Heather Wooden, who has died aged 79, was the final surviving member of the Younger Custom, heroes of the Sixties people scene within the UK and North America with their rousing three-part unaccompanied harmonies, garments that made them appear like rock stars and songs that ranged from sea shanties to a haunting remedy of the Lyke Wake Dirge.
The Younger Custom was the identify of one among many London people golf equipment within the mid-60s, and it was held in a pub then referred to as the Scots Hoose, close to Cambridge Circus within the West Finish. Peter Bellamy and Royston Wooden have been two common singers there, and Heather “simply joined in from the viewers” in 1965. The three of them discovered that “individuals would pay us to sing”, and have been managed for some time by Bruce Dunnet, who ran the membership and urged they took its identify. Later they grew to become regulars on the Les Cousins membership in close by Greek Road, the place they sang alongside Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, who lived above them in Somali Highway, West Hampstead.
Signed to Transatlantic, in 1966 they launched their first album, The Younger Custom, which included the Lyke Wake Dirge, the story of a departed soul making a hazardous journey to purgatory, in addition to their gutsy remedy of the Tyneside colliers’ music Byker Hill. It instantly established their fame.
In contrast to the opposite nice younger unaccompanied vocal group of the period, the Watersons, the Younger Custom weren’t from the identical household and have been three very totally different people with totally different types who “made up our personal harmonies”. Bellamy beloved the blues, Royston had roots in classical music, whereas Heather stated she was influenced by “the Everly Brothers and years of faculty and church choirs”. What that they had in widespread was their love of folks music, and a dedication to assembly and studying from veteran conventional singers akin to Harry Cox or the Copper household.
Their second album, So Cheerfully Spherical, was launched in 1967, the identical yr they have been invited to the Newport people pageant within the US, the place Heather remembered them singing informally with Janis Joplin. In the identical yr they recorded an EP of sea shanties, Rooster on a Raft, which was launched in 1968, whereas their closing studio album, Galleries, which got here out in 1969, included visitor appearances from David Munrow’s Early Music Consort of London, Dave Swarbrick and Dolly Collins.
The Younger Custom broke up in 1969, however Heather saved working with Royston. In 1977, after touring the US collectively, they launched No Relation – a reminder that they have been certainly not associated.
Heather had at all times preferred the US, and in 1977 she moved completely to New York, acquiring US citizenship in 2003. She continued singing, each as a soloist and in teams together with Crossover, with Andy Wallace, from 1984 to 1986, and Poor Previous Horse, with Tom Gibney and David Jones, from 1992 to 2005. She was additionally concerned with shanty teams, together with New York Packet, and was treasurer and programme chair of the Folks Music Society of New York.
Born in Attercliffe, Sheffield, she was introduced up by her mom, Pleasure, a youngsters’s nurse, on the south coast of England after she had left Heather’s father when she was 4. Later she attended Parkstone grammar faculty in Dorset earlier than spending a yr at College School London, studying philosophy and economics. Dropping out of her research, she spent a brief interval within the Ladies’s Royal Military Corps, earlier than busking across the streets of London, the place she found that she may get into people golf equipment free of charge if she sang a music or two. Quickly thereafter she grew to become a people scene movie star.
Other than her musical actions in later life, Heather additionally wrote a guide, 101 Marvelous Cash-Making Concepts for Youngsters, which was revealed in 1995, compiled the Grass Roots Worldwide Folks Useful resource Listing, which she co-edited together with her good friend, the lawyer Leslie Berman, and acted as a bookkeeper for numerous legislation companies.
In 2013 a stay Younger Custom album, Oberlin 1968, was launched. Based mostly round a 1968 live performance at an Ohio faculty that had been recorded with out the group’s information, it proved that they might nonetheless sound recent and thrilling, even 45 years on.
Regardless of dwelling within the US, Heather saved in contact with the UK people scene, and returned this yr to go to the ‘Obby ‘Oss pageant in Padstow, Cornwall as a spectator.
She had a short marriage within the mid-70s to the author Patrick Carroll.
