Shirley Collins

Speaker 20:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Presenter0:05

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were castaway to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:44

My castaway this week is the singer Shirley Collins. A heroine of the British folk music scene, along with her sister Dolly, Shirley Collins spearheaded the folk revival of the nineteen sixties, creating some of the era's most beloved albums and collaborating with contemporaries including Davy Graham, Bert Jansch and The Incredible String Band.

Presenter1:04

Her interest in folk music began when she was a child, sheltering from German bombs during the Second World War. Her grandfather would sing the Sussex folk songs of his own childhood to comfort her. He gifted her a lifelong love of the songs of England's past and the unadorned direct vocal style which would become her signature.

Presenter1:24

As a young woman in the 1950s, she travelled to the American South with her then partner, the music archivist Alan Lomax. The field recordings they captured of folk and blues artists like Mississippi Fred McDowell would go on to become global music treasures, preserving the voices of our collective past. Her own voice was lost for decades. She suffered from dysphonia for almost 40 years, but she eventually recovered it, making a triumphant return to music in her 80s with a suite of critically acclaimed albums. She says, What I love about folk is that it's the archaeology of music. It's as important as that. You dig up something and it's valuable and tells you about the time it comes from. Shirley Collins, welcome to Desert Island Day. Oh, thank you. It's wonderful to be here. Well, it's lovely to have you, Shirley, here in Broadcasting House in our studio today. But I know that your first contact with the BBC happened quite some time ago when you were just 15. Well, it did. My sister Dolly and I used to go to the pictures every Saturday after we'd been to the library.

Presenter2:28

And there was one film called Nightclub Girl, which was about a

Presenter2:32

Girl from Tennessee who was taken up to New York to sing in nightclubs. And as the nightclub owners played by an actor I was really crazy about, I thought, oh, that'll do for me. I'm going to be a folk singer. Although, of course, I had been listening to songs at home that were sort of proper English or Sussex songs. I was so sort of so fired up by this that I thought, well, I'd better write to the BBC and let them know.

Presenter2:58

And then I didn't hear anything at all.

Presenter3:01

But one day

Presenter3:03

It must be a year or so later there was a knock on the front door, and there was this gentleman, Bob Copper, who was collecting folk songs in the South East for the B B C archives, and he was in Hastings recording songs from the Fisherman in the Old Town, and just on the off chance somebody had handed him my letter.

Presenter3:25

and he popped up to see us, to see Dolly and me.

Presenter3:29

Like complete idiots, we instead of choosing a song that grand elder Aunt Grace sang to us, we tried to impress him with a very long Scots ballad, which I think we sang with Scots accents as well. But luckily Bob had teenage children of his own, so I think he saw the funny side of it. But it was the start of a long, long friendship. Oh, how lovely. I'm so glad that he found you. So what was it about folk music that you loved? It was because our grandparents sang to us during the war. It was a comfort.

Speaker 33:51

So

Presenter4:02

And I was in love to what they sang about. But a lot of the ballads do really go back hundreds of years when you know, love is a bit crueller as well, and people weren't afraid to sing about the s the strange, the deathly things, the evil and wicked things, as well as the beautiful things and the love songs. And music is your life's great passion, of course, so I can imagine that narrowing your selection down to just eight today must have been very difficult.

Speaker 34:24

Ain't today. Must have been

Presenter4:28

It has been extremely difficult because I have a a quite wide range of of music that I love. Let's get started with your first disc today. What have you chosen and why? I love dances. I love English and Scottish dances from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when they were sort of proper slightly hooligan dances, you know. And this is the most glorious melody, fabulously played by David McGuinness's Concerto Caledonia, especially the fiddle player David Greenberg. So it's Chiling Auguira, played by the Concerto Caledonia.

Presenter5:34

Sheila Naguira Performed by Concerto Caledonia.

