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A Collection | 
| Artist: Anne Briggs
Label: Topic
Category: Music
List Price: £9.99
Buy New: £9.98
You Save: £0.01
New (18) Used (2) from £6.50
Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 3468
Format: Original Recording Remastered
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
MPN: 504
UPC: 714822050425
EAN: 0714822050425
ASIN: B00000J80K
Release Date: May 10, 1999
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Tracks:
| • | Recruited Collier | | • | Doffing Mistress | | • | She Moves Through The Fair | | • | Let No Man Steal Your Thyme | | • | Lowlands | | • | My Bonny Boy | | • | Polly Vaughan | | • | Rosemary Lane | | • | Gathering Rushes In The Month Of May | | • | Whirly Whorl | | • | Stonecutter Boy | | • | Martinmas Time | | • | Blackwater Side | | • | Snow It Melts The Soonest | | • | Willie O' Winsbury | | • | Go Your Way | | • | Thorneymoor Woods | | • | Cuckoo | | • | Reynardine | | • | Young Tambling | | • | Living By The Water | | • | Maa Bonny Lad |
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
A voice from my past April 24, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It must be more than 40 years ago that I bought 'The Topic Sampler' (that's what they were called before some marketing bod thought of 'compilation'). It had a great selection from Topic's catalogue but the one that has always stayed in my mind was Anne Briggs' version of 'The Bonny Boy'. I've always preferred unaccompanied singing, mainly because I'm unable to sing to an instrument, but this was something else. She sang simply but with perfect pitch, not often heard in those days of earnest middle-class, middle-of-the-road singers. She sounded as if the song was learnt, not from a book, but from her own experience. Over the years that LP has been in the rack, occasionally played for that one song.
So now I have 'A Collection', and I'm back in love with that voice. Maybe if she'd carried on the commercial pressure would have changed her style, so I'm half glad she retreated (rather than retired) when she did. When I think back on all those long-haired blonde lassies who struggled so hard to sound as if they believed in the words they were singing, I truly think that Anne Briggs was in a different league altogether. Maybe one of my Ma's sayings fitted her best; 'You should sing as if you can taste the words.' Anne Briggs certainly did just that.
Just another young kid from the floor........... November 16, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I can remember this like it was yesterday - I'm sure that the venue was "The Scot's Hoose" in Cambridge Circus, London, circa 1964/5 (ish), and it was a Bert Jansch gig. Invited up to sing as a floor singer, she just stepped up from the audience without much of an introduction. The place was full of noise as usual, beer glasses being cleared etc. and no one took a great deal of notice at first, but Anne battled on and the audience soon began to shut up - by the time she ended the song (sorry, can't remember what it was) you could have heard a pin drop. She totally nailed it. Everybody who was there knew that this was the real deal, and I've been listening ever since.
Buy this disc and put it in the 'special' or 'definitive' section of your record collection; bring it out from time to time, give it a play and get lost in the authenticity of her singing. It never fails to impress.
If you've looking for a quick review this is it. November 12, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I've never been into folk, but I found this album a delightful collection of wonderful music at it's most stripped back and purest.
A Revelation March 17, 2007
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Like the previous reviewer the first time I encountered Anne Briggs was hearing her on the BBC documentary series Folk Britannia. I've always liked folk music and the voices of singers such as Sandy Denny but I was transfixed when I first heard Anne Briggs voice which stood out from all the other voices (mostly exceptional) in the documentary.
I too have an aversion to earnest unaccompanied folk singers but I've become mesmerised by this album. The album has a spellbinding quality which made me listen intently to the words and become caught up in the stories that the songs tell. The purity of Anne Briggs voice is so intense that I've played it over and over again in the 3 weeks since I first bought it, something I've not been inspired to do for a long time. It's made me try and find out everything I can about this reclusive singer and to search out all her other recordings.
The quality of Anne Briggs singing is such that it physically affects me every time I hear her. Anyone with even a vague liking of folk music should have this CD in their collection.
Sweet, sad, and sublime January 29, 2007
18 out of 18 found this review helpful
Folk Music... it's a minefield, isn't it? Albeit one garnished with ancient copses and mediaeval ploughed furrows. My first introduction into traditional music was via Kate Rusby's superb album "Sleepless" some years back. Taste buds suitably tingling, I then delved into a variety of compilations, but they brought forth too much adenoidal bellowing, too many faux-West Country accents, and quite simply not enough to love. So, Rusby and a select few apart, I backed away.
Then last year the BBC came up with the excellent Folk Britannia trilogy and my ears pricked up to the genre again. Particularly when, for the first time, I encountered doe-eyed free spirit Anne Briggs. The brief snippets of her crystalline vocals were enough to send me searching out her recordings sharpish, and I duly spread my wad on "The Collection". Swipe me, what a revelation. Unaccompanied folk singers used to, at best, frighten me, or at worst hold about as much appeal as a cow pat. But Anne Briggs... well, she may be singing the same songs which have been ritually slaughtered by many a craggy country dweller in all those worthy old field recordings, but the effect her voice has on you is light years away. I realise traditional music is all about The Song, but when you get Anne Briggs to sing The Song, you're taken into an extra dimension.
Ten seconds into "Recruited Collier" and I was FLOORED. I had so many shivers running up and down the back of my neck that I thought the top of my head was going to flip up. She breathes such light and life into the standards "She Moves Through The Fair" and "Let No Man Steal Your Thyme" that her versions have to be definitive. And the takes here are live in concert. She may have suffered form terrible stage-fright but the vocals are flawless.
Yet it seems she hated the studio even more, and this allied to her wayfaring lifestyle, meant her 60s recordings, though stunning, were sporadic at best. In 1971, nine years after her first release, came her first long-player, included here in its entirety. And it's a mind-blower. At the time of writing I've had "The Collection" 6 months and I STILL get the heavy collywobbles every time I hear "Blackwater Side". And I play it a helluva lot. Her sparse guitar accompaniment drops like gentle, comforting raindrops on the window of her world and you never want the clouds to part. "Go Your Own Way" has me groping for appalling 6th form clichés in much the same way.
I could go on. These are but few of the numerous highs on a cd which will change your musical mindset. As vocalists go, Anne Briggs' beautiful voice is incomparable: no accompaniment, no artifice, no contest. Lose yourself.
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