SHIRLEY COLLINS - LODESTAR

NEW ALBUM COMING SOON

NOTES from the wonderful weblog Aquarium Drunkard

Shirley Collins first album in 38 years, Lodestar, is out next month via Domino Records. The album features songs from the 1500s to the 1950s, from the American, British and Cajun canons. “Pretty Polly”, culled from the set, came to Collins attention in 1959 while touring the south doing field recordings with Alan Lomax. Collins, in her own words, below . . .

A song found throughout England and the US. This version is the one I recorded from Mrs Ollie Gilbert in Timbo, Arkansas, in 1959. Alan Lomax, with whom I was working, had settled down to talk and drink with Oscar Gilbert, a fine singer, fiddle player, maker of moonshine, and known as the fightingest man in the county. I’d been banished to join the womenfolk – but I had the recording machine with me, and took down several songs from Oscar’s wife Ollie, a good singer in true Ozark mountain style, and a great source of songs. “Pretty Polly” remained a favorite of mine for over fifty-five years; I could never quite get out of my head her use of Nunited instead of United and the way she fitted in ‘I’m a Nunited States soldier from George Washington I came’ in a line that didn’t quite have enough notes.