Presenter5:38

So let's go back to the beginning, Shirley Collins. You were born in 1935 to Dorothy and George. What are your memories of early life in Hastings? I think you would have been four when the Second World War broke out. I can remember that we were evacuated twice, for instance, once to Wellingarden City, just Dolly and me without parents, and then once to Wales, later to Wales with mum. Because Hastings as a seaside town would have been a target. I mean it was a target as well and also when there were bombing raids in London and if the planes had been turned back before they reached London they'd dropped their bombs on the way back and often hit Hastings. In fact um we were bombed out of a house. An incendiary bomb hit the house next door and it was a terrace and half of ours went with it. So then we had to move up to live with Aunt Grace.

Shirley Collins6:01

Uh

Speaker 36:01

Because Hastings is

Shirley Collins6:03

Uh

Speaker 36:03

A target.

Shirley Collins6:13

It's a later.

Presenter6:28

For a bit. My sister and I were machine gunned as well by a German plane that it was one of the hit and run raids, and we'd been given Aunt Grace's little daughter in a pram to push down the road, get her out of the way.

Presenter6:45

Mum had always taught us that if we saw a plane that we didn't like we should throw ourselves under a hedge or under a wall. And this huge black pl plane was coming up from the sea and

Presenter6:57

Dorry and I threw ourselves under the hedge, but the plane machine gunned the road in front of us. So we lay there, the mach bullets, you know, just hitting and spitting on the road. It was absolutely terrifying. An incredibly intense atmosphere. So no wonder that you needed to be comforted in in the air raid shelter at the end of the day.

Shirley Collins7:16

Oh yeah

Presenter7:18

He just sang the words, sang the to the tune.

Presenter7:22

He didn't dramatize it. It was just straightforward. He it was just just plain.

Presenter7:28

But beautiful.

Presenter7:30

And you know, when when I listen to the proper field recordings, this is how people sing. They don't embellish it with lots of dramatics or anything. It's a song and it's a story they're telling you, and they want to tell it to you really as directly as possible.

Presenter7:45

Shelley, your your dad was away at at war during the Second World War, and I think your mum worked as a bus conductor to keep money coming in. That's right. Tell me a little bit more about her. She was a Communist, wasn't she? She was a Communist, which was quite a brave thing in those days in Hastings.

Shirley Collins7:48

Yeah well

Presenter8:00

But she was also really interested in literature. She encouraged us to read. She liked us listening to classical music, but um not pop music. One of the things I remember she said so frequently to me, You've got to admit.

Presenter8:16

I thought, no, I haven't, mum, not this time, not always. But that was it. You've got to admit that so and so and so and so, you know, and it was quite dogmatic.

Shirley Collins8:22

This is

Presenter8:24

Um and yet she was a wonderful spirited woman and I thi I mean, this partly accounted, I think, for when Dad was finally demobbed from the army and came home. He only lasted a year or so with with her and with us because she was so dogmatic.

Shirley Collins8:38

Their marriage didn't survive.

Presenter8:42

so opinionated and so harsh in so many ways and Dad fell in love, or moved on, with a a red headed widow.

Presenter8:52

Um who lived two doors away. I always think it was dark here, but that wouldn't matter these days, but it mattered then. I'm going to ask you about your dad in the next section. It's time for some more music, Shirley. Your second choice today. What are we going to hear?

Shirley Collins8:59

Play.

Shirley Collins9:01

Yeah.

Presenter9:06

Well, this is the Birds in the Spring from the Copper family. They are a very well known family in Sussex, and they've lived there for well over four hundred years, and they always sang in harmony.

Presenter9:18

And it was just wonderful to hear them, the sort of robust voices of the brothers and the cousins and the fathers. I would want to remember the birds in the spring. I'd want to remember the skylarks as I walked over the downs when I was older. You know, so high in the sky you can't see them, but you can hear them. One May morning I chanced far to roam, And strolled through the fields by the side of the grove.

