Another tribute here http://www.spiralearth.co.uk/news/irwinstory.asp?nid=7868 on Spiral Earth

A fond farewell to Louisa Killen

A couple of months ago I was visiting a friend on the Scottish border in Berwick and, almost on a whim, called Louisa Killen. The reasons weren't entirely altruistic – I'd long had her in mind as a potentially useful source of information in my never-ending and increasingly foolhardy quest to assimilate enough information to write a biography of the very great (but very obscure) Irish travelling singer Margaret Barry. I'd never admit this in public, of course, but – human nature being what it is – an ugly and shameful crum of curiosity also came into play because…well, because the last time we'd spoken a few years earlier Louisa had been Louis.

She sounded breathless and doubtful on the phone. Ghastly stories of cancer, hospital appointments, unfriendly medication and extreme tiredness and warned that in her current condition conversation might be limited. But, she said, never mind all that…come anyway.

She was living in an imposing block of flats in Gateshead. Not Newcastle – Gateshead. They are a stone's throw apart but there's a big difference. This is where she was born 79 years ago, but many adventures had coloured her life between.

A smiling Louisa opens the door and we hug awkwardly. She's thin and frail and speaks softly, just a nice little old lady. A remote cry from the boisterous shanty singer of yore who set my pulses flying belting out Won't You Go My Way at a frankly terrifying decibel rate with her old friend Peter Bellamy in another century, but her spirit is unbowed and the welcome is gratifyingly warm. Her remarkable ex-wife Margaret, a clinical psychologist who's flown in from the States to offer support in her hour of need, attends to the tea as Louisa settles down in her favourite chair to talk.

And talk she does. For about two hours. Sure, there are breaks as she fights for breath and sentences are occasionally left teetering in the air and sometimes you strain to hear her, but she's animated enough and keen to reminisce…about Margaret Barry and a lot else besides.

She talks of her upbringing. An Irish family with three brothers who regularly sang anything and everything together at home – cowboy songs, blues, music hall, opera, Irish songs and the border ballads they were force-fed at school. And she explains how that wide repertoire stood her in good stead after she'd stumbled on the folk music revival via the Heritage Society in Oxford where the first artist she saw was Rambling Jack Elliott. Cyril Davies, Alexis Korner and, indeed, Margaret Barry also soon crossed her path.

There are stories of jumping ship from college in Oxford, her aborted career as a cabinet maker and her path through skiffle, the influence of the twin architects of the folk revival, Ewan MacColl and Bert Lloyd, and – true to the pioneering spirit of those early 1960s - the Newcastle folk club she helped found with occasional musical cohort Johnny Handle. At one point she even breaks into song with surprising vigour as she discusses the beloved ballads with which she's always been indelibly associated.

They included some of folk music's greatest treasures…Blackleg Miners, Pleasant & Delightful, Trimdon Grange Explosion, The Bramble Briar, The Banks Of Sweet Primroses…wonderful songs from a wonderful singer whose distinctive delivery – uncluttered, intimate, lyrical, affecting – seemed to define they were performed for years afterwards. Sometimes they were unaccompanied, sometimes they were sparsely arranged on concertina, guitar or even banjo; but the philosophy was always that the song is king.

She speaks fondly of her three decades in America, where her shanties, mining songs and tales of the industrial north east were lapped up and her Irish heritage led to six mad years singing with the group who'd given Irish music an international platform, the Clancy Brothers. She lived all over the place… Maine, Massachusetts, California, Montana…singing, lecturing, storytelling and indulging her passion for sailing. Married three times, she was to all intents and purposes the archetypal bearded, bawdy, beer-loving northern macho man.

Abhorrence of the Bush administration and the first indications of failing health finally brought her back to England for good about ten years ago and even then precious few knew the secret she'd long harboured but mostly suppressed… that deep, deep inside she had an increasingly urgent need to be a woman.

We don't speak of this, though she is so open about everything else there's little doubt she'd be happy to do so. But somehow, it just doesn't seem relevant. It's only afterwards you reflect on the magnitude of her courage when – in her seventies – she took the giant leap that would allow her true self to surface and underwent the relevant treatment to enable her to become Louisa.

Margaret tells me afterwards about the fears she'd had about changing gender. That nobody would understand. That she'd be a laughing stock. That she'd be rejected by friends and family. That it would destroy her reputation and end her career. It's a measure of her inner strength that she still went ahead with it. And perhaps a measure of those friends and family that they were so supportive.

Sure, there were ignorant sniggers behind her back and the gigs were less forthcoming after the gender change, but by then she was already starting to tackle the far more sinister threat of cancer which occupied her final years.

Despite it all, Louisa is remarkably cheerful this night in Gateshead and, whatever else, is perfectly content in her own skin. She certainly has no regrets. About any of it. "Folk music has been very good to me," she says. "I've been very lucky. I have no complaints."

And now, a few short weeks later, she is gone and we have to bid goodbye to one of the few remaining seminal figures of the early British folk revival. She was a great singer…yet, she was so much more than that.

As we said our goodbyes at the front door of her flat and hugged - less awkwardly this time - she laughed suddenly. "Never mind Margaret Barry," she says, "when are you going to write about book about me?"

If we'd only had that conversation a couple of years earlier…