The voice of ANNE BRIGGS, long silent, reaches us over the decades with a rare beauty and power, on the few recordings this wary but resolute folk artist was persuaded to make. About her, not much else is known, and that’s just how she likes it. “I learnt from a very early age to hide behind the song,” she tells JIM WIRTH.“That was my umbrella.”
LULLING MOJO INTO A FALSE sense of security, Anne Briggs agrees to answer a few more questions… It is 11pm on a Friday night in December; our telephone conversation with the Greta Garbo of the British folk revival started at an unconventional 9.30. The first miracle came when she answered the phone. The second is that she seems to be prepared to keep talking. “I’m enjoying it in a silly sort of way,” she says.
Not exactly unguarded, the 79-year-old has agreed to speak as Topic prepare to release a new edition of her self-titled 1971 solo LP with a bonus 7-inch of out-takes: The Lost Tape. In the context of a modest back catalogue that comprises one EP, a few tracks on compilation albums and three full-length LPs (including one that was only released for the first time in the 1990s), an extra 15 minutes of material is a significant find. There’s alternative takes of Sovay and Three Maids a-Milking Did Go (AKA Bird In The Bush), plus two songs she never recorded elsewhere: The Cruel Mother and Bruton Town.
Eternally watchful as she talks from her home in the north of Scotland (Oban is her nearest Tesco’s), there is a certain quiet determination as the intensely private Briggs strives to share her story. At one point her voice cracks.
“All this talking,” she jokes. “I’m not used to it.”
However, if she doesn’t mind having a bit of a natter about old times, Briggs has her limits. She speaks to Courtesy of Phil Smee
MOJO on the specific condition that we do not ask her about why she decided to quit singing in the early 1970s, and as the timeline of our questioning starts to get close to that murky period, the line suddenly goes dead.
“I’ve got to finish now,” she says curtly. “I’ve got to finish.”
There is no explanation. No goodbye. No call back. She has said what she is going to say. As far as she is concerned, it’s over.
THAT TENDENCY TO VANISH HAS CONTRIButed to Briggs’ legend, but her colossal reputation hinges on her extraordinary voice and the clutch of gnomic songs she wrote.
Fellow valkyrie Shirley Collins counts Briggs’ ecstatic, bouzouki-spangled 1971 version of Willie O’Winsbury as one of the absolute jewels of the folk revival. “It’s just the best,” she tells MOJO. “Not dressed up at all. She just had the most beautiful voice. She made such an impression on everybody without trying to.”
“She’s amazing,” confirms Lankum’s Radie Peat who tells MOJO she has recently been obsessing over the version of The