Presenter9:50

It was there I did hear the harmless birds sing, And you never heard so sweet, And you never heard so sweet You never heard so sweet As the bird in the spring

Shirley Collins10:03

Uh

Speaker 310:03

You never

Presenter10:11

The Birds in the Spring Sussex folk song sung by members of the Copper family, Bob and Ron.

Presenter10:19

Shirley Collins, when the war was over, you must have been looking forward to your father coming back. Do you remember his return?

Presenter10:27

I

Presenter10:28

Do you have

Presenter10:29

A strange

Presenter10:31

Vision of him coming down the street carrying his de mob case, which was a wooden case.

Presenter10:39

and wearing a b his de mob suit, which was a navy blue suit, and it just looked slightly too tight for him. But I didn't know that that was my Dad but I did know because my sister told me she said that's Dad coming down the road. Um and it was wonderful to have him home.

Speaker 310:52

Mm.

Presenter10:55

But not for long enough, because he and Mum just couldn't get on. Mum had been used to, you know, running the place, just looking after everything and they just couldn't readjust to life together. Not at all.

Shirley Collins11:05

They just couldn't readjust to life together.

Presenter11:09

And then he was gone, and I didn't see him again until I was thirty two, and Dolly and I were giving a concert in Southampton, and there was Dad in the audience, and that was the last I saw of him, and he bought us a half pound box of milk tray chocolates each.

Presenter11:24

And it didn't seem quite adequate.

Presenter11:27

Did you get the sense that he wanted to to reconnect with you? He was trying to make amends, or? No. No. No, I don't think so. What did he say? He just came along and said hello.

Presenter11:40

And it is the chocolates.

Presenter11:42

I think Dolly might have had a few words with him, but I

Presenter11:46

Couldn't bring myself to.

Presenter11:49

Why not?

Presenter11:51

But it left us.

Presenter11:53

Without a word to either of us children,

Presenter11:57

Also I still have the memory of the one Christmas he did send us a present, and that was a pair of stockings each, but they were stamped substandard.

Presenter12:08

And I thought, that's what my dad thinks of me. So I threw mine away. I didn't wear them. I just.

Speaker 312:10

Yeah.

Speaker 312:11

He says

Shirley Collins12:11

Uh

Presenter12:14

Chapter

Presenter12:15

Did you see him again after that night at the concert?

Presenter12:19

But the ironical thing is that when he moved away from His he moved with his new family to Southampton, to a suburb called Shirley.

Presenter12:29

Love's a bit cruel sometimes. When you died, did you know about it? Did you go to New York? No, didn't know about it.

Shirley Collins12:34

Yeah.

Presenter12:37

I think Dolly found out somehow because she was more keen on keeping in touch and so finally when the news came back that he had died and he died young he died when he was sixty two or sixty three.

Shirley Collins12:41

Hmm.

Presenter12:50

Of a heart attack the same age that Dolly died? The same as Dolly. Yes.

Presenter12:55

Let's have some more music, shall we? Your third choice today. This is one of my or no, it's my favourite hymn, the John Bunyan hymn to be a Pilgrim.

Presenter13:03

Ruffon Williams.

Presenter13:05

collected a lot of folk songs in the early part of the um twentieth century, nineteen hundred and four, around that time. And this is um tune already existed for the hymn To Be a Pilgrim, one of my favourite hymns, the wonderful John Bunyan hymn.

Speaker 313:12

Yeah.

Presenter13:22

And in nineteen hundred and four or so Vaughan Williams was asked to

Presenter13:28

Edit a new English hymnal.

Presenter13:31

What he did was to attach some of the hymns to the tunes of some of the folk songs that he collected. So the hymn to be a pilgrim came from Mrs. Harriet Verrill of Monksgate near Horsham. And if you look in the New English hymnal, there's the words tune Monksgate. I love the lustily way Maddie sings it and that's how it should be sung.

Presenter13:56

Who would true valour see, let him come hither?

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One year will Constant be Come wind, come weather.

