Shirley Collins continues to tour her very personal presentation, America Over The Water, based, as it is now, on her recent autobiographical book of the same title.

In November the show arrived at The Tiger in Long Eaton. The programme follows the format of the book, interweaving sketches of her early life growing up in Hastings with a vivid and memorable account of touring the southeastern states of the USA in the summer of 1959 with Alan Lomax, recording in the field a series of singular, and very disparate, singers, musicians and communities. Shirley narrates her own and her shared experiences with Lomax on his mission to demonstrate the breadth of authentic living folk music in its most rough-hewn incarnation, at the close of the decade that had seen—particularly in its second half—the burgeoning college folk revival. This movement was epitomised by such clean-cut groups as the Kingston Trio, whose cultured but insipid delivery had lately permeated the Top 40. Lomax knew the antidote to this was still out there, but fast dying out, and he set out to relocate some of the same singers and musicians he had recorded in the ‘40s,and even the ‘30s.

For Shirley it was like entering a quasi-mythical world that little in England could have prepared her for, except in that the austerity of wartime and post-war Hastings was not a wholly foreign counterpart to the poverty she encountered in the New World. The experience of post-war rationing in Britain inspired Shirley’s ubiquitous references to foods, exotic and diverse, that she discovered in America over the water. The one key difference between her two worlds was race, but more of that later. 

Leaving New York Alan and Shirley headed for the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where they recorded the white blues of Hobart Smith and the high lonesome sound of banjoist Wade Ward and fiddle player Charlie Higgins. Ward had been recorded by Lomax in 1939,and now in 1959 he was over 70. Higgins was over 80, and his fiddle 200 years old. These were men whose musical skills and sensibilities had been shaped at the turn of the century and their repertoires reached deep into the 19th century. The illustrative recordings Shirley used were enhanced by the power of the super hi-tec sound system, operated for her by Vic Smith; they were further complemented by projected photographs of musicians and locations,operated by Tina Smith. The third member of Shirley’s team is actor Pip Barnes, who set the woods on fire with his interpolations of the dialects and accents of choice characters encountered on the journey, including voices from radio jingles. Several of Pip’s contributions were greeted with spontaneous applause, such was their astonishing appeal, and Shirley had to recover her point in the narrative amidst her own gales of laughter. 

On to Kentucky and the mood darkened, as if crossing a forbidden frontier. Shirley conveyed her first sense of fear as they hit upon an outdoor Baptist prayer meeting in woods out of a town called Blackey. The lining hymn Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah boomed from the speakers with its zealous tones and almost strangulated singing style, delivered by an isolated and tormented community. As Lomax was setting up his cumbersome recording machine the preacher turned on him and railed at the unsolicited intrusion of “them phones”, demanding their removal and pouring wrath on Shirley’s “bobbed hair”. (This seemingly bizarre reference puts me in mind of Blind Alfred Reed of West Virginia and his 1927 recording Why Do You Bob Your Hair, Girls?, a song of stern social admonishment and clearly unintended humour). As Lomax withdrew he still managed a surreptitious recording with a concealed hand-held machine.

Here was risk and danger but the musical and historical rewards were priceless. Pip Barnes evoked the harangue of the wrathful preacher with intonations of sheer terror. This was music and spoken word breathing more life into the medium than any number of moving visual images. We were a privileged audience to a wonderful radio programme yet to be made.

The arcane folklore of Kentucky squirrel hunters brought light relief, before spines were again chilled by a choir of Sacred Harp singers, this time from Alabama. There was a lovely balance of lighthearted and serious also conjured by the juxtaposition of reminiscences of Shirley’s Sussex childhood with her sister Dolly, punctuating the American narrative: tales of Saturday mornings at the flicks, or of girlish hysterics at the prospect of meeting Laurence Olivier, charmed and delighted in abundance.

Back in Alabama, the God-fearing choristers of the Sacred Harp who extended the warmest welcome to Shirley, their exotic English guest, and matter-of-factly commented, “We don’t like niggers and won’t allow ‘em,” when Shirley had announced that her next stop would be recording at a black church. Shirley had in fact noticed, at various points on the itinerary, an increasing number of towns proclaiming KKK presence or affiliation.

On to Mississippi where the infamous Parchman Farm prison plantation was the belly of the beast of pre-civil rights America. From here on Shirley decided she was more afraid of white people than black. Convict James Carter was recorded in Parchman, fronting a work gang wielding rhythmic hoes and responses to Carter’s lead lines. This recording came to be used in the film O Brother Where Art Thou? and brought seriously belated recognition for James Carter, who was found in Chicago in 2002 when the Grammy-winning success of the film enabled him to be presented with a royalty cheque for $20,000.

Elsewhere in Mississippi the drum and fife sound of Lonnie and Ed Young was recorded. They were found at the end of dirt roads where approaching white strangers were greeted with apprehension or real fear. The Youngs had a sound that seemed to evoke the essence of putative African origins. The Youngs also talked of a neighbour of theirs, who appeared later in the evening from out of the trees, having literally just walked off the cotton fields he worked in. Dressed in mud-stained dungarees, his hands gnarled by the cotton plants, he sat down with guitar to lay bare the heart and soul of the blues. Here was the stark naked expression of the “lowdown shakin’ chill”, the word made flesh. This man was Mississippi Fred McDowell, and this was the first that even Lomax knew of him, never mind the outside world. The rest was history which had come, not out of mythology or even rumour, but clean out of nowhere. Shirley Collins savoured this moment with glowing reverence.

In Como, Mississippi, Viola James and congregation sang the spirituals that preceded gospel. Here was all the ecstatic abandon of the unmediated black church. As with all the Lomax recordings used, the sound is of a surprisingly high quality, higher than one would have thought possible for 1959 field recordings. In fact they sound digital. 

Further west to Arkansas, where Neal Morris and Charlie Everidge were recorded,the latter aged 84 and playing a mouth-bow, an instrument that had made its earliest known appearance on the world stage in the 15,000 year-old cave paintings of Lascaux. Almeida Riddle performed English-origin ballads and barnyard doggerel in a cackling voice. Her husband had been killed in a tornado twenty years earlier. Like Neal Morris she claimed kinship with Jesse James.

Finally, returning due east clean across the south, courtesy of unavoidable stops at segregated eating houses, and on to the Sea Islands, off the Georgia coast, Alan and Shirley found a black culture and music isolated from the mainland, again evoking the strains of Africa, albeit again putatively.

Back to New York and the circle was complete and unbroken. What a time they had. To describe the pre-civil rights American south as another country is an understatement. This world has has now all but vanished, but what greater legacy could it have bequeathed later generations than its music, its beating heart. Alan and Shirley were its witnesses who preserved this music which now stands for all time. 

Mention must also be made of 3 recordings, inserted at key points in the programme, which were of Shirley’s own singing, accompanied by her sister Dolly. To hear Shirley’s recorded voice from the ‘60s, made all the more poignant by her presence in the room a few feet away, evoked the deepest emotions of all in this listener, as once again it wove its sweet melancholy that sang now for the passing of the years, the aching of the heart and the fragility of life.

Hail, Shirley Collins, siren of the heart who sings forever of  England. We are proud to know you.