Shirley Collins turns 90!

Shirley Collins - one of the most important voices and stewards in British folk music - turns 90 years old today.

To celebrate her birthday, Domino is pleased to share a new version of “Hares on the Mountain”.  

“Hares on the Mountain” is one of Shirley’s signature arrangements, a traditional English ballad she defined as a young woman, first on her wonderful debut album Sweet England – recently voted the #9 best album of the 1950s by Uncut magazine - before Collins rewrote the melody and recorded it with Davy Graham for their seminal record Folk Roots, New Routes. This 1965 version become the benchmark rendition, inspiring new interpretations by artists such as Lankum, Alt-J and All Them Witches. Collins re-sung “Hares on the Mountain” on her most recent record Archangel Hill (2023), and it re-emerged aching with the wisdom of the archetypes she has at many points in her life embodied; mother, muse, dreamer, explorer, samaritan, elder, rebel and sage.  

Most recently, Shirley recorded “Hares on the Mountain” with her musical director Ian Kearey to serve as the theme tune for Bridget Christie’s Channel 4 show The Change and this latest, faster version was recorded as an alternative take, unreleased before now.   Every one of these shades of Shirley has affected the tending with which we now receive this last harvest and the tenderness we hear within songs, sung like only Shirley can. It only takes a heartbreak to sing a love song but a lifetime to sing a folk song. 

It is released alongside “Oakham Poachers”, taken from Archangel Hill. A song so reverberant of the land rights justice movement of today. A timely reminder from Shirley about being a good ancestor and paying your respects to the generations before. Shirley has done a lifetime of this work and asks of us to do the same. 

Happy 90th birthday, Shirley Collins!