Speaker 314:07

Uh

Presenter14:08

Uh

Speaker 314:08

Uh

Presenter14:09

No disguise

Presenter14:11

John Make him once relent His fires of out intent to be a pilgrim.

Presenter14:19

Who's always sat em round with a dismal story?

Presenter14:25

Maddie Pryor and The Carnival Band Who Wood Drew Valerie.

Presenter14:30

Shirley Collins, as a teenager, you gave your first public performances with your sister Dolly at the Oakhurst Hotel in Hastings. What are your memories of those occasions? Well, again once again they were socialist occasions, sometimes literary occasions. Dolly had bought a very cheap guitar through an ad in The Daily Worker.

Presenter14:51

a Texas Varkian guitar. She didn't know how to play it, so she just open tuned it, laid it on her lap, and we strummed a few chords across it. So we were singing folk songs with Dolly's strummy accompaniments to

Presenter15:06

Possibly bewildered guests and who have friends of your mum's. Oh, yeah, oh, yes, no, they're all sort of politically sound and correct and

Shirley Collins15:09

Friends of your mum's.

Presenter15:15

possibly very sympathetic to us, you know.

Presenter15:17

So after leaving school you went to London and I think you started training as a teacher but left after a year. Why was that? I didn't like it. My dad was supposed to send me I think fifteen shillings a week or a month but he never did so I never had any money and I used to steal stuff from other girls like I mean only things like squeezes of toothpaste and shakes of washing powder if I needed to do some washing. Never anything worse than that. But it was humiliating all of it. My heart wasn't in it. I didn't want to do that. So you left teacher training college, resolved to be a folk singer, but you had to find a way of supporting yourself. What were those early days for you like in London of the 1950s? It was a tough time to make a living. I mean all still very post-war rationing still

Shirley Collins15:48

Yeah.

Shirley Collins15:50

Yeah.

Presenter16:04

I'd got a job as a bus conductress for the summer in Hayson, so I had a little bit of money to get to London Myth. Fortunately I got a job in a bookshop in

Presenter16:14

Beltsyce Park, near Hampstead.

Presenter16:17

and it was there I discovered um two volumes of Cecil Sharpe's English folk songs from the Southern Appalachians, the most wonderful collection of songs that he and his partner Maud Carpolis collected in the

Presenter16:32

In about nineteen hundred and one and nineteen hundred and two, it was my first two weeks' wages in the bookshop, and I lived on buns and

Presenter16:39

I think packet soup, which in those days was pretty fine. But it was worth it in the long run. Of course it was. No, it's the best money I ever spent. You'd started to perform and you also went to Warsaw and Moscow to perform. Well, I did. What was that experience like? It was fantastic. I mean, the journey was incredible for a start. We got through Germany and the great big Russian train was waiting for us. A huge thing. You had to climb up into it. And there was a damn great red star on the front. It was thrilling. And I sort of did feel some sort of socialist stirrings then, I guess. And we made our way across Russia to Moscow, stopping at stations where there were often people waiting to give you bunches of flowers or badges. And I had been told to take little bars of chocolate with me to give back, you know, so I had done that.

Presenter17:34

Let's take a minute for some more music, Shirley Collins. This is your fourth choice today.

Shirley Collins17:35

Yeah.

Shirley Collins17:36

Your f

Presenter17:38

What we're going to hear is just the sweetest recording of all time, I think a field recording that is from a little six-year-old girl in the traveller community, Sheila Smith, in Sussex in nineteen fifty-five. And it's just the natural way she sings this song that so delights me, either called Sweet William or Come Father Build Me a Boat.

Shirley Collins18:04

Dear father dear

Speaker 218:06

Yeah.

Speaker 318:06

Yeah.

