Singer 1937 – 2014

Douglas Martin wrote in The New York Times on 22 August 2014:

Jean Redpath, an esteemed Scottish folk singer whose arresting repertoire of ancient ballads, Robert Burns poems and contemporary tunes helped energize a genre she described as a “brew of pure flavour and pure emotion”.

She lived in Elie, in the county of Fife, Scotland, and stayed in various places around the United States.

Ms. Redpath, who recorded some 40 albums, combined voluminous historical knowledge, a winning stage presence and a voice that could be both bright and melancholy to become perhaps the most prominent Scottish folk singer of the postwar era.

She once sang for Queen Elizabeth II in a command performance, but she began as one of the gaggle of young singers who arrived in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s. For a while, according to histories of the era, she dated Bob Dylan. They slept on the floor of an apartment at One Sheridan Square with other folky hopefuls like Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.

She went on to become what The Boston Globe called “something very close to Scotland’s folk singer laureate.”

Read her Wikipedia entry here. Obituaries are published by the Guardian, The Telegraph, The Glasgow Herald and The Scotsman. A memory by Kirsteen McCue is published here.

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An Interview with Folk Singer Jean Redpath

26 November 2014 Illinois Public Media Focus 580

Hosted at Internet Archive.

A Matter of Policy

Although not credited on the Internet Archive where it is hosted it is thought that this recording was taken from Garrison Keillor’s ‘A Prairie Home Companion’ (February 7, 2009).

I lost my love / Tail Toddle

From Pete Seeger’s 1966 TV show Rainbow Quest episode 17.

Hosted at Internet Archive.

The Beggar Laddie

From Pete Seeger’s 1966 TV show Rainbow Quest episode 17.

Hosted at Internet Archive.

The Skye Fisher’s Song

From Pete Seeger’s 1966 TV show Rainbow Quest episode 17.

Hosted at Internet Archive.

Auld Lang Syne

With guest Jean Redpath.

From episode 17 of Rainbow Quest.

Hosted at Internet Archive

Miss McLeod’s Reel / Uncle Joe

With guests Jean Redpath and Roscoe Holcomb.

From episode 17 of Rainbow Quest.

Hosted at Internet Archive

Pete Seeger’s Rainbow Quest, Episode 17

For the seventeenth episode of Rainbow Quest, Pete Seeger hosts Appalachian musician Roscoe Holcomb and Scottish singer and folklorist Jean Redpath. Rainbow Quest was a television program produced for one series run in 1965 and 1966 by the Advertisers Broadcasting Company for UHF station WNJU-TV in the New York City market. Throughout the show’s 39-episode run, writer and curator of American folk songs Pete Seeger hosted many guest musicians. He also himself presented the histories of diverse American and international folk music traditions through spoken and musical segments.

Hosted at the Internet Archive.