Shirley Collins

Shirley Elizabeth Collins MBE (born 5 July 1935) is an English-British folk singer who was a significant contributor to the English Folk Revival of the 1960s and 1970s. She often performed and recorded with her sister Dolly, whose accompaniment on piano and portative organ created unique settings for her sister's plain, austere singing style.

Biography

Shirley Collins and her older sister, Dolly, grew up in the Hastings area of East Sussex in a family which kept alive a great love of traditional song. Songs learnt from their grandfather and from their mother's sister, Grace Winborn, were to be important in the sisters' repertoire throughout their career.

On leaving school, at the age of 17, Collins enrolled at a teachers' training college in Tooting, south London. However, in London she also involved herself in the early folk revival and in 1954, at a party hosted by Ewan MacColl, she met Alan Lomax, the famous American folk collector, who had moved to Britain to avoid the McCarthy witch-hunt, which was then raging in America. Lomax and Collins made a folk song collecting trip in the Southern states that lasted from July to November 1959, and resulted in many hours of recordings, featuring performers such as Almeda Riddle, Hobart Smith, and Bessie Jones, and is noted for the discovery of Mississippi Fred McDowell. Recordings from this trip were issued by Atlantic Records under the title "Sounds of the South", and some were reenacted in the Coen brothers’ film Oh Brother, Where Art Thou. The experience of her life with Lomax, and the making of the recordings in religious communities, social gatherings, prisons and chain gangs was described in Collins's book America Over the Water (published 2005).

Shirley Collins (politician)

Shirley Jean Collins (born October 7, 1952 in Hamilton, Ontario) is a former politician in Ontario, Canada. She served in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as a Liberal from 1987 to 1990, and was a cabinet minister in the government of David Peterson.

Background

Collins was educated at McMaster University. She was a special assistant to federal Member of Parliament John Munro from 1979 to 1981, and a constituency assistant to Member of Provincial Parliament Sheila Copps from 1981 to 1982. From 1982 to 1987, Collins served as an alderman and regional councillor in Hamilton. Her son Chad is a member of the Hamilton City Council.

Politics

Collins ran for the Ontario legislature in the 1985 provincial election, losing to incumbent New Democrat Robert W. Mackenzie by 1,600 votes in the Hamilton East constituency. In the 1987 election, she was handily elected in the neighbouring riding of Wentworth East.

On August 2, 1989, Collins was named a minister without portfolio responsible for Handicapped Persons. She held this position for just over a year.