June Tabor (born 31 December 1947 in Warwick, England) is an English folk singer known for her solo work and her earlier collaborations with Maddy Prior and with Oysterband. Early life June Tabor was born and grew up in Warwick, England. As a young woman of 18, she was inspired to sing by hearing Anne Briggs' EP The Hazards of Love in 1965. "I went and locked myself in the bathroom for a fortnight and drove my mother mad. I learned the songs on that EP note for note, twiddle for twiddle. That's how I started singing. If I hadn't heard her I'd have probably done something entirely different." Discussing in a 2008 interview how she developed her characteristic style, she said, "I have no musical education whatsoever...I just learned the songs and copied the phrasing by playing those records ad nauseam, trying out both [Anne Briggs and Belle Stewart] singers' styles. Then I tried putting the two together, and missing a few bits out – and that's approximately what I've been doing ever since. It's also why I don't do singing workshops, because that's about as much as I can tell anyone." Her earliest public performances were in the mid 1960s at the Heart of England Folk Club, in the Fox and Vivian pub in Leamington Spa. She attended St Hugh's College, Oxford University and appeared on University Challenge in 1968, as captain of the college team. She joined the Heritage Society at Oxford University and sang with a group called Mistral. After she performed at Sidmouth Folk Festival, she was booked in folk clubs and contributed to various recordings. One of her earliest was in 1972 on an anthology called Stagfolk Live. She is 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. In 1976 Tabor 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 Tabor in the recording studio for three albums before he moved to the United States in 1987. (Since his return, Simpson has been a guest artist