Folk Song Cellar

In the summer of 1966 Peter Kennedy recorded a series of 45 minute radio programmes for the BBC. Folk-Song Cellar was presented as ‘an informal get-together’ in a fictional ‘folk club’ hosted by Robin Hall and Jimmie MacGregor and over the 39 broadcast episodes featured over one hundred performers from Britain and Ireland. The programmes were recorded in the basement studio at Cecil Sharp House, London. Anne Briggs, billed as “from Nottinghamshire comes Anne Briggs to sing some of those unaccompanied songs she heard first from the gypsies”, sang three songs during the launch episode of Folk-Song Cellar, broadcast on Saturday 13th August 1966. Remarkably these beautiful performances have survived for half a century.