![\"Louisa](\"https:\/\/thejovialcrew.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/louisa-jo-killen.jpg\")
<\/a>Louisa Jo Killen 10 January 1934 \u2013 9 August 2013<\/p><\/div>\n
One the greatest influences of our genre of music has just passed of lung cancer.<\/p>\n
Louis Killen – Louisa Jo Killen<\/strong> was a tremendous<\/em> singer and concertina player and the loss to all of us is great beyond sufficient words.<\/p>\n Louisa was born and raised in Gateshead, Tyneside, England, to a family of lovers of music, and his influences included traditional ballads and work songs, church hymns and whatever could be had down at the music hall, classical as well. She was a founding member of several music clubs and circles, and a tight friend of the Watersons. She truly built\u00a0her mark in the 60s, and while the folk music scene dwindled to a whisper late in the 70s, Louisa remained a force to be reckoned with, particularly in the Maritime music scene the world over.\u00a0 In the mid 1960s she moved to the US, and became a partner in the Clancy Brothers for a time.\u00a0 Around the start of this century, she returned home to Gateshead. A few years back, Louisa came out that though all her life a man, she truly was a woman and she embraced that, as we all did her throughout her life.<\/p>\n Heather Wood, another well known performer in our genre, has put up a wonderful obituary\/celebration <\/a>page for Louisa, which I hope you will also visit. To borrow her words: \u201cOne cannot overstate the influence of Lou\u2019s singing on a whole generation of revival singers of English traditional folk songs. Her playing of the English concertina (she pioneered it as an accompanying instrument) was a prime example of how it should be done \u2013 never overpowering the song\u2026 As well as being a terrific singer, she had a wealth of knowledge about the songs and the singers from whom they came, which she willingly shared with audiences and admirers. She would also tell some tales from the Pitman\u2019s Bible (stories told in Pitmatic, the idiom of the Tyneside pits) which were hilarious.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n My own experience with Louisa was in short episodes but left indelible marks on me\u2026 As a child, my step-father knew her and owned a copy of her first album \u201cBallads & Broadsides\u201d (1965) which I still own and is my greatest<\/i> influence for my playing of the English concertina.<\/p>\n