Info: Isla Cameron (1930-1980)

Subject: RE: Info: Isla Cameron (1930-1980)
From: Tony Rees
Date: 21 Aug 20 - 02:42 AM

I have incorporated some of the above info plus additional items I have found around the web into an updated version of the Isla Cameron article on Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isla_Cameron (some of it is unchanged from the efforts of previous contributors). If anyone has more that could be added - ideally from printed/published sources - I would be pleased to hear it.

Regards - Tony

Subject: RE: Info: Isla Cameron (1930-1980)
From: GUEST,Starship
Date: 20 May 20 - 01:06 PM

Joe, I don't know if this will help:

"Cameron seldom sang in public after the mid-'60s, however, as acting became more the focus of her life. She died in a tragic accident in her home during 1980."

That was written by Bruce Elder. The rest of the article he wrote can be found at

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/isla-cameron-mn0000090128/biography

Subject: RE: Info: Isla Cameron (1930-1980)
From: The Sandman
Date: 19 May 20 - 09:14 AM

Cameron seldom sang in public after the mid-'60s, however, as acting became more the focus of her life. She died in a tragic accident in her home during 1980. i saw her in a folk club in dartford at the railway about 1970maybe 1972

Subject: RE: Info: Isla Cameron (1930-1980)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 May 20 - 08:54 AM

HERE
Jim

Subject: RE: Info: Isla Cameron (1930-1980)
From: GUEST,akenaton
Date: 19 May 20 - 07:37 AM

I listened to your link Phillip, saddest thing I've heard for a long time......what a society we have become since then.

Subject: RE: Info: Isla Cameron (1930-1980)
From: Phillip
Date: 19 May 20 - 06:44 AM

I haven't listened to it yet, but here is a link to a BBC radio play from 1962, in which Isla Cameron had a leading role.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOGN3wGnww0

Well, I tried making a link, but it's beyond me. Just copy and paste if you are interested.

Phillip

Subject: RE: Info: Isla Cameron (1930-1980)
From: Reinhard
Date: 26 Apr 18 - 03:31 PM

The above obituary was printed in 1981, which doesn't contradict Isla Cameron dying in 1980.   imdb.com give an actual death date of April 3, 1980.

Subject: RE: Info: Isla Cameron (1930-1980)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Apr 18 - 02:03 PM

Isla Cameron now has a Wikipedia Page that shows her dates at 1930-1980. I'll add those dates to the thread title - and correct them if I'm proved wrong.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Help: Isla Cameron- What happened to?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Apr 18 - 12:19 PM

"according to the thread just two above your own Isla died in 1981. "
Thanks Hoot - didn't realise it was so long ago - wasn't at home when I posted this morning so I didn't have time to read through the postings
Jim

Subject: RE: Help: Isla Cameron- What happened to?
From: matt milton
Date: 26 Apr 18 - 08:40 AM

Always wanted to hear the album she did featuring Martin Carthy on guitar. It never made it to CD.

Subject: RE: Help: Isla Cameron- What happened to?
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 26 Apr 18 - 05:26 AM

Jim,

according to the thread just two above your own Isla died in 1981. Or at least the obituary was dated 1981.

Subject: RE: Help: Isla Cameron- What happened to?
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Apr 18 - 03:25 AM

We bought books from bookseller, Stanley Smith, in London in the 1980s/90 - a large number of our Folk. song/folklore books came from those he bought from broadside excpert, Leslie Shepherd.
A year or so after we bought the main lot, we had a phone call from him (he had then moved to Hampstead) - he told us he had acquired a small collection from the estate of a lady who had recently died
They turned out to Be Isla Cameron's collection - a treasure trove of books and magazines from the early revival - one-off's like a bound edition of MacColl's play, Uranium 235, complete with contemporary reviews of the play, signeed copies of song collections
All of them bore Isla's signature - apparently she died sometime in the 1980s in North London
Apart from he singing, she was an actress - I think she appeared as the maid in the filmed version of Henry James's short ghost story, The Turn of the Screw (released as 'The Innocents'
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Help: Isla Cameron- What happened to?
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 26 Apr 18 - 02:10 AM

Thanks, that is enlightening.

Subject: RE: Help: Isla Cameron- What happened to?
From: GUEST,Derek Schofield
Date: 24 Apr 18 - 05:58 AM

There was an obituary in the 1981 issue of the Folk Music Journal, written by Shirley Abicair, who wrote that Isla died after mis-swallowing some food. There was also reference to a tribute in Melody Maker by Karl Dallas. In her latter years, Isla was a TV researcher.
Derek

Subject: RE: Help: Isla Cameron- What happened to?
From: The Sandman
Date: 24 Apr 18 - 02:59 AM

she was the voice singing Bushes and Briars in Far From The Madding Crowd

Subject: RE: Help: Isla Cameron- What happened to?
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Apr 18 - 11:33 PM

Can't comment on Mr Coura's motives, but maybe a ruse to circumvent YouTube's copyright rules?

