As a rural East Sussex teen, Shirley Collins was enraptured by the sound of traditional English folk music. Moving to London at the dawn of the genre's '50s revival, Collins fell in with performers like Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger and folk-song collector Alan Lomax, with whom she steeped herself in both British and American ballads. Although her distinctively fluty voice became a signature sound of English folk traditionalism, she was by no means hidebound. Her collaborations with her multi-instrumentalist sister Dolly Collins brought sounds from around the globe into the genre.