Performances
The television program was The Ballad Hunters, directed by David Attenborough, who later became director of BBC2 television. In 1958 Hamish Henderson recorded her in Edinburgh. Those recordings were issued as "Up the Dee and Doon The Don" on the Lismor label. The Traditional Music and Song Association founded the Blairgowrie Festival in 1965, during the fruit picking. The first festival saw Jeannie, plus Jimmy MacBeath and other valuable source singers, who learned folk songs without the influence of radios or books. Her 1968 appearance there was issued as part of an anthology on the Topic label. As well as classic ballads, she sang bawdy songs such as "Never Wed an Old Man". Jeannie was awarded the MBE in 1968 and died on 13 March 1975. Jeannie's most celebrated song is "I'm a man you don't meet every day", otherwise known as "Jock Stewart". It has been recorded by Archie Fisher, The Dubliners, The McCalmans, The Tannahill Weavers and The Pogues. Variants are known from the USA in the 1880s and Australia in the 1850s. It was to the 1990s what "The Wild Rover" was to the 1960s in folk clubs.
Read more about this topic: Jeannie Robertson
Famous quotes containing the word performances:
“This play holds the season’s record [for early closing], thus far, with a run of four evening performances and one matinee. By an odd coincidence it ran just five performances too many.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)
“At one of the later performances you asked why they called it a “miracle,”
Since nothing ever happened. That, of course, was the miracle
But you wanted to know why so much action took on so much life
And still managed to remain itself, aloof, smiling and courteous.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)