Cyril Francis Tawney, folk revival singer and songwriter, naval historian and broadcaster: born Gosport, Hampshire 12 October 1930, married 1966 Rosemary Radmore; died Wonford, Devon 21 April 2005.

It was Cyril Tawney's proud, unchallenged claim that he sang folksongs for a living longer than anyone else in Britain. When, at the end of the 1950s, Britain experienced its first flowering of what might honestly be called English chanson, where chanson conveys a sense of literate, intelligent song, the larger-than-life Tawney was at the forefront.

He sprinkled his songs with enduring images. In "The Ballad of Sammy's Bar" (1958), an encounter set in Malta, the sailor asks Marina how sand got in her hair, to be told that he is past history: the love-rival is "a better man by far / As he drives a Yankee car". "Sally Free and Easy" (1958) is strewn with lines like, "Think I'll wait to sunset / See the Ensign down."

Tawney's songs entered the folk bloodstream, being covered over the years by the trio of Mary Black, Emmylou Harris and Dolores Keane (who sang his "The Grey Funnel Line" - slang for the Royal Navy), Bob Dylan, Davy Graham, Dorris Henderson, Carolyn Hester, Nic Jones, the Silly Sisters (Maddy Prior and June Tabor), Martin Simpson, Trees, the Watersons, the Yetties and the Young Tradition.

Tawney was born into a naval family in Gosport, Hampshire, in 1930. He joined the Navy at 16 and spent 12 years in the service working as a naval artificer (electrician), in naval slang a "tiffy", hence Tawney's song drolly winkled out of a Shakespearian quote, "A Lean and Unwashed Tiffy". He made his radio début as a folk singer on the Home Service's Sing Christmas and the Turn of the Year on Christmas Day 1957 - a broadcast that inspired the Radio 4 Archive Hour that I presented on Christmas Day 2004, by which time Tawney was too ill to participate, a pity since he helped my essay for its 2000 CD release enormously.

The original programme's anchor-man, the US musicologist and folk-song collector Alan Lomax, announced him, live on air, as "Petty Officer Tawney of HMS Murray". Earlier Home Service and Third Programme broadcasts by Lomax and Sing Christmas's Plymouth presenter Peter Kennedy had awakened Tawney's musical consciousness, weaning him off Frank Crumit, Elton Hayes, Burl Ives and Jimmie Rodgers onto "authentic folk music".

He bought himself out of the Navy in May 1959 to become a full-time, professional folk singer. In the days before the folk-club explosion, he made his living by broadcasting. Basing himself in London or Bristol would have been a wiser radio and television career move; but he picked Plymouth, in the process becoming a prime mover in the revival of interest in West Country folk culture. By the early 1960s he was recording, contributing to Rocket Along and A Pinch of Salt (both 1960). In October 1961, he secured his first solo folk club date, followed by his first recording under his name alone, Baby Lie Easy (1963).

As a former submariner, he had a keen appreciation of naval life, but he turned the particular into the universal in many of his songs. They entered song collections such as Songs for the Sixties (1961), The Oxford Book of English Traditional Verse (1983) and The Oxford Book of Sea Songs (1986). Tawney became a leading authority on maritime song, singing on the important anthology Farewell Nancy (1964); acting as consultant to "provide authentic song material" for the television series Moonfleet; and writing Grey Funnel Lines: traditional song & verse of the Royal Navy 1900-1970 (1987).

He also specialised in West Country folk song - witness his album The Outlandish Knight (1969) - and the Sabine Baring-Gould collections. Interviewed by the chronicler of folk-music history Eric Winter in 1972, Tawney said:

A folk singer must have a regional identity, be representative of the ordinary people of a certain area, be able to express their character and outlook on life not only in the songs, but also in the way he sings them. Although I was born in Hampshire, I had already put down roots in the Devon and Cornwall area through my naval service, so I settled in Plymouth and got on with the business of learning as much as I could about West Country songs.

After ping-ponging between record labels, Tawney found relative stability with Argo. It released four albums and placed tracks on a handful of its budget compilations. From 1988 onwards, Tawney put out his own material on his own label, Neptune Tapes, most on nautical themes. An exception was Down the Hatch (1994), themed mainly on beery matters - including John Mitchell's "A Pint of Contraception", Richard Thompson's "Down Where the Drunkards Roll" and the traditional "Sucking Cider from a Straw". Many of his songs are riddled with innocent and not-so-innocent measures poured out from barroom and pub encounters. In "Monday Morning" he sang,

If only birds would booze
If only the sun was a party giver
If I could just lend someone else me liver
On a Monday morning.

