The folk voice who found herself at 76
She shaped British folk. At 76 she began to live as a woman: Louisa Jo Killen, who died in 2013.
On 9 August 2013, the folk singer Louisa Jo Killen died of cancer in Gateshead in the north of England at the age of 79. She was one of the most influential voices of the British folk revival and three years earlier, at 76, had begun to live openly as a woman.
She was born in 1934 in Gateshead on the Tyne, into a family where people sang at home: hymns, ballads, music hall numbers. In 1958 she was among the founders of one of the first folk clubs in Britain in Newcastle upon Tyne, and from 1961 she sang professionally. Under the name Louis Killen she became the defining interpreter of 19th-century songs of miners, sailors and factory workers. Experts still regard her recordings of "The Shoals of Herring" and "Pleasant and Delightful" as definitive versions. She was also a pioneer of the English concertina as an accompanying instrument. In 1966 she moved to the USA, became a close companion of Pete Seeger and from 1970 sang with the Clancy Brothers. More than 60 albums bear her name.
In 2010 she surprised her audience and her friends: from then on she performed in women's clothing and called herself Louisa Jo, and in 2012 she underwent gender-affirming surgery. She went on singing for almost two years, and by all accounts the vast majority of her fans and all of her friends stayed loyal to her. Her distinctive tenor voice did not change in the process. According to her former wife Margaret Osika, that was her only disappointment about the transition. She regretted nothing: neither her long life as a man nor her short one as a woman.
A few years before her death she had returned to her home town. The US folk magazine "Sing Out!" bade her farewell with a line from one of her favourite songs, the traditional farewell song "The Parting Glass": good night, and joy be with you all.