Tabor's earliest public performances were at the Heart of England Folk Club (at the Fox and Vivian pub) in Leamington Spa in the mid 1960s. In the late 1960s an appearance at the Sidmouth Folk Festival led to folk club bookings and she contributed to various records. One of her earliest recordings was in 1972 on an anthology called Stagfolk Live. She also featured on Rosie Hardman's Firebird (1972) and The First Folk Review Record (1974). At the time she was singing purely traditional unaccompanied material but in 1976 she collaborated with Maddy Prior on the Silly Sisters album and tour, with a full band that included Nic Jones. It provided the launching pad that same year (1976) for her first album in her own right, Airs and Graces. She later joined again with Prior, this time using the name Silly Sisters for their duo. Starting in 1977 Martin Simpson joined her in the recording studio for three albums before he moved to America in 1987. (Simpson has returned from America to be a guest guitarist on albums in the 2000s.) After his departure, she started working closely with pianist Huw Warren.
In 1990, Tabor recorded an album with the folk-rock band OysterBand entitled Freedom and Rain. She went on tour with OysterBand, and the Rykodisc label published a limited-run promotional live album the following year. Many of her current fans first discovered her through this tour and album with the OysterBand. In 1992 Elvis Costello wrote "All This Useless Beauty" specifically for Tabor, and she recorded it on Angel Tiger.
Since then her solo albums have included:
A Quiet Eye (1999)
Rosa Mundi (2001)
An Echo of Hooves (2003)
At the Wood's Heart (2005)
Apples (2007)
Ashore (2011)
Ragged Kingdom is a 2011 album by June Tabor & Oysterband.
Since 2006, Tabor has also been working with Huw Warren and Iain Ballamy as Quercus.
Website: www.junetabor.co.uk
Shallow Brown
June Tabor Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Shallow oh shallow brown
Bound away to leave you
Shallow oh shallow brown
Master's going to sell me
Sell me to a Yankee
Great big Yankee dollar
Fare thee well Juliana
Fare thee well Juliana
Fare thee well Juliana
Fare thee well Juliana
The song "Shallow Brown" by June Tabor is a soulful lamentation of a slave who is being sold to a “Yankee” master by his current master, bidding farewell to his beloved Juliana. As the slave prepares to leave, he sings the chorus, “Bound away to leave you, Shallow oh shallow brown” twice, creating an air of melancholy and longing, echoing the feelings of all slaves who were forced to leave their loved ones behind. The lyrics of the song paint a picture of the harsh realities faced by slaves during the 19th century, their heart-wrenching journey from their homeland to a life of bondage in a foreign land.
The second verse of the song further reinforces the cruel reality where the master is selling the slave, who is presented as nothing more than merchandise for a “great big Yankee dollar”. The farewell to Juliana in the third and final verse establishes an emotional connection between the persona and his lover.
Overall, "Shallow Brown" expresses the deep pain, grief and sorrow of slave life and has become recognised as a traditional song.
Line by Line Meaning
Bound away to leave you
Departing to part ways with you
Shallow oh shallow brown
Referring to a slave, who will now be left behind
Master's going to sell me
The slave master plans to sell the slave
Sell me to a Yankee
To sell the slave to someone from the north (Yankee refers to Northerners in US Civil War history)
Sell me for a dollar
The slave's worth is only a dollar to the master
Great big Yankee dollar
The Yankee buyer has a lot of money to buy the slave with
Fare thee well Juliana
Saying goodbye to someone named Juliana
Fare thee well Juliana
Repeating the farewell to Juliana
Contributed by Brody O. Suggest a correction in the comments below.