He once told me that too many folk performers had leapt at the chance to join "big glam 'lectric groups". "It really is a bit niggling," he said:

You think, "Maybe I should have gone with one of these groups for six months and got out of it. My name would have been made afterwards." People are quite indiscriminate about it, as if he's been with a group so he must be good.

One group he did join was the one the singer and composer Peter Bellamy put together for his "ballad-opera" The Transports (1977, reissued 2004). Bellamy created The Shantyman in his likeness. Ironically Tawney had worked on a ballad-opera as early as 1969.

The Scots singer Ray Fisher once remarked to me, "Cyril was something of an enigma." She was right. He never conformed to folk stereotypes of any sort, never touted his politics, just sang and made history come alive.

Ken Hunt

Although he championed the traditional folk songs of the west country and the sea, Cyril Tawney, who has died, aged 74, from a bacterial infection, also established a reputation as the writer of some of the best-loved songs of the folk revival. One of them, Sally Free And Easy, achieved fame far beyond the folk clubs, and was recorded by others, including Bob Dylan. Born into a naval family in Gosport, Hampshire, Cyril joined the Royal Navy at 16, serving on submarines for 13 years. He started singing and writing songs before he became aware of folk song: Five Foot Flirt, for example, was written in 1950, and, although he sang it in concerts for more than 50 years, its popularity owed much to a cover version by the Yetties.

Inspired by the radio series As I Roved Out, Cyril visited the English Folk Dance and Song Society's London headquarters at Cecil Sharp House, Camden Town, in 1957, where he met the radio producer Charles Parker. He made his radio debut on Christmas Day 1957, in the Alan Lomax programme Sing Christmas, and his television debut the following Easter. Before long, he had a weekly television spot, as well as his own networked programme Watch Aboard, while still serving in the navy. Leaving the services gave Cyril the freedom to extend his repertoire and develop his broadcasting career to include radio plays, children's programmes and documentaries, and later a weekly folk record request programme, Folkspin. By now based in Plymouth, he researched the songs of Devon and Cornwall collected by the vicar of Lew Trenchard, the Rev Sabine Baring-Gould.

In 1961, Cyril was one of the folk singers who took part in Arnold Wesker's Centre 42 project, aimed at taking the arts to a wider audience. Folk club engagements followed, and Cyril established his own folk club in Plymouth, where he met his future wife, Rosemary. From 1958, he researched 20th-century naval songs, which resulted in his book Grey Funnel Lines (1987).

Cyril's naval experiences also inspired his songwriting. Chicken On A Raft (navy slang for fried egg on fried bread) was written in the shanty call and response style, while The Oggie Man contrasted the disappearance of the oggie, or Cornish pasty, seller at Devonport docks with a sailor's lost love. His song Grey Funnel Line was heard in John Duigan's film Sirens (1994).

Like many of Cyril's songs, the best known, Sally Free And Easy, was written in the late 1950s. Walking through a deserted dockyard one morning, Cyril was reminded of the opening sequence of the film On The Town, and also of WH Auden's Roman Wall Blues. By the time he reached his ship, he had composed the song in his head. Starting with Carolyn Hester in 1963, Dorris Henderson and John Renbourn, Davy Graham, Pentangle, Marianne Faithful and Dylan all recorded the song.

Cyril's repertoire may have come largely from the English tradition, but a major stylistic influence was the American Burl Ives, whose gentle, deceptively simple style he emulated, including his soft, strumming guitar accompaniment.

Cyril's recording career started with Rocket Along (1960) and continued with The Outlandish Knight, a selection of west country versions of folk ballads, for Polydor. Surprisingly, his only recording for the prestigious Topic label was on the compilation album of sea songs and shanties, Farewell Nancy (1964), but from 1969 several albums were released on the Argo label. Much later, he established his own recording label, Neptune.

In 1972, Cyril went to Lancaster University to study sociology. Upon graduation, he moved to Leeds, and was awarded a master's degree from the Institute of Dialect and Folklife Studies with a dissertation on dialect in folk song.

He and Rosemary, who survives him, moved to Exeter in 2000. His last concert was at Lancaster maritime festival at Easter 2004.

Cyril Tawney, folk singer, born October 12 1930; died April 21 2005

Derek Schofield

A SUBMARINER, scholar, singer and TV presenter, Cyril Tawney also wrote some of the finest songs in the the British folk-music revival. His songs — largely inspired by his own experiences at sea — have become such an integral part of the fabric of the folk scene, that many people assume they are traditional.

