ABSTRACT
Before the second folk song revival of the 1950s, there were very few singers who specialised in performing folk songs. From 1930 until her untimely death in a motoring accident in 1955, Eve Maxwell-Lyte made a successful career performing folk songs on the concert platform, on the radio, and in early television broadcasts. Her repertoire was taken from the traditions of many countries, though British folk songs were to the fore. Her style of performance was that of the diseuse, partly acting the songs as she sang them. This was as controversial at the time as it would be today; yet, she was a very successful and popular performer. Her obituary in the Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society described her ‘clear and lovely voice, a gift for mime, and charm of looks and personality which enchanted her audiences’. The obituary also mentions the ‘lively and vivid introductions with which she prefaced her songs’. She appeared in concert several times at Cecil Sharp House, where her performances were based on collaboration with other musicians such as Doreen Senior on songs from Nova Scotia, and Rodney Gallop on the songs of Portugal and the Basque Country.
Before the second folk song revival of the 1950s, there were very few professional singers who specialised in folk song. In the 1930s and 1940s, Clive Carey, Harry Plunket-Greene, Steuart Wilson, and others sang arrangements of traditional songs as part of a repertoire of mostly classical music. A few others, like Albert Richardson, sang predominantly humorous songs, from or based on the tradition, to audiences who preferred rather lighter fare.
