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I've found opinion to be very divided on the subject of Shirley and Dolly Collins. I could listen to both all day long, but others have compared their singing voices to the expiring mewls of drowning kittens. It's a strange thing in a folk club when someone gets up and sings something trad in the style of Kathleen Ferrier (this does happen occasionally, believe it or not; the people who go to folk clubs tend to be old enough to have grown up listening to Ferrier, for one thing). Tastes shift: authenticity nowadays sounds like Norma Waterson, who is indeed a tremendous singer but also one with her own mannerisms and "date". I think that authenticity, or some subjective sense of it, is partly the issue: sticking with folk for the moment, I get irritated listening to June Tabor because she sounds sort of /fake/ to me, and I think the irritation stems from my being aware of the mannerisms rather than accepting them as part of the grain of the music. If June Tabor is what you think folk singing sounds like, then you'll enjoy June Tabor a lot more than I find I can; but because I grew up listening to the Watersons and the Young Tradition, I think folk singing sounds like that. Sid Kipper is very good at drawing the mannerisms out of the "grain of the music", and making you hear them as mannerisms again... Dominic