Perhaps his most famous song, Sally Free and Easy, was written as an English blues in 15 minutes one Sunday morning in 1958 as he wandered around a deserted dockyard in Portsmouth while serving in HMS Murray. It was recorded by many famous names, including Bob Dylan, Marianne Faithfull and Alex Campbell. Many more classic Tawney songs, like Sammy’s Bar, Chicken on a Raft, Grey Funnel Line, On a Monday Morning and In the Sidings continue to enjoy popular currency.

Tawney has always been closely associated with the West Country but he was actually born in Gosport, Hampshire, in 1930. He was raised in a naval family and joined the Navy at 16. He served in submarines for 13 years, mainly working as an engineering artificer. His sea adventures inspired his writing, and he soon established his reputation as an entertainments organiser. “I did go to sea for a living but I’m no sea freak,” he once said. “Don’t ask me about knots and splices or a ship’s rigging.”

He wrote his first real song, the jokey Five Foot Flirt, as a response to the American Red Ingle’s song Cigareets & Whiskey in 1950 — it was later covered with some success by the Dorset folk group The Yetties. He became interested in the burgeoning folk revival after a visit to Cecil Sharp House, the London headquarters of the English Folk Dance and Song Society.

He made his debut on a live BBC Home Service show Sing Christmas and the Turn of the Year, presented by the US collector Alan Lomax, who introduced Cyril as “Petty Officer Tawney” alongside such folk luminaries as Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger and Shirley Collins, as well as skiffle groups and calypso singers. In 1957, while still serving in the Navy, he had his own TV show, Watch Aboard, and Princess Margaret became a convert after seeing him perform his song Cheering the Queen at an EFDSS Diamond Jubilee Concert.

By this time he had already written many of the songs that were to establish his fame as one of his generation’s greatest folk songwriters. He bought himself out of the Navy to pursue a professional singing career in 1959.

Sammy’s Bar was based on a tiny drinking hole at Pietà Creek, Malta, where he performed regularly. His shanty Chicken on a Raft, Navy slang for a fry-up, became a staple of the folk club scene after a memorably boisterous cover version by the group Young Tradition; and Grey Funnel Line, his moving song about leaving the Navy, took on a life of its own with cover versions by the Silly Sisters (Maddy Prior and June Tabor) and Emmylou Harris, Dolores Keane and Mary Black, and was even featured in the film Sirens (1994). For while his songs mainly spoke about life at sea they carried a human resonance that touched people deeply.

Settling in Penzance, he involved himself in the new folk movement, researching the West Country songs collected by the Rev Sabine Baring-Gould, continuing his broadcasting career (he had a Saturday-morning radio show called Folkspin) and running his own folk club. It was there he met Rosemary, whom he married in 1966. He mixed traditional songs with his own material, and thanks to his gentle unaffected style, easy stage presence and simple acoustic guitar accompaniments, he became one of the scene’s main attractions.

He was something of a folk purist and in some ways suffered for it, sticking resolutely to his soft, homely, solo approach when others started to expand their horizons with involved arrangements, embracing the influence of rock and jazz.

Tawney had little time for such modernist tendencies, wincing at the sound of the electric band Steeleye Span hitting the charts with a souped-up version of one of the traditional songs he used to sing, All Around My Hat. But while his style came to be considered old-fashioned by some, the quality of his songs and his knowledge of West Country folklore and matters nautical were never questioned, and he continued to be a mainstay of the folk clubs with an long catalogue of recordings to his name.

In 1972 he switched paths to study sociology at Lancaster University and then Leeds University, where he was awarded an MA for a study of dialect in folk song. Throughout his studies he continued to perform — he had a 45-year singing career and he was proud of his claim to be Britain’s longest-serving professional folk singer.

He and Rosemary returned to the West Country — to Exeter — in 2000, but he continued to write and perform, exhibiting the humour that was also an integral part of the man and his music. There was certainly a strong comical element to his last recorded song, the seven-minute The Lone Shepherd, which appeared on the “alternative” Christmas album Bah! Humbug (2002).

Tawney was one of the mainstays at the Lancaster Maritime Festival held every Easter, and it was there that he made his final public appearance in 2004. By then he was suffering badly the effects of the rare bone infection which caused the nine-month stay in hospital that preceded his death, but he still gave an exquisite performance. He sang all his most popular songs from The Oggie Man to Sammy’s Bar, interspersing the songs with entertaining anecdotes and reminiscences of his life at sea.

Cyril Tawney, folk singer and songwriter, was born on October 12, 1930. He died on April 21, 2005, aged 74.

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