I'll never forget the first time I heard June Tabor sing. I had fallen asleep on the sofa one night while listening to the radio, and awoke sometime around 1:00 AM to the sound of her singing. But it wasn't so much that I happened to awaken at that moment, so much as it seemed her voice pulled me from my slumber, gently shaking my shoulder, whispering to me...wake up, I want you to hear this. It was like listening to a Siren...had I been a ship's Captain I would have followed her voice until I wrecked my vessel upon the rocky shoals, it was that beautiful.
This is the song that pulled me from my sleep...an old Northern English ballad about a gardener who is smitten by a girl and promises to make her a gown from the flowers he grows. The girl, however, wants nothing to do with him, and her rebuff is as cold and sharp as the dead of winter.
June Tabor's songs are often like this. Dark. Somber. Moody. Wintry. It's no coincidence, then, that she was born on December 31 in 1947. She has been singing folk music for more than 40 years now, and her voice seems only to get better with age.
June Tabor first began singing English folk music around 1965, and her live performances garnered enough attention and appreciation to afford her a steady career as a live performer at various British folk venues. She never set foot in a recording studio until some ten years later, when Maddy Prior, a member of the group Steeleye Span, was coaxed by Chrysalis Records to do a solo album in 1976. Prior agreed to make the record on the condition that June Tabor sing with her. June recorded her own debut album in the same year, but not long afterwards retired from the music business. After a failed business venture with her then husband, she divorced and decided to return to music, as it was, in her own words, "the only thing she had."
Her return to music was the 1988 album "Aqaba", from which this song is taken:
This next song was included on that first album that June recorded with Maddy Prior. It was written by British folk singer Cyril Tawney in 1959, while he was still a sailor in the Royal Navy. He was only 22, but had been in the navy for 7 years already, and had another 7 years to go. In his own words:
‘The Grey Funnel Line’ is the sailors' nickname for the Royal Navy—just as if it were another mercantile line. It's a straightforward song about a sailor leaving home and the loved one. He's extremely fed up with the Senior Service and he'd rather be outside, but he has to go away yet again. On occasions like this I think the close of the first day out, as the sun is setting, is the time when we're most vulnerable to nostalgia.
Here is a live version by Tabor.
A lot of people who are current fans of June Tabor discovered her first when, in 1990, she recorded an album with the folk-rock group Oysterband. Here they are live, singing a great song from that album.
You might be forgiven, at this point, if you have thought to yourself "she has a beautiful, haunting voice, but she's a bit, what's the word.. stern looking." Yes, she is. Pete Paphides, former rock critic for The Guardian had this to say about her, upon meeting her the first time:
Where June Tabor is concerned, a certain amount of trepidation might also be advisable. Pick up almost any album bearing her name over the last three decades, and a look of purse-lipped austerity greets you. Tabor's newest offering, Ashore – an album of songs about the sea – is no exception. The woman photographed before a metallic expanse of ocean is a personification of grim portent
"Ashore" was a concept album exploring Man's relationship with the sea. But Tabor's sea, and indeed in most traditional folk music from the British Isles and Ireland, is a brooding, inhospitable, threatening force of nature. One that serves up death, pain, loss, loneliness, and is often associated with war. There are no Beach Boys songs to be found here.
She does a fine version of an old Elvis Costello song here..."Shipbuilding." Elvis was and is a great admirer of June Tabor, and had earlier penned his song "All This Useless Beauty" just for her. It was some years later that he recorded it himself. Costello is such a fan of Tabor's that he once stated anyone who doesn't love her music should quit listening to music altogether.
From her 2007 cd "Apples", here is "The Dancing", featuring Andy Cutting on the diatonic accordion.
June covers a song written by Lal and Mike Waterson here, entitled "Scarecrow." She first recorded this on her 1983 album "Abyssinians." The lyrics are a bit opaque, but the song alludes to ancient pagan fertility rituals surrounding May Day, which celebrated the beginning of summer. Those celebrations, in pre-Christian times, might involve human sacrifice, but over the centuries the only vestige of that which remains is thought to be the scarecrow. Note this verse:
As I walked out one fine spring day,
Saw twelve jolly dons decked out in the blue and the gold so gay.
And to a stake they tied a child newborn,
Then the bells were rung and the songs were sung and they sowed their corn.
This last song is an instrumental from the album Ashore, featuring Andy Cutting again on accordion. I'm including this with a shout out to Gooserock, whom I suspect is a fellow June Tabor fan.
If you like this kind of music, you might explore:
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