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Shirley Collins, "Sweet England"
When it was first released in 1959, Alan Lomax described this album as "the wistful and tender magic of the young girl that is beyond art." Obviously, Lomax was a bit impartial since they had just completed an exhaustive song-collecting journey through the American South together, but it is impossible to think of a more apt description. Collins' appeal has always been the unwavering simplicity and purity that she brings to the well-worn songs that she loves, traits that are just as timeless and trend-proof as any traditional melody. Sweet England is not the crowning achievement of Shirley's influential discography, but its reissue makes its clear that her vision was firmly in place from the very beginning and that the passage of five decades has done little to blunt its impact.
Sweet England was recorded in a whirlwind two-day session in a house way back in 1958, when Shirley was just 22 years old.The session was a farewell present of sorts from Lomax, who was just about to head back to the US for yet another long-term song-scavenging expedition.At the time of the recording, Collins was still a bit new to the banjo, so a few other musicians were enlisted to back her.Despite Shirley's self-deprecating liner notes suggesting that the whole thing happened quite a bit sooner than she would have liked, she nevertheless managed to finish a whopping 37 songs over those 48 hours (the same session also produced the somewhat superior False True Love).There is definitely some justification for Collins' lukewarm enthusiasm, given how much she ultimately evolved, but both albums yielded some absolutely beautiful work and made an enormous impact on the nascent English folk scene, as instrumental accompaniment for folk music had yet to fully come into vogue.
Of course, the albums for which Collins is most revered came a bit later, such as her collaborations with her sister Dolly, Anthems in Eden, or Folk Routes, New Routes, but Shirley's voice was still beautiful and uniquely her own even at this early stage.Also, the quality of traditional songs ripe for reinterpretation was just as depthless in 1958 as it would be at any other time.Unfortunately, I am not entirely in love with the song selection on this particular album, as I don't like nonsensical refrains like "hey down, ho down, dare dare down" or comic pig noises– the "lighter, banal songs," as Shirley puts it.Most of the pieces in this vein were ones that Shirley learned from her mother when she was a child, so I can certainly understand their inclusion and their larger importance in the folk music tradition, but they were not fated to remain a part of her repertoire for long.Thankfully, there are also some great lovelorn ballads here that stand among her best work, particularly "Polly Vaughn" and "Barbara Allen."
Despite the fact that Collins was not quite at the height of her powers at this stage, I am quite fond of this "me and a banjo" era, as I feel that working with an entire band diluted her impact a bit.Anyone that feels similarly about Collins' oeuvre will certainly find some striking and intimate "singles" and alternative versions of later re-workings here to get excited about (like I did), but the curious should probably go elsewhere first.Fountain of Snow seems like probably the best overview for my taste, but every phase of her career has some wonders to offer.
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