Speaker 218:07

Father Pray build me a boat. So all on that ocean roll there go and flow. Every big ship that do pass by, I will inquire for my sailor boy. Oh wow. Colour clothes, your true lover wear. What colour

Presenter18:33

Hello Was this with golden air? The idea. Isn't it gorgeous? Absolutely beautiful. Come father, pray build me a boat. Sheila Smith. So Shirley, in the summer of 1959, you travelled to America to work collecting songs with the musicologist Alan Lomax. An incredible trip to go on, I imagine. How exactly did it come about?

Presenter18:56

I had heard so many programmes of Allen's collections in the British Isles and in Spain and Italy that he'd made in the in the fifties.

Presenter19:07

And I longed to meet him, but thought I never would, until one day an invitation came from Ewan McCall to a party that he was throwing for Alan, who was just coming back to England after recording in Spain.

Presenter19:20

First of all I went to work for him, but um it it sorta soon

Presenter19:25

moved into a a relationship, although I was twenty years younger than him.

Presenter19:31

But it was the most incredible experience because um I mean he he'd got albums coming out ab about the blues, about his field recordings in the Mississippi State Penitentiary.

Shirley Collins19:40

Yeah.

Presenter19:42

In the nineteen twenties or forties

Shirley Collins19:43

Yeah.

Presenter19:45

And I remember stepping on this wonderful ship, the SS United States.

Presenter19:51

'Cause that's how poorer people travelled, you know, it was only the rich that flew then.

Presenter19:56

And it was a five day voyage out of the most

Presenter19:59

Oh, just sumptuous food, you know, just being on deck looking at the ocean all the time, knowing that I was going to meet Alan at the other end. You travelled around the Deep South recording songs. Tell me about the kinds of people that you were meeting and recording. What sort of groups of people? Everyone really. I mean, we were say we started off in Virginia where there was white mountain music and the old British ballads that were still being sung. Wonderful fiddle tunes, fiddle players and banjo players. When we went down to the Mississippi State Penitentiary, Alan had been there in the nineteen twenties and wanted to see how the music had changed, the the work songs, the chain gangs, the field holers and the blues.

Shirley Collins20:34

Yeah.

Presenter20:43

1959, very much the era of the civil rights movement. Did you get a sense of that social change that was taking place around you while you were traveling?

Speaker 320:45

The civil rights

Presenter20:54

No. We were just there a year or so.

Presenter20:59

too soon for that. I mean

Presenter21:01

We ate in segregated restaurants. We swam in segregated pools and What did you make of that?

Presenter21:08

Everything's shaming.

Presenter21:11

But it was that was all there was, you know. Um

Presenter21:15

Do you feel s ashamed now of having gone along with it, not protesting, but we were there to record the music of the people, both white and the black populations? Let's hear your next track, Shirley.

Presenter21:27

I'll never forget the first sight I had of Mississippi Fred MacDowell. He'd been picking cotton all day. He came into the clearing where the shacks were, and there were children playing and chickens scratching about and dogs barking. And this very slight figure appeared through the trees in his work dungarees and carrying a guitar. And he sat down and played Sixty one Highway Blues was the first thing he played, and it was the most wonderful sound, the shimmering metallic sound of the guitar, and his wonderful voice, and the wonderful blues itself.

Presenter22:04

I get goosebumps thinking about it now. It was so extraordinary. And Alan.

Presenter22:09

and I were just looking at each other, you know, shaking our heads in wonder, and Alan wrote the one word in his notebook, which he'd never written before, perfect, and that was Mississippi Fred McDowell.

Shirley Collins22:26

Lord and sixty one away, here long we would.

Presenter22:39

Lord and 61 Highway Beat the only road I know.

Presenter22:50

Sixty-one Highway Blues, Mississippi Fred MacDowell. So Shirley Collins, what an amazing trip. You returned to Britain and you established yourself as a performer. You also met someone else and by the early sixties you were married. You had two very young children, but you were gigging and traveling round the country with your banjo. How difficult was all that to manage? Oh, it was very difficult indeed. So a lot of sitting on late night station platforms and things like that? Yes, I mean the worst episode was when I was sitting on

Shirley Collins23:09

How difficult was that?

