June Tabor

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June Tabor

Background information
Born 31 December 1947
Origin Flag of England Warwick, England
Genre(s) English Folk
Occupation(s) Singer
Years active 1972 – present
Label(s) Topic Records
Website JuneTabor.co.uk

June Tabor (born December 31, 1947) is an English folk singer.

Contents

[edit] Early years

June Tabor was born in Warwick, England. She was inspired to sing by hearing Anne Briggs' EP Hazards of Love in 1965. "I went and locked myself in the bathroom for a fortnight and drove my mother mad. I learnt the songs on that EP note for note, twiddle for twiddle. That's how I started singing. If I hadn't heard her I'd have probably done something entirely different." (The quotation is from liner notes on the album "A Collection" by Anne Briggs)

She attended St Hugh's College, Oxford University and appeared on University Challenge in 1968, as captain of the college team. She joined the Heritage Society at Oxford University and sang with a group called Mistral. One of her earliest recordings was in 1972 on an anthology called Stagfolk Live. Her breakthrough occurred in 1976 when she recorded the album Silly Sisters with Maddy Prior. Shortly thereafter in the same year, she recorded her solo debut, Airs and Graces. She later joined again with Prior, this time using the name Silly Sisters for their duo. Starting in 1977 Martin Simpson joined her in the recording studio for three albums before he moved to America in 1987. (Simpson has returned from America to be a guest guitarist on albums in the 2000s.)

Tabor stopped performing professionally for a time after working for decades as a singer. During this time, she worked as a librarian and, with her then-husband David Taylor, ran a restaurant called "Passepartout" in Penrith, Cumbria, England before returning to music professionally in the 1990s.

[edit] Solo work

In 1990, June Tabor recorded an album with the folk-rock band The Oyster Band titled Freedom and Rain. She went on tour with the Oyster Band, and the Rykodisc label published a limited-run promotional live album the following year. Many of her current fans first discovered her through this tour and album with the Oyster Band. In 1992 Elvis Costello wrote "All this Useless Beauty" specifically for Tabor, and she recorded it on Angel Tiger. Costello didn't record it himself until 1996, on his album of the same title.

In 1977 Ken Russell directed a documentary called "In Search of English Folk Song", broadcast on Channel 4. In it June Tabor sang "The King of Rome". In 1983 the BBC TV series "Spyship" was broadcast, with June singing the title song. Tim Winton, author of the 2001 novel "Dirt Music" which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, made a selection of music to echo the themes of the novel. The CD "Dirt Music" (2001) includes "He Fades Away" by June Tabor, a painful tale of the slow death of a miner. In 2002 the "Passchendale Peace Concert" in Flanders had June sharing the stage with Coope Boyes and Simpson. On 30th June 2006 BBC Radio 3 broadcast "Night Waves" to commemorate the anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. It was broadcast live, with World War I songs sung by June Tabor, and a discussion with Michael Morpurgo and Kate Adie.

Over the years she has worked in various genres including jazz and art song, but generally with a sparse and sombre tone to it. Her 2003 album An Echo of Hooves marked a return to the traditional ballad form after concentrating on other styles for several years, and was highly acclaimed. The All Music Guide said of this album "A stunning jewel in a remarkable career, and one of the best things Tabor’s ever released." Always (2005) is a boxed set of four CDs, spanning her whole career and containing rare recordings.

[edit] Collaborations and recent developments

On 24th October 2003 Tabor appeared on Later With Jools Holland (BBC TV) , singing "Hughie Graeme". This was later issued as part of a compilation DVD from the series. Folk Britannia was the name of a concert at the Barbican centre, and a TV mini-series (February 2006, repeated in October). She sang "Fair Margaret and Sweet William" at the Barbican, under the heading "Daughters of Albion". Tabor contributed one song to Ashley Hutchings' project Street Cries (2001) and one to a collection of folk musicians singing songs by the Beatles - Rubber Folk (2006). She chose to sing Lennon's "In My Life" A cappella. June tends to be adventurous in a way that avoids modernism. For example she frequently sings traditional songs with a piano accompaniment. On the album Singing The Storm (2000) she sings to the accompaniment of Savourna Stevenson's harp, and Danny Thompson's bass. In May 2004 she performed as part of "The Big Session" and sang an adaptation of Love Will Tear Us Apart as a duet with John Jones of The Oyster Band.

The lighter side of her character can be seen in her work with Les Barker's Mrs Ackroyd Band which performs his comic work. So far June has performed on 3 of their albums, the 1990 Oranges and Lemmings (singing "The Trains of Waterloo", a parody of the folk song "The Plains of Waterloo" in a duet with Martin Carthy), the 1994 Gnus and Roses (singing "The January June", a send up of her perceived sombre character) and the 2003 Yelp! (singing "There's a hole in my bodhran", to the tune of "There's a Hole in my Bucket").

[edit] Discography

[edit] Trivia

  • Nearly all of Tabor's solo album titles begin with the letter A.
  • Although Tabor sings primarily in English, she occasionally records in other languages. Notably, the title track of the Aleyn album (די נאַכט אַליין איז םיט םיר, or, Di nakht aleyn iz mit mir) is in Yiddish, and there are German and French songs on Rosa Mundi.

[edit] External links

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In other languages