Cut and pasted from the Times

Asked to define folk music, Norma Waterson could have written a book based on her lifetime as the unrivalled matriarch of vernacular English singing. Instead, she offered a one word answer. “Stories,” she said. “Folk music is just stories about the human condition.”

When pressed, she would expand on the definition and point out that even in an age of digital miracles, we still have more in common with our forebears of centuries ago than differentiates us from them. “We’re born, we fall in love, we experience joy and pain and ultimately we all meet the same end. It’s the same cycle,” she said.

Broad Yorkshire in accent and deep in her resonant ability to interpret a lyric, she sang in a serene and unhurried voice. Once described by her husband as an “extraordinary balance of timidity and fearlessness”, she told an interviewer: “I’m basically a shy person, but when I’m singing, I don’t give a shit.”

Yet although she was revered by folk traditionalists and seen as Britain’s answer to Joan Baez, she had no time for purism. “If people say traditional music has got to be like this or like that, you may as well put it in a museum or bury it in the ground in a time capsule,” she said. “You can’t do that with tradition. You have to hope each generation brings their own thing to it, so it keeps going.”

She was a founding member of the Watersons, which became not only the first family of English folk music but also its pre-eminent pillar of traditionalism. At different times the line-up included her sister Lal, brother Mike, cousin John Harrison and husband, Martin Carthy.

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Singing with the family group, her warm but keening voice found a perfect fit within their rich harmonies. In her mid-fifties, however, she also emerged as a solo singer of unparalleled subtlety and interpretative nuance, whether singing 18th century ballads about jolly plough boys and lovelorn milk maids or reimagining rock songs by the likes of Elvis Costello and Billy Bragg. Songs, she said, flowed “like a river” and were therefore “timeless”. When a box set chronicling 40 years of her singing with members of her family was released in 2004, it was titled Mighty River Of Song.

She is survived by her daughter Eliza Carthy, who in turn became one of the finest English folk singers of her generation, and Carthy, the doyen of English folk guitarists, whom she married in 1972. She is also survived by a son, Tim, from her first marriage to Eddie Anderson, a jazz drummer, which ended in divorce.

Martin Carthy, Norma Waterson, Lal Waterson and Mike Waterson in the 1970s
Martin Carthy, Norma Waterson, Lal Waterson and Mike Waterson in the 1970s
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Eliza took great enjoyment in recounting how folk song had brought her parents together. “They’d been eyeing each other up for years, but every time there was a possible opportunity for them to get together, one or the other of them was married,” she said. “Then they found themselves in a studio, late at night, recording Red Wine and Promises and that was what did it — a midnight song about drinking wine.”

Norma Christine Waterson was born in 1939 in Hull. Her mother, Florence, played the piano and her father, Charles, guitar and banjo. On being orphaned during the war, she and her younger siblings Elaine (Lal) and Mike were brought up by Eliza Ward, their Irish maternal grandmother who came from gypsy stock. She taught them the parlour ballads, folk songs and popular music hall numbers she sang around the home and drummed into them that “a good song is a good song,” regardless of its genre or provenance.

The three siblings sang constantly at home and by the late 1950s had formed a skiffle group called the Mariners. With the addition of Harrison, they performed a cappella in Yorkshire’s clubs and pubs, mixing American and British folk songs with pop numbers.

Gradually the former took over, and by the early 1960s they had formed their own folk club called Folk Union One. Operating from the Blue Bell in Hull, the club became a powerhouse of the Yorkshire folk scene as the Watersons delved into the traditional songs and folk customs of the locality.

Their debut album, Frost and Fire, appeared in 1965. Billed as “a calendar of ritual and magic songs”, it showcased their earthy but perfectly calibrated four-part harmonies on ballads and carols associated with folk customs such as wassailing and pace-egging.

Frost and Fire was followed by further albums, including A Yorkshire Garland, which the group promoted with a string of spirited appearances in folk clubs across Britain, their beatnik look earning them the tag “the folk Beatles”.

Waterson and her husband Martin Carthy at Cambridge Folk Festival in 1999
Waterson and her husband Martin Carthy at Cambridge Folk Festival in 1999
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However, Norma soon developed itchy feet which she attributed to “the gypsy blood coming through” and, despite her deep love of the Yorkshire countryside, in 1968 took off for the Caribbean, where she spent four years in Montserrat, working as a radio disc jockey. On her return to Britain the Watersons reformed, with Harrison replaced by Carthy, whose ripe voice fitted readily into the group’s rough-hewn but perfectly rounded vocals. Living on a farm on the Yorkshire moors near Robin Hood’s Bay, which became a folk commune of singing aunts, uncle, cousins and other relatives, their recorded comeback, 1975’s For Pence and Spicy Ale, was voted folk album of the year by Melody Maker.

As the musical family expanded to include a new generation, Norma and Lal sang with their respective daughters, Mari Knight and Eliza Carthy, as the Waterdaughters. In the early 1990s Norma began performing as a trio with her husband and daughter, recording a string of acclaimed albums as Waterson-Carthy, which maintained the Watersons’ vocal harmonies but added instruments such as guitar and fiddle.

Norma also pursued a separate career and her debut solo recording Norma Waterson (1996) was a revelation as her voice emerged on its own with a new and rich resonance. The album almost won her the Mercury Music Prize, coming second to Pulp’s Different Class.

She was appointed MBE in 2002 for services to folk music but was more excited by the fact that the honour earned her an appearance on the front page of The Yorkshire Post, which she said had been a lifetime ambition.

Norma Waterson, MBE, folk singer, was born on August 15, 1939. She died of pneumonia on January 30, 2022, aged 82