Shirley Collins23:14

Station

Presenter23:21

Leeds railway station.

Presenter23:23

And I'd finished a gig and I knew I wanted to get home, I didn't want to wait till morning, and there was this train at something like two o'clock, and I was sitting on a s bench with my you know, holding my case and my banjo, and two rather heavy Yorkshire cops came up and sort of almost accused me of being a prostitute. And I thought, well, how many banjo playing prostitutes are there? you know. You had to be fairly watchful, you know, getting around on your own and uh

Presenter23:49

So when I started working with Donnelly it was lovely because then we were driving in a car and uh yeah and you had each other. So so the two of you started uh working together. You performed and recorded together and wrote some seminal albums in in throughout the sixties and seventies. Working with family members, although it was lovely to have the company and that closeness, it sometimes can be quite tricky. Did you ever have those albums? No, never shaking your head. No, never with Donnelly. We were always the best of friends and um

Shirley Collins23:55

I'm gonna have to

Shirley Collins23:56

Yeah.

Speaker 324:13

Never Shaking your heads.

Shirley Collins24:14

Yeah.

Presenter24:19

No, we never quarrelled. There was always too much to laugh about, to talk about.

Presenter24:24

It was lovely being with each other. No, we were we were great sisters. I lost her far too young.

Presenter24:34

What I loved about Donnelly's I mean, Donnelly's arrangements are his

Presenter24:38

Beautiful, and so true to the songs and so true to the Englishness or occasionally the Irishness of of a song.

Presenter24:46

This particular tune, Poor Sally Sits a Weeping, is I think one of the loveliest of the English folk songs.

Presenter24:55

And she plays it just on the piano so simply.

Presenter24:59

But what I'd love to

Presenter25:02

See, Noah, when I hear it, is that I see Dolly sitting

Presenter25:06

at her piano or the flute organ, she was always so upright.

Presenter25:11

and so graceful. Her hands are so beautiful.

Presenter25:15

But it was just her demeanour was lovely. But this track I think is one it's one of the loveliest of English folk tunes anyway. And the way she plays it is so gentle and so

Presenter25:27

It's so full of feeling and it just it sort of breaks me up when I listen to it still.

Presenter26:03

Your sister, Dolly Collins, playing her own arrangement, surely, of Poor Sally, Sit a weepin'.

Presenter26:10

Dolly died of a heart attack in her early sixties. It must have been a huge shock for you. Yes, it was.

Presenter26:18

And I had to go and tell her mum as well.

Presenter26:21

That was true.

Presenter26:23

It's is it just extraordinary their mum made that classic

Presenter26:27

remark, but I'd better go and put the kettle on.

Presenter26:31

But I was really very lucky to have her as a sister. She taught me so much about

Presenter26:37

Nature and butterflies and apples and

Presenter26:40

She was a big walker, wasn't she? Did you walk together? Oh, we walked together all the time.

Shirley Collins26:40

Faithful

Shirley Collins26:42

Did you work together?

Shirley Collins26:46

Yeah.

Presenter26:48

Shirley, the nineteen seventies had been another creative decade for you. You married your second husband, the musician Ashley Hutchings, but towards the end of that decade

Presenter26:58

The marriage fell apart and it was at that point that you lost your voice. You developed a condition known as dysphonia. What actually happened?

Presenter27:06

We were working at the National Theatre in

Presenter27:10

Production of Lark Rice to Candleford.

Presenter27:15

And during that time Ashleigh fell in love with

Presenter27:19

First one, then another, actress.

Presenter27:23

And left her left just left me.

Presenter27:26

He came home one one evening.

Presenter27:29

When I had come home I had come home earlier and he came home late and said um

Presenter27:35

I I knew something was wrong when he came through the drawer.

Presenter27:38

And he said um

Presenter27:40

I'm consumed with love. I'm leaving in the morning.

