Bob Fox (musician)

Last updated

Bob Fox
Musician Bob Fox (161117219).jpg
Background information
Origin Seaham, County Durham, England
Genres Folk
Occupation(s)Singer, guitarist
InstrumentsGuitar, bouzouki, appalachian dulcimer, piano
Years active1972–present
Website www.bobfoxmusic.com

Bob Fox is an English folk guitarist and singer, specialising in traditional and contemporary songs of the north-east of England and in particular, the coal mining communities thereof. He is noted for his collaborations with Tom McConville and Stu Luckley, and for solo performances since 1982.

Contents

Biography

Bob was born in 1953 in Seaham, County Durham, England. After discovering he could sing while in school he taught himself guitar and started singing in folk clubs while at the same time training to be a teacher in Durham, where he qualified in 1975. He commenced his singing career as a resident at the "Davy Lamp" Folk Club in Washington, Tyne and Wear in approx. 1970 and in 1975, teamed up to form a professional duo with fellow north-eastern singer (and fiddle player) Tom McConville for 2 years (1975–77). After this he formed a duo with ex-Hedgehog Pie singer, guitarist and acoustic bass guitar player Stu Luckley which performed all over the United Kingdom and recorded two albums, the first of which "Nowt So Good'll Pass" was voted Folk Album of the Year by Melody Maker in 1978. [1] Fox and Luckley became a popular attraction on the UK folk scene and supported Richard and Linda Thompson and Ralph McTell on major British tours. [2] After ceasing the partnership with Luckley in 1982 to pursue individual projects, Bob has maintained a successful career as a solo folk performer for over 30 years. During the 1990s, together with Benny Graham he developed a multi-media show documenting the coal mining communities of Durham and Northumberland, which led to the CD "How Are You Off For Coals", featuring a selection of mining songs. In 2006 Bob, along with a range of other top UK folk artists, was involved in providing performances for the "2006 Radio Ballads" commissioned by BBC Radio, and in 2009 he performed in the part of "Songman" in the highly acclaimed West End production of War Horse which played in the West End for 18 months and was subsequently toured for another eighteen months around Britain, Ireland and South Africa. [3] Scholar Anthony Ashbolt describes Fox as "possessing one of the best folk-singing voices in England and he evokes the world of the miners and, in general, the songs of the northeast, with power and clarity." [4]

Discography

Bob Fox and Stu Luckley

Fox (on right) with Stu Luckley in 1982 Bob Fox and Stu Luckley on stage at Leeds Folk Festival, UK, 1982 (photograph by Tony Rees).jpg
Fox (on right) with Stu Luckley in 1982

Bob Fox and Benny Graham

Solo

The Hush (Jed Grimes, Garry Linsley, Graham Wood, Paul Smith and Neil Harland) with Bob Fox

Various Artists: The 2006 Radio Ballads

Bob Fox features on albums including The Song of Steel, The Enemy That Lives Within, The Horn of the Hunter, Swings and Roundabouts, Thirty Years of Conflict and The Ballad of the Big Ships, also on the compilation album The Songs of the Radio Ballads.

Billy Mitchell and Bob Fox

The Pitmen Poets (Benny Graham, Billy Mitchell, Bob Fox, Jez Lowe)

Related Research Articles

A. L. Lloyd English singer

Albert Lancaster Lloyd, usually known as A. L. Lloyd or Bert Lloyd, was an English folk singer and collector of folk songs, and as such was a key figure in the British folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s. While Lloyd is most widely known for his work with British folk music, he had a keen interest in the music of Spain, Latin America, Southeastern Europe and Australia. He recorded at least six discs of Australian Bush ballads and folk music.

Fellside Recordings English record label

Fellside Recordings is a British independent record label, formed by Paul Adams and Linda Adams in 1976 in Workington, Cumbria, and still run by them.

Frankie Armstrong Musical artist

Frankie Armstrong is an English singer and voice teacher. She has worked as a singer in the folk scene and the women's movement and as a trainer in social and youth work. Her repertoire ranges from traditional ballads to music-hall and contemporary songs, often focusing on the lives of women.

Isla Cameron Musical artist

Isla Cameron was a Scottish-born, English-raised actress and singer. AllMusic noted that "Cameron was one of a quartet of key figures in England's postwar folk song revival - and to give a measure of her importance, the other three were Ewan MacColl, A. L. Lloyd, and Alan Lomax". She was a respected and popular folk music performer through the 1950s and early 60s as well as appearing in several films; she focused almost exclusively on her acting career from 1966 onwards. Cameron provided the singing voice for actress Julie Christie's part in the hit 1967 film version of Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, but changed career direction and became a film researcher in the early 1970s before her early death in a domestic accident in 1980. One of the traditional songs in her repertoire, "Blackwaterside", recorded by Cameron in 1962, was subsequently popularised by notable "next generation" U.K. folk music performers Anne Briggs, Bert Jansch and Sandy Denny.

