Fred Jordan
Farm worker who became a folk circuit favourite
Derek Schofield
Thu 8 Aug 2002 02.12 BST

Fred Jordan, who has died aged 80, was a Shropshire-born folk singer and one of the last survivors of a way of life long since disappeared. A frequent performer at folk music festivals, he was awarded the English Folk Dance and Song Society's highest honour, the gold badge, for services to folk music, in 1996.

Fred was born in Ludlow, Shropshire, the youngest of five children. He made his singing debut at the age of six on the stage of Ludlow's town hall with The Gypsy's Warning and won a pound. Always top of the class, he nevertheless left school at 14 and became a farm labourer, living in at the farms where he worked, generally looking after the horses, then still a feature of farm life in the county.

His songs were learned from his parents, fellow workers and the Gypsies who travelled up and down Corve Dale, and he was welcome in the pub sing-songs on a Saturday night. This encouraged him to learn new songs. Fred's youth and willingness to sing soon led to him being invited to Birmingham, where he sang on the BBC radio folk dance programmes in the mid-50s. An appearance at an English Folk Dance and Song Society festival in London led to further invitations from the newly emerging folk clubs in the 50s and 60s. A tour of Scotland brought him into contact with the poet Hamish Henderson in Edinburgh and he sang at concerts at Manchester's Free Trade Hall and the Royal Festival Hall in London.

When the folk festival scene took off in the 1960s, Fred was a favourite performer, especially at the legendary Keele Festival, which continues as the National Folk Music Festival. He also appeared at festivals in Cambridge, Bromyard, Sidmouth, Redcar and Whitby. By then he was working as a casual farm worker, where his jobs included fencing, hedging, ditching and harvesting. This allowed him time to travel and sing.

Fred's unaccompanied singing was first available commercially in the US on a series of albums compiled by Peter Kennedy and Alan Lomax, and released here by Topic Records in the late 1960s. It was Topic which issued two solo albums - Songs Of A Shropshire Farm Worker (1966) and When The Frost Is On The Pumpkin (1974) - and several of his songs were included on the acclaimed Voice of the People series of 20 CDs. His songs included The Banks Of The Sweet Primroses, with which he invariably started his performances, and the classic ballads The Outlandish Knight and Barbara Allan, as well as his "signature song" The Farmer's Boy.

He continued to learn songs from the singers he met in the folk clubs and festivals, and they were all sung in his distinctive style, with a slight vibrato in his voice and a subtle and skilful use of melodic ornament. In performance, he sang with a dead-pan expression and rarely talked between songs, a deliberate ploy which forced the audience to listen carefully to the words and story - he certainly saw himself as a story-teller through song.

He had little or no interest in the trappings of a materialistic society - he owned neither a television nor a radio, but he was well-informed about current affairs - although he faithfully polished his large collection of horse brasses every week. He frequently turned up for concert and festival appearances in his working clothes, including hob-nail boots and cloth cap.

In 1991, the English Folk Dance and Song Society released a new recording of his singing, In Course of Time.

· Fred Jordan, folk singer and farm worker, born January 5 1922; died July 30 2002