Presenter27:44

And I remember just standing there crying

Presenter27:48

All night long I think we stood there, and I just cried and cried and cried.

Presenter27:53

But I still had to earn a living'cause he wasn't supporting me either, you know.

Presenter27:59

And so I tried to continue to work at the National Theatre.

Presenter28:05

But

Presenter28:06

One of the actresses I mean, these were promenade performances, so the audience was right up, you know, as close as they could walk right in front of us. Okay. And the first actress you fell in love with would turn up night after night standing right in front of me. As I was trying to sing, but wearing his sweaters.

Presenter28:25

I couldn't cope. I th I couldn't

Presenter28:29

I didn't know what to do. Um some nights I was fine and could sing well.

Presenter28:34

Some nights

Presenter28:36

My voice was as shaky as anything. Some nights opened my mouth nothing came out at all. And it was eventually, I mean, finally so humiliating I had to stop.

Presenter28:46

And you couldn't even sing in private. It wasn't just performance. I couldn't sing at all.

Shirley Collins28:48

Performance.

Presenter28:53

I mean, it must have been devastating. It was devastating. Let's take a break for your seventh disc, Shirley. Well, I've chosen Linda and Richard Thompson singing Richard's song A Heart Needs a Home.

Presenter29:05

It was the one song I played over and over and over again all the time that Ashley and I were breaking up.

Presenter29:11

It still moves me very much, and I just think Linda Thompson is one of the great singers, underrated, never quite properly acknowledged what a

Presenter29:21

Brilliant singer, she was. So this helped me through some very

Presenter29:26

Sad days.

Shirley Collins29:39

I feel

Shirley Collins29:46

I've never gone wrong.

Presenter29:53

I'm never gonna wrong

Presenter30:03

A Heart Needs a Home Linda and Richard Thompson

Presenter30:07

Shirley Collins, you found your voice again after thirty eight years and came back with a new album, Lodestar, in twenty sixteen. What persuaded you back behind the microphone and how was it to find your voice again?

Presenter30:20

I think a great deal of the credit, if credit's the right word, um, has to go to

Presenter30:25

David Tibbett, of Current ninety three, who had befriended me when I was working at the Job Centre, came over with friends and said how much he had loved my singing.

Presenter30:36

and tried to persuade me to sing again. And I did manage to do one or two verses of recording for him, one hymn and one lullaby that he put out on an album.

Presenter30:47

And then Monday he said, Look, I've got a concert at the Union Chapel with Curt Ninety Three. Just come along and sing two songs. Got such a really lovely reception when we walked out on stage. I was a bit wobbly, but um lovely applause at the end and um it just sort of

Presenter31:06

It bucks me up somehow, you know, and I thought, Crumbs, I can do it possibly. And then me started thinking about making an album.

Presenter31:15

So we decided to record it in my cottage in Lewis. And we can hear the birds in the garden and everything else. In the garden, the the sound was streaming through the kitchen window. And it was one of the sort of darkest songs on the album, you know, several.

Shirley Collins31:20

And then

Shirley Collins31:23

Yeah.

Presenter31:31

A bit of slaughter going on there, a bit of revenge. Oh, the body count on your records, Shirley. It's through the roof. I know, I know, but that's life. It's true. It's true.

Shirley Collins31:33

Oh, the sh

Speaker 331:36

Through the roof

Speaker 331:38

It's true.

Presenter31:40

You recently released a new album at at the age of eighty-eight. Have you got any plans to make any more?

Speaker 331:43

So have you got any

Presenter31:46

No?

Presenter31:47

No, I th I think that must be it now, surely. Well, Shirley, you've had many adventures, and it's almost time for your next. We're going to cast you away on your desert island.

Shirley Collins31:50

Well, surely

Shirley Collins31:54

Do anything?

Presenter31:57

What do you think the biggest challenge that you'll face there is? The practicalities, perhaps? I'll probably be okay on a desert island because the practicalities that I can't cope with are things like opening jars. Impossible. They're on the job. They can't get into packets. Perfect. No packets. No, no packets there. So that would be a relief. One less thing to worry about. Yes.