Jez Lowe Musical artist

John Gerard "Jez" Lowe is an English folk singer-songwriter. Lowe was born and raised in County Durham, in a family with Irish roots. He is known primarily for his compositions dealing with daily life in North-East England, particularly in his hometown of Easington Colliery. He attended St Francis RC Grammar School in nearby Hartlepool and later studied languages at Sunderland Polytechnic. He performs both as a solo artist and with his backing band, The Bad Pennies. In addition to singing his songs, Lowe accompanies himself and The Bad Pennies on guitar, harmonica, cittern, and piano.

Hedy West American folk singer, song adapter and banjoist (1938–2005)

Hedwig Grace "Hedy" West was an American folksinger and songwriter. She belonged to the same generation of folk revivalists as Joan Baez and Judy Collins. Her most famous song "500 Miles" is one of America's most popular folk songs. She was described by the English folk musician A. L. Lloyd as "far and away the best of American girl singers in the [folk] revival."

"Young Hunting" is a traditional folk song, Roud 47, catalogued by Francis James Child as Child Ballad number 68, and has its origin in Scotland. Like most traditional songs, numerous variants of the song exist worldwide, notably under the title of "Henry Lee" and "Love Henry" in the United States and "Earl Richard" and sometimes "The Proud Girl" in the United Kingdom.

"Bonnie Annie" is a folk ballad recorded from the Scottish and English traditions. Scottish texts are often called Bonnie Annie or The Green Banks of Yarrow, English texts are most often called The Banks of Green Willow. Other titles include The Undutiful Daughter, The High Banks O Yarrow, The Watery Grave, Green Willow, There Was a Rich Merchant that Lived in Strathdinah and The Merchant's Daughter.

Sandra Kerr is an English folk singer.

Jon Boden British singer, composer and musician

Jon Boden is a singer, composer and musician, best known as lead singer and main arranger of Bellowhead. His first instrument is the fiddle and he is a proponent of "English traditional fiddle style" and also of "fiddle singing", both of which he employed in Bellowhead, in the duo Spiers & Boden, and previously as a member of Eliza Carthy’s Ratcatchers.

Alfred William "Bob" Roberts (1907–1982) was a British folk singer, songwriter, storyteller, bargeman, author, and journalist. He was the last captain of a British commercial vessel operating under sail, and brought to an end a centuries-old tradition.

Nancy Kerr Musical artist

Nancy Kerr is an English folk musician and songwriter, specialising in the fiddle and singing. She is a Principal Lecturer in Folk Music at Leeds Conservatoire and Newcastle University. She was the 2015 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards "Folk Singer of the Year".

Hedgehog Pie British folk rock group

Hedgehog Pie were a British folk rock group from the north-east of England, that evolved between 1969 and 1971. Despite frequent line-up changes, they built up a considerable regional and national following and produced three highly regarded albums. They were connected to many of the most important folk and rock bands of the region from the 1970s and have been seen as one of the most significant groups in a rediscovery and popularisation of Northumbrian roots music.

Martyn Wyndham-Read Musical artist

Arnold Martyn Wyndham-Read is an English folk singer, who was a collector and singer of Australian folk music. He lived and worked in Australia from 1958 to 1967 and was subsequently a regular visitor to the country.

Geoff Heslop is an English record producer and musician.

Cockersdale is a folk music singing group from West Yorkshire, England, founded by Keith Marsden of Morley and revived after his death.

The Beggars Chorus OR The Jovial Crew is an English broadside ballad from the mid-18th century. It celebrates the life of a beggar, and treats begging as a legitimate English trade. Sung to the tune of A Begging We Will Go. Copies of the broadside can be found in the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, and the Huntington Library.

"Hares on the Mountain" is an English folk song. Versions of this song have been collected from traditional singers in England, Canada and the USA, and have been recorded by modern folk artists.

Walter Pardon Norfolk folk singer

Walter Pardon was an English carpenter, folk singer and recording artist from Knapton, Norfolk, England. He learned songs and tunes from older members of his family and remembered and performed them at a time when most people of his generation were uninterested in traditional music. He was then able to pass his songs and tunes on to a new generation of folk music collectors and performers.

Bob Davenport is an English traditional folk singer who has been a leading and influential voice in the British folk revival since the early 1960s.

References

  1. Bob Fox. "currentbiog". Bobfoxmusic.com. Retrieved 20 May 2020.
  2. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 10 June 2016. Retrieved 18 May 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  3. "UK talks to Bob Fox". Folkradio.co.uk. 9 July 2015. Retrieved 20 May 2020.
  4. Ashbolt, Anthony (2005). "When the boat comes in – an interview with Bob Fox.". Illawarra Unity – Journal of the Illawarra Branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History. pp. 30–39.