Peter Bellamy

Kipling's Barrack Room Ballads were published in 1892, and Bellamy started setting them to music in 1973.

He was struck by people's misconceptions about Kipling, who many perceived as (in Bellamy's words) "one of the reactionary old guard, and therefore obviously a writer of no merit whatsoever".

Peter Franklyn Bellamy (8 September 1944 – 24 September 1991) was an English folk singer.

He was a founding member of The Young Tradition and also had a long solo career, recording numerous albums and touring folk clubs and concert halls.

He is noted for his ballad-opera The Transports, and has been acknowledged as a major influence by performers of later generations including Damien Barber, Oli Steadman, and Jon Boden.

Peter Bellamy was born in Bournemouth, England, and spent his formative years in North Norfolk, living in the village of Warham and attending Fakenham Grammar School in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

His father, Richard Reynell Bellamy, worked as a farm bailiff at that time.

Peter Bellamy studied at Norwich School of Art, and later at Maidstone College of Art, and decades later still retained something of the flamboyant art student image, being described as looking like a latter-day Andy Warhol, with blond hair often worn in a ponytail and tied back with a ribbon, a scarlet jacket and florally patterned trousers which he made himself from furnishing fabric.

Encouraged by his friend Anne Briggs he dropped out of college in 1965 to become a member of "The Young Tradition" with Royston Wood and Heather Wood.

The trio recorded mainly traditional songs in close harmony and mostly without accompaniment.

The Young Tradition projected their voices powerfully, clearly influenced by The Watersons, the Copper Family and Ewan MacColl.

They recorded three albums together plus a collaboration with Shirley Collins called The Holly Bears The Crown.

Peter Bellamy's first solo album Mainly Norfolk (1968) indicated his desire to promote the folk music of his part of England.

It drew heavily on the repertoire of Harry Cox, still alive at that time, who was the most famous traditional singer of Norfolk songs.

On the album, Bellamy sang all songs unaccompanied.

Beginning on his second album, Fair England's Shore (1968), he began to accompany himself on the Anglo concertina.

Still later, he occasionally recorded with guitar.

Although recorded in 1969, this was not released in full until the 90s.

The Young Tradition's final concert was at Cecil Sharp House in October 1969, after which they split up, with Bellamy wanting to concentrate on traditional English music, whilst the other members had developed interests in mediaeval music.

In 1971, Bellamy recorded a collaboration with Louis Killen: "Won't You Go My Way?".

Having mastered the art of putting new words to a traditional song and his own words to a traditional tune, he wrote a ballad-opera, The Transports, in 1973, but it took him 4 years to find a company willing to produce it.

It wasn't until Bellamy's eighth album in 1975 that he recorded any of his own compositions.

In the same year he recorded a collection of Rudyard Kipling's Barrack Room Ballads (see below).

It then became the folk record of the year for 1977 vindicating his long wait and many efforts to get it released.

Many prominent names in the folk scene collaborated on the project, including Dolly Collins (a composer, the sister of Shirley Collins), Martin Carthy, Mike Waterson, Norma Waterson, June Tabor, Nic Jones, A.L. Lloyd, Cyril Tawney and Dave Swarbrick.

It told the true story of the first transport ship to land in Australia and the first couple, Henry and Susannah Cable (or Kabel), to marry on Australian soil, based on a story Peter found in the local newspaper in Norfolk and followed by his research into the details at the city museum and library.

Descendants of the Kabel family still live in Sydney and became friends of Peter.

In 1986 Sid Kipper and others devised a ballad opera called Crab Wars.

It was partly a parody of The Transports, but Bellamy took it in good humour and even sang the role of narrator.

Another of Bellamy's ambitious projects, The Maritime Suite, was broadcast on BBC Radio 2 but never issued on record.

The economics of folk singing meant that Bellamy sold his own limited edition cassettes at folk clubs, and many performances exist only as pirated tapes.

It is said that Celtic Records have a large cache of quality recordings that are unlikely to be issued.

Continuing his early talents with the visual arts, Bellamy generally designed his own album jackets and also drew cartoons for Fred Woods's Folk Review magazine (for which he also showed considerable talent and fluency as a writer of reviews and features).

He continued to exhibit and sell his paintings throughout his life.

Sydney Opera House once hosted a concert by him and he toured in the USA.

Although at folk clubs, and in private, he often accompanied blues on bottleneck guitar, these performances rarely appeared on his albums: an exception is an attenuated version of Robert Johnson's "Stones in My Passway", on the Young Tradition's Galleries.

A hiss redolent of an old 78 record was added, but this joke misfired: a Transatlantic Records press officer later told interviewer Michael Grosvenor Myer that quite a few copies were returned as 'faulty' as a result!

In 2004 it was re-released together with a new production involving Simon Nicol and Fairport Convention.

In 2009 Topic Records included in their 70-year anniversary boxed set Three Score and Ten "When I Die" from Both Sides Then as track nine of the second CD.

Bellamy started his exploration of Kipling as a source for songs, not with the Barrack Room Ballads but with the songs from Kipling's Children's books, (Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies) from which he produced two albums, Oak Ash and Thorn and Merlyn's Isle of Gramarye.