I was sent this today, not in my orbit but I thought it might interest someone out there....

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Waterson, Elaine [Lal; married name Elaine Knight] (1943-1998), folk-singer and songwriter, was born on 15 February 1943 at 92 Park Street, Hull, the younger daughter and youngest of the three children of Charles Norman Waterson (c.1910-1948), ironmonger's clerk, and his wife, Florence Maude Ward (1908-1946). Her bloodlines were once described as a mixture of Irish, Gypsy, and Yorkshire farmer. Her elder sister, Norma, was born in 1939, and her brother, Michael, in 1941. After their mother's death, their father's health declined sharply; their maternal grandmother Eliza Ward, an extended family of relatives, and a family friend, Thurza (Tut) Hutty, stepped in and duly raised the three children. At the age of eleven Elaine won a scholarship to Hull's High School for Art and Crafts. She later left to join G. K. Beaulah & Co. Ltd, a market leader in heraldic shield manufacture, where she painted scholastic, military, and family coats of arms. She met her future husband, George Knight (b. 1944), through a snowball fight in the winter of 1961-2. They had two children, Marry (b. 1964)-the name was spelt Marie on her birth certificate-and Oliver (b. 1969), and married on 16 March 1968.

Like many of her generation, Lal Waterson gravitated to folk music from skiffle and American-derived forms, becoming one of a group of like-minded people that went on to host Folk Union I, a folk club that ping-ponged around Hull before reaching Lowgate's Olde Blue Bell in the summer of 1961. The Mariners and the Folksons, in both of which she sang, evolved into the Watersons proper, which comprised the three Waterson siblings and their cousin John Harrison (b. 1945). When a fifth member, Pete Ogley, departed, their Anglo-American repertory departed too. Few acts shook up the British folk-song revival in the way the Watersons did. Although they initially used the guitar and the banjo, this hangover from their 'Anglo-American past' gave way to a stylishly dynamic unaccompanied singing style. Their official recording debut-ignoring some earlier anthologized work-was in a cycle of pre-Christian ritual and calendrical songs, Frost and Fire (1965). It ignited the imagination of 'folkies', folklorists, bohemians, and hippies, and stands as one of the ten most important folk records of the twentieth century. The Watersons had far from purist musical tastes. Northern music-hall and Big Bill Broonzy's blues contributed to their musical palette. Other members of the extended family played the guitar, banjo, cornet, and piano. Norma taught Lal and Mike to play the guitar.

In 1968 the group broke up, weary of continual one-nighters, and Norma Waterson left for Monserrat. On her return in 1972 the Watersons re-formed, with Norma's husband, Martin Carthy, replacing Harrison. The group went on to make For Pence and Spicy Ale-voted Melody Maker's folk album of 1975-and the exceptional Sound, Sound your Instruments of Joy (1977)-a counterblast to the pagan, as it were, with its 'lost' Victorian Christian hymns. In the hiatus before reuniting, however, Lal and Mike Waterson began fleshing out the songs that became Bright Phoebus (1972); it was 'remade' between 2001 and 2002 by musicians influenced by its songs. Acknowledging only Arthur Rimbaud as a conscious influence, Lal ensured that her own poetry and songwriting, of great originality, suffused with a kind of folk poeticism, lacked any literary posing. She would drive her brother to distraction with revisions, producing complete rewrites where he had suggested tweaking one phrase or note.

The Watersons effectively disbanded when, owing to poor health, Lal Waterson stepped off the touring treadmill. She continued to 'sing Yorkshire', however, with two collaborations with her son, Oliver Knight, Once in a Blue Moon (1996) and A Bed of Roses (1999). Her songs frequently flouted conventional melodic resolutions and rhyming. In 'Flight of the Pelican' from Once in a Blue Moon her imagery conjoined heraldry's vulning pelican and the stony-hearted 'old crow' of Thatcherism to deliver a political charge about the loss of 'your children's children's rights'. Songs such as 'The Scarecrow' or 'Altisidora' were touched by the numinous. To borrow Michael Hamburger's assessment of Rimbaud, listeners do not understand Lal Waterson's songs: they learn them by heart.

Lal Waterson died of cancer at her home, Normanhurst, Robin Hood's Bay, Whitby, Yorkshire, on 4 September 1998; she was cremated at Scarborough crematorium on 11 September. She was survived by her husband, George, her daughter, Marry, and her son, Oliver.


Ken Hunt

Sources K. Hunt, 'Water daughters', Folk Roots (May 1996), 24-5, 27, 29 + K. Hunt, 'All our yesterdays', Folk Roots (Nov 1997), 17, 19 + D. Knight, Travelling for a living, BBC, 1966 [television] + D. Knight, 'Travelling for a living', Radio Times (19 May 1966), 6 + K. Hunt, Prince Heathen: Martin Carthy and the English folksong revival [forthcoming] + H. K. Moss, 'Club review: Folk Union I, Hull-the Watersons', Ballads & Songs, 4 (1965), 2 + The Independent (8 Sept 1998) + The Guardian (8 Sept 1998) + The Times (9 Sept 1998) + Daily Telegraph (11 Sept 1998) + personal knowledge (2004) + private information (2004) + b. cert.
Archives Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, London
Likenesses B. Shuel, photographs, 1960-69, Brian Shuel Collections, London · photograph, 1964, repro. in Daily Telegraph · M. Evans, photographs, 1990-98, Topic Records · M. Evans, photograph, repro. in The Independent · D. Peabody, photograph, repro. in The Guardian · B. Shuel, group portrait, photograph, Redferns Music Picture Library, London [see illus.]
Wealth at death under £200,000-gross; under £10,000-net: administration, 26 Oct 1998, CGPLA Eng. & Wales
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