Shirley Collins32:10

Yeah.

Presenter32:19

The practicalities, uh what I've always wanted to do

Presenter32:25

I never managed in my life. I wanted to learn to swim the crawl. That's what I will focus on, just getting.

Presenter32:31

My cruelty Olympics.

Presenter32:34

How are you with your own company? I've been alone for so long now that uh

Presenter32:39

It's not going to be much different, really. Well, you'll have your discs to keep you company and we'll let you share one more with us before you go. Your eighth choice today, Shirley Collins. What's it going to be?

Shirley Collins32:42

And we'll let you

Presenter32:49

One of my favorite movies is Local Hero.

Presenter32:53

And anything with Bert Lancaster in. I love Local Hero, and the music is so great. I love Mark Knopfler.

Presenter33:00

And it's called Going Home And so what could be, you know, better than that? And it's such triumphant music as well and um no, lovely. It makes me feel good every time I hear it.

Presenter33:41

GOING HOME MARK Knopfler from Local Hero. So, Shirley Collins, I'm going to send you away to the island. I'll give you the books to take with you, the Bible, the complete works of Shakspere, and you can take one other book of your choice. What would you like? Well, I would like the Jackson Brodie novels. Kate Atkinson is my favourite author.

Presenter34:00

Jackson Brod is my favourite hero. I'll allow you the collection of five. Thank you. My former castaway, Kate Atkinson, would be delighted to give you that.

Shirley Collins34:04

Thank you.

Presenter34:09

You can also have a luxury item. What would you like, Shirley? I want a solo-powered.

Presenter34:16

Surf replenishing fridge

Presenter34:19

Full of Italian ice cream with a couple of lipsticks thrown in.

Presenter34:25

So a solar powered fridge absolutely packed with ice cream. I'm not gonna look, and if you wanna chuck the lipsticks in there, I'm gonna turn a blind eye, but you've got ten seconds. Got to be amethyst shimmer.

Presenter34:38

Because it's you, Shirley, I'm going to look away now. You do with that fridge what you want. Thank you. It's yours. And finally, which one track of the eight wonderful discs that you've shared with us today would you rush to save from the waves? I think I would take the Dolly track. Poor Sally sits a weeping just because

Presenter34:57

I have such a clear picture of her when I hear that played.

Presenter35:01

Shirley Collins, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Lawn, thank you for having me. It's been such a pleasure to talk to you.

Shirley Collins35:03

Yeah.

Presenter35:08

Talk with you.

Presenter35:23

Hello, I hope Shirley is happy on our islands listening to our music and choosing which ice cream flavour to eat next. Doesn't sound too bad. We've cast away many musicians over the years, including Sirs Paul McCartney and Nelton John, and Adele. You can hear their programmes if you search through our Desert Island Discs programme archive or on BBC Sounds. And you'll also find Shirley's favourite author, Kate Atkinson, in there too.

Presenter35:47

The studio manager for today's programme was Andrew Garrett and the producer was Sarah Taylor. The series editor is John Gowdy.

Shirley Collins36:27

Hi, it's Amit Katwala.

Speaker 236:29

And Charlotte Stavre here, we wanted to tell you that season two of All Consuming from BBC Radio 4 is here.

Shirley Collins36:35

In this series we'll be once again delving into our culture of consumption by examining the services and products that have changed the world.

Speaker 236:42

This time we're looking at houseplants.

Shirley Collins36:44

I fell in love with that map.

Speaker 236:45

The idea of just turning a plant into this giant analog synthesizer. Running shoes. The beauty of it is you get a chance to understand performance at the high

Speaker 336:53

Highest level. And T. It's the connection and the safety cues to your body that it's over and you're safe.

Shirley Collins37:00

And much more, so join us for the second season of All Consuming, available on BBC Sounds.