SOUNDTRACK: SHIRLEY COLLINS: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #109 (November 10, 2020).
There is no denying the first line of this blurb: “Shirley Collins is a legend.” But like many legends, I find that I know of her more than I know about her. It’s possible that I’d never heard her before this set. And that may not be an unreasonable thing
Her life story took the sort of twists you hear in the songs she sings, in her case, a broken heart, a painful divorce, and the loss of her voice. For 30 years, she couldn’t sing.
I don’t exactly understand what happened to her voice (that link doesn’t explain it), but her first album in over 30 years came out in 2016.
Now, here she is playing songs from Heart’s Ease, only the second album she’s made in the past 40 years. You hear her sing of a young sailor boy who saves his ship from robbers and is promised by his captain both gold and his daughter’s hand in marriage. The lad sinks the robber’s boat, only to be left to drown by that very same captain.
These unimaginable tales and that unadorned voice have influenced both British and American folk music since the 1960s, from Fairport Convention’s Sandy Denny to The Decemberists’ Colin Meloy. These tales of woe and whimsy are as timeless as Shirley Collins
So here is Shirley Collins, at 85, seated in the living room of her cottage in Lewes, East Sussex, accompanied by guitarist Ian Kearey, singing along to a few stringed instruments
She sings five songs. At 85, her voice doesn’t sound amazing, but it does sound good. And it’s more about the emotion she puts into these songs than the power of her voice.
She explains that in the 1950s, she took a field recording trip across the United States with Alan Lomax. She heard “The Merry Golden Tree” in Arkansas. It was still sung in England but had traveled across the Atlantic and then across the continent.
Kearey plays guitar for the first song, but switches to banjo for “Sweet Greens and Blues” a song her first husband Austin John marshall wrote 50 years ago. She says the first line seems apt in 2020: “If we don’t make it this year let’s see what next year will bring.”
She heard “Wondrous Love” from a rural Alabama congregation. The church was full of people from all over. They sang this hymn in their old voices–“shrill and beautiful at the same time: the most incredible lovely noise you could hope to hear.” Kearey gets a very cool metallic slide guitar sound for this song.
Before singing “Tell Me True” she tells the story of an American friend in Montana who sent her a vast British ensign flag from the Royal Navy. He found it in a barn when he was 16 on holiday in rural Vermont. He took it! Now he sent it to her. She thinks its from 1812, the Battle of Lake Champlain in vermont. Woah
“Old Johnny Buckle” is a nonsense song, an upside down song that’s good fun to sing. I imagine it could have been sung by Boy and Girl Scouts. With silly lyrics like this
Old Mrs. Buckle went a’fishing one day
She caught her left leg in the clay
The toads and frogs all wobbled about
She ran to get a shovel to dig herself out
[READ: December 8, 2020] “Reflections”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my fifth time reading the Calendar. I didn’t know about the first one until it was long out of print (sigh), but each year since has been very enjoyable. Here’s what they say this year
You know the drill by now. The 2020 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories from some of the best writers in North America.
This year’s slipcase is a thing of beauty, too, with electric-yellow lining and spot-glossed lettering. It also comes wrapped in two rubber bands to keep those booklets snug in their beds.
As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check back here to read an exclusive interview with the author.
It’s December 8. Sofia Samatar, author of A Stranger in Olondria, is glad she remembered to pack those seasickness tabs.. [Click the link to the H&O extras for the story].
This story was a challenge for me. First because I didn’t realize that the two letters (the story is two letters on facing pages) were meant to be read separately. At first I thought it was a series of disjointed, unfinished letters–a sort of failed attempt at communication. Obviously that is very far from what the story is mean to be about. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 