Anne Briggs - Classic Anne Briggs - The Complete Topic Recordings (1990)

A painfully shy person in front of an audience, Anne's singing was hypnotic and from all accounts had a profound influence on other UK folk notables such as June Tabor, Maddy Prior and Sandy Denny. Sandy's song The Pond and the Stream (track 7, Fotheringay album) was inspired by Anne Briggs:
Annie wanders on the land
She loves the freedom of the air....

Anne was shy of her own recordings. She "delayed" the release of her 1974 recordings with the impromptu group Ragged Robin for a mere 22 years. (Sing a Song For You - 1996).

"Classic Anne Briggs" is the Anne Briggs motherlode, encompassing her four original 1963-1971 EPs and sole LP recorded for the Topic label. This music is mainly a capella, though some tracks have sparse instrumental arrangements.

Tracks
1 The Recruited Collier
2 The Doffing Mistress
3 Lowlands Away
4 My Bonny Boy
5 Polly Vaughan
6 Rosemary Lane
7 Gathering Rushes
8 The Whirly Whorl
9 The Stonecutter Boy
10 Martinmas Time
11 Blackwaterside
12 The Snow It Melts the Soonest
13 Willie O' Winsbury
14 Go Your Way
15 Thorneymoor Woods
16 The Cuckoo
17 Reynardine
18 Young Tambling
19 Living by the Water
20 My Bonny Lad

Anne Briggs - Classic Anne Briggs
(320 kbps, cover art included)

Here is the link to a rare interview, in which Anne Briggs talks to Alexis Petridis about her 'lost classic' folk album - and why she has hardly sung a note for 34 years

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/aug/03/folk.shopping1