June Tabor was born and grew up in Warwick. As a young woman of 18, 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 learned 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.”
Discussing in a 2008 interview how she developed her characteristic style, she said, “I have no musical education whatsoever…I just learned the songs and copied the phrasing by playing those records ad nauseam, trying out both [Anne Briggs and Belle Stewart singers’ styles. Then I tried putting the two together, and missing a few bits out – and that’s approximately what I’ve been doing ever since. It’s also why I don’t do singing workshops, because that’s about as much as I can tell anyone.
After she performed at Sidmouth Folk Festival, she was booked in folk clubs and contributed to various recordings. One of her earliest was in 1972 on an anthology called Stagfolk Live. She also is featured on Rosie Hardman’s Firebird (1972) and The First Folk Review Record (1974). At the time she was singing purely traditional, unaccompanied material. In 1976 Tabor collaborated with Maddy Prior on the Silly Sisters album and tour, with a full band that included Nic Jones. It provided the launching pad that same year (1976) for her first album in her own right, Airs and Graces. She later joined again with Prior, this time using the name Silly Sisters for their duo.
In 1990, 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.
Tabor is frequently experimental but avoids modernism. For example, she frequently sings traditional songs with a piano accompaniment. On the album Singing The Storm (1996), 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 Oysterband. In 1992, The Wire voted Tabor’s “Queen Among the Heather” as one of the “Top 50 Rhythms of all Time”.
Topic Records issued a 70-year anniversary boxed set Three Score and Ten, in the accompanying book it lists Tabor’s Aqaba as one of their classic albums. Three tracks from it are included in the compilation. “A Place Called England”‘ from A Quiet Eye is track eight on the second CD, and two songs appear on the seventh CD: “While Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping” from Airs & Graces is track two, and “Hedger and Ditcher” from the Silly Sisters album No More To The Dance is track seventeen.
