Heather Wood, who has died aged 79, was the last surviving member of the Young Tradition, heroes of the 1960s folk scene in the UK and North America with their rousing three-part unaccompanied harmonies, clothes that made them look like rock stars and songs that ranged from sea shanties to a haunting treatment of the Lyke Wake Dirge.
The Young Tradition was the name of one of many London folk clubs in the mid-60s, and it was held in a pub then known as the Scots Hoose, near Cambridge Circus in the West End. Peter Bellamy and Royston Wood were two regular singers there, and Heather “just joined in from the audience” in 1965. The three of them found that “people would pay us to sing”, and were managed for a while by Bruce Dunnet, who ran the club and suggested they took its name. Later they became regulars at the Les Cousins club in nearby Greek Street, where they sang alongside Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, who lived above them in Somali Road, West Hampstead.
Signed to Transatlantic, in 1966 they released their first album, The Young Tradition, which included the Lyke Wake Dirge, the story of a departed soul making a hazardous journey to purgatory, as well as their gutsy treatment of the Tyneside colliers’ song Byker Hill. It immediately established their reputation.
Unlike the other great young unaccompanied vocal group of the era, the Watersons, the Young Tradition were not from the same family and were three very different individuals with different styles who “made up our own harmonies”. Bellamy loved the blues, Royston had roots in classical music, while Heather said she was influenced by “the Everly Brothers and years of school and church choirs”. What they had in common was their love of folk music, and a commitment to meeting and learning from veteran traditional singers such as Harry Cox or the Copper family.
Their second album, So Cheerfully Round, was released in 1967, the same year they were invited to the Newport folk festival in the US, where Heather remembered them singing informally with Janis Joplin. In the same year they recorded an EP of sea shanties, Chicken on a Raft, which was released in 1968, while their final studio album, Galleries, which came out in 1969, included guest appearances from David Munrow’s Early Music Consort of London, Dave Swarbrick and Dolly Collins.
The Young Tradition broke up in 1969, but Heather kept working with Royston. In 1977, after touring the US together, they released No Relation – a reminder that they were indeed not related.
Heather had always liked the US, and in 1977 she moved permanently to New York, obtaining US citizenship in 2003. She continued singing, both as a soloist and in groups including Crossover, with Andy Wallace, from 1984 to 1986, and Poor Old Horse, with Tom Gibney and David Jones, from 1992 to 2005. She was also involved with shanty groups, including New York Packet, and was treasurer and programme chair of the Folk Music Society of New York.
Born in Attercliffe, Sheffield, she was brought up by her mother, Joy, a children’s nurse, on the south coast of England after she had left Heather’s father when she was four. Later she attended Parkstone grammar school in Dorset before spending a year at University College London, reading philosophy and economics. Dropping out of her studies, she spent a short period in the Women’s Royal Army Corps, before busking around the streets of London, where she discovered that she could get into folk clubs for free if she sang a song or two. Soon thereafter she became a folk scene celebrity.
Aside from her musical activities in later life, Heather also wrote a book, 101 Marvelous Money-Making Ideas for Kids, which was published in 1995, compiled the Grass Roots International Folk Resource Directory, which she co-edited with her friend, the lawyer Leslie Berman, and acted as a bookkeeper for various law firms.
In 2013 a live Young Tradition album, Oberlin 1968, was released. Based around a 1968 concert at an Ohio college that had been recorded without the group’s knowledge, it proved that they could still sound fresh and exciting, even 45 years on.
Despite living in the US, Heather kept in touch with the UK folk scene, and returned this year to visit the ‘Obby ‘Oss festival in Padstow, Cornwall as a spectator.
She had a brief marriage in the mid-70s to the writer Patrick Carroll.
• Arielle Heather Wood, singer, born 31 March 1945; died 15 July 2024
