CD: Shirley and Dolly Collins, The Harvest Years

Shirley Collins was a 1960s folk revolutionary. After pioneering a folk-jazz-global fusion style with Davy Graham, she experimented in matching folk songs with early music instruments, with help from her sister Dolly, who played the portable flute organ and was an inventive arranger. Championed by John Peel, they were signed to EMI's then-fashionable "underground" label Harvest to record some of the finest albums of the 60s and 70s folk revival. They are all here on this double set, which starts with the remarkable Anthems in Eden suite from 1969, in which Shirley's cool, no-nonsense vocal style was matched against cornett, sackbut, harpsichord, recorder and a male chorus to revive songs such as The Blacksmith or Searching for Lambs, now folk standards. Then there's the bleaker Love, Death and the Lady from 1970, more songs from Amaranth in 1976, and a rousing reminder of her work with the Albion Dance Band on Hopping Down in Kent. Shirley and Dolly helped transform the English folk scene, and their songs remain powerful and fresh.