As an aside, once, when asking for "a glass of water" while dining in a Greek restaurant in Melbourne, I was told by the waiter that he was unable to assist me, but suggested an address further along the street. With great mirth, he then explained that the expression is slang in Greece as a euphemism for, shall we say, a girl of a certain calling, or for the service provided.

Gives an apparently beautiful song a whole new meaning. Naughty Mr Carter, naughty :-)

Subject: RE: Help: Isla Cameron- What happened to?
From: rich-joy
Date: 23 Apr 18 - 08:07 PM

Thread Creep :

Whilst searching for Isla Cameron songs on YouTube (there are quite a few, once you start delving!), I came across this number from 1966 : "Glass of Water" (lyrics by the late Sydney Carter to a traditional Cretan melody), which she sings, accompanied by Martin Carthy : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2aWqz6Dbv0

I then came across this 2011 clip by one Peter Coura, where he claims to have written the song!! : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kg_J1SZqao


What gives?!

R-J

Subject: RE: Help: Isla Cameron- What happened to?
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 23 Apr 18 - 06:27 PM

No details whatsoever on the fatal accident which killed her?

Subject: RE: Help: Isla Cameron- What happened to?
From: Sorcha
Date: 05 Jun 01 - 01:23 PM

(I don't know if I quite qualify as a "nice person", but here is the article--

Isla Cameron was one of a quartet of key figures in England's postwar folksong revival — and to give a measure of her importance, the other three were Ewan MacColl, A. L. Lloyd, and Alan Lomax. Her public singing career began quite by accident — she was a member of a theater workshop run by Joan Littlewood, who was then the wife of Ewan MacColl (1915-1989), when she and MacColl met backstage.

They began a long friendship and professional relationship, and MacColl helped secure Cameron's first recording, an unusual unaccompanied performance of "The Fair Flower of Northumberland," which was released as a 78-rpm disc by EMI in the early '50s. Cameron became one of the most popular woman folksingers of her day, and performed regularly in clubs throughout the British isles — she had a special affinity for songs from Dorset and Somerset, having grown up there.

Cameron had always set her sights on an acting career in addition to her singing, and by the late '50s she began appearing in movies as well as on stage — she played small roles in the drama Room At the Top (1958), The Innocents (1961), and Nightmare (1963), and a somewhat larger part in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). Cameron was to have played an on-screen role in John Schlesinger's Far From The Madding Crowd (1967), but her scenes were cut — it was no matter, however, for her most important contribution to that film was as music advisor to Schlesinger and composer Richard Rodney Bennett.

She chose the songs heard in the film, recruited the other folk artists who worked on the movie, including Fairport Convention alumnus Trevor Lucas and fiddler Dave Swarbrick, and was responsible for the recording of the folksongs on the soundtrack album, and did the singing for Julie Christie in the film. Cameron continued to record into the mid-1960's, expanding her repertory to include modern material by Bob Dylan, Kurt Weill, and Bertolt Brecht. Her pioneering work in the 1950's paved the way for such figures as Sandy Denny and Fairport Convention, and opened English folk music to a wider audience than it had been perceived as having.

Cameron seldom sang in public after the mid-'60s, however, as acting became more the focus of her life. She died in a tragic accident in her home during 1980. —
Bruce Eder

Subject: RE: Help: Isla Cameron- What happened to?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 05 Jun 01 - 12:39 PM

Isla Cameron was to Joan Baez as Jean Ritchie is to Marian Anderson.

Just my opinion.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Help: Isla Cameron- What happened to?
From: GUEST,jaze
Date: 05 Jun 01 - 12:04 PM

I've always wanted to hear her because in Lilian Roxon's Rock Encyclopedia she says there had to be prettier voices than Joan Baez in the early 60's and that Isla Cameron was one. Is this true?

Subject: RE: Help: Isla Cameron- What happened to?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 04 Jun 01 - 11:22 PM

Hi - You might check www.allmusic.com (click). The information on Isla Cameron there is quite interesting. Maybe some nice person with a real computer will copy-paste the article into this thread.
-Joe Offer on WEBTV-

Subject: Isla Cameron- What happened to?
From: GUEST,Dak Finch
Date: 04 Jun 01 - 09:53 PM

Does anyone have biographical information on Isla Cameron. I have found very little on the web past the sixties.