America Over The Water

Shirley Collins

At the age of nineteen, Shirley Collins was making a name for herself as a folk singer. Whilst attending a party hosted by Ewan MacColl she met the famous American music historian and folklorist, Alan Lomax. They became romantically involved, and before long, Collins found herself boarding the SS United States, to begin an adventure almost unheard of for a young English girl at the time.

In this highly personal and heart-rending account, she describes her affair with Lomax and their year-long trip to uncover the traditional music of America’s heartland. Travelling through Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Georgia they discovered Mississippi Fred McDowell, recorded James Carter’s “Po’ Lazarus” (which thirty years later featured on the Grammy award-winning soundtrack to the Coen brothers’ film Oh Brother, Where Art Thou) and many other remarkable performances.

The story that emerges is of two lost worlds. With awestruck wonder Collins recounts her and Lomax’s adventure into the cultural roots of the deep American South, interspersing this with memories of being brought up as a working class girl in wartime Hastings. The result is a finely woven tapestry of one woman’s journey, both emotional and musical, and her discovery of a world of beauty and dignity, as well as deprivation and prejudice, amongst the folk musicians over the water in America.

Published SAF Publishing 2005