I've kept out of this discussion up to now because I've always loved Shirley's singing (and fancied her like mad many years ago when she was living in Blackheath and I used to drive her back from the odd gig).

I think that over the last thirty years or so, the folk scene has tended to "standardise" singing styles - including that of unaccompanied traditional material. This is not surprising when the vast majority of performers (including me) are revivalist folksong singers. What we tend to forget is that the original traditional singers (or those nearer that point) all had their own vastly differing styles because there were not the unifying influences that folk clubs, recordings, radio & TV, and even more recently the internet have tended to impose.

Shirley was at the fore-front of the sixties folk revival and, greatly to her credit, retained her original basic singing style, which is much nearer to what she would have heard from traditional singers in her native Sussex. She was never an egotistical or pushy performer - rather the opposite, as she could be quite nervous about singing. Her sister Dolly always seemed to be much more confident, and I often feel that this tended to help Shirley to produce some of her best recordings with her.

It would be very unfair to compare the singing styles of "The Copper Family" with "Coope, Boyes & Simpson" or "Artisan", and the same goes for Shirley and many contemporary female singers. It is exactly for this reason that it is so refreshing to hear songs sung with that simplicity, clarity, and almost naivety that is so typical of many of Shirley's recordings.