. In 1964, she recorded the landmark jazz-folk fusion of Folk Roots, New Routes, with guitarist Davy Graham. 1967 saw the essentially southern English song collection, The Sweet Primeroses, on which she was accompanied for the first time by Dolly Collins's portative organ. In 1969 there was another collaboration, this time with The Young Tradition (featuring Peter Bellamy, Heather Wood and Royston Wood) and Dolly Collins, The Holly Bears the Crown. However, the album was not released to the public until 1995. Collins's seminal recording is considered by many to be Anthems in Eden, released in 1969. It featured a suite of songs centred on the changes in rural England brought about by the First World War. Dolly Collins created arrangements featuring David Munrow and various other players from his Early Music Consort. The highly unusual combination of ancient instruments included rebecs, sackbuts, viols and crumhorns and hinted that the guitar was not the only appropriate accompaniment for the folk song. Several critics have suggested that it is impossible to imagine that electric accompaniment for traditional song, as successfully purveyed by Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span, could have developed quite as it did without the pioneering 'Anthems In Eden'. All these recordings strove to marry a deep love and understanding of the English folk music heritage with a more contemporary attitude to musical settings. Anthems In Eden was followed by Love, Death and the Lady, and No Roses, recorded in 1971 with the Albion Country Band, and a total of 27 musicians. Collins married her second husband Ashley Hutchings in 1971. He left Steeleye Span and the couple created the all acoustic Etchingham Steam Band with Terry Potter, Ian Holder and Vic Gammon. The Etchingham's repertoire was drawn from the traditional music of Sussex. With The Albion Dance Band, performing traditional material on a mixture of modern (electric) and mediaeval instruments, Collins recorded The Prospect Before Us. 1978's For As Many As Will was the last studio album recorded by Shirley and Dolly Collins. Collins retired from public performance, although she continues to lecture and to appear on radio as an authority on traditional music. In 2004, she was awarded a Gold Badge by the English Folk Dance and Song Society and became patron of the South East Folk Arts Network in 2006.[1] She was awarded the MBE for services to music in the Queen's New Year's Honours List, announced 30 December 2006. On 14 April 2007, she was awarded an Honorary Degree by the Open University, for a "Notable contribution to education and culture", while in 2008 she was given the "Good Tradition" award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. In 2008, Ms. Collins was elected as president of the English Folk Dance and Song Society.[2] With actor Pip Barnes, she tours with her three illustrated talks "America over the Water" (about her field trip in the Southern States of America with Alan Lomax), "A Most Sunshiny Day" (about the traditional music of England and Sussex in particular) and "I'm a Romany Rai" (about the Gypsy singers and songs of Southern England). Influence Both the collaboration with Davy Graham (Folk Roots, New Routes) and the Anthems in Eden album are seen as milestones in the English folk revival. Shirley Collins's voice has a breathy, unearthly quality which alienates some people but draws in fans from unexpected quarters. The American folk-rock band 10,000 Maniacs did a cover of "Just as the Tide was Flowing", closely mode...
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