Singers by County
The thrust of this section is to identify what we might call 'traditional' singers. These are distinct from the singers who have learned via the folk revival initiated in the 1950s and continuing today.
Which singers should go in this category? That's open to discussion. The starting point is the era of recording, ie. those singers who sang into the cylinder machines of the early collectors, followed by the early reel-to-reel tape machines and then the newer technologies, probably as far as the turn of the millenium. What we include before and after that is open to discussion and interpretation of what constitutes a 'traditional singer'
They are more likely to have learned their songs within the family or the community rather than off recordings but even this factor is fraught with difficulty. Probably the best approach is to take a stab at it and accept the flaws.
Classifying singers by County is probably as good an approach as any. That's often how the collectors did it.
But some of the Counties have changed! Let's include them anyway, for a while at least!
North East
Northumberland
County Durham
Yorkshire
North West
Cumbria:Cumberland:Westmorland
Lancashire
Greater Manchester
Merseyside
West Midlands
Cheshire
Staffordshire
Shropshire
West Midlands County
Herefordshire
Warwickshire
Worcestershire
East Midlands
Derbyshire
Nottinghamshire
Leicestershire
Rutland
Humberside
Lincolnshire
East Anglia
Norfolk
Suffolk
Cambridgeshire
South Midlands
Northamptonshire
Bedfordshire
Buckinghamshire
Oxfordshire
Berkshire
London and South East
London
Middlesex
Surrey
Essex
Kent
South
Sussex
Hampshire
see list at http://www.forest-tracks.co.uk/hampshirevoices/pages/singers.html