‘You’ve met Shirley, right?’ chuckles Linda Thompson. ‘Well, when you do, you’ll understand. She was always an English rose, luminous skin and strawberry blonde hair. But so, so quiet. And they say it’s the quiet ones, don’t they, that you’ve got to watch.’
No one has watched Shirley Collins for 30 years. After accompanying Alan Lomax on his famous folk-documenting tour of the USA in the ’50s, and recording a cluster of classic folk albums, the legendary singer retired from performance back in ’78. But she’s remained a great torch-bearer for the scene, and this week curates a series of folk-flavoured events culminating on Sunday in a knees-up featuring folk’s other First Lady and Collins’ lifelong friend, Linda Thompson.
‘It was Tiger – Ashley Hutchings – who introduced us in the ’60s when he was going out with her,’ Thompson says. ‘Me and Richard [Thompson] would go to her cottage and watch Kurosawa movies. She lets a song speak for itself, and I was quite old before I realised that was the only way to sing. We still see each other at folk dos but we’re both solitary people. She’s not one of those dreadful friends who keeps asking you to go to lunch.’
‘I first saw Shirley in Scunthorpe back in ’68,’ recalls singer-songwriter Martin Simpson, who opened Folk Roots, New Routes on Tuesday. ‘There’s a photograph of her in a black velvet coat cradling a banjo which is absolutely iconic for me. And to think of that glamorous girl rambling around the Mississippi, which is rough as a badger’s bum. Shirley’s voice is so absolutely plain, straight as a die, and yet she’s delivering some of the heaviest songs on the planet.’
When we ask Thompson if she has a favourite Collins song she instantly forgets all the titles. ‘I’m so close to Alzheimer’s I might actually have to phone my ex-husband and ask him to remind me,’ she says. In five minutes we get an email. ‘Of course, my favourite song of hers is “The Plains Of Waterloo”. Me and Shirley once got tipsy and did the can-can together at Waterloo station. I seem to recollect that we made some money, too…’ Now wouldn’t that make for the perfect encore.
Further listening: www.myspace.com/shirleycollinsmusic
