Fred Jordan (singer)

He learnt his songs from his parents, fellow farm workers and travelling families. His repertoire included songs which had been handed-down by the oral tradition from as far back as the era of Samuel Pepys and from the music halls of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He knew many versions of the famous Child Ballads, including The Outlandish Knight, Barbara Allen, Four Marys, Henry My Son, The Three Crows, The Watery Grave. He mainly sang his songs in pubs.

In 2009 Topic Records included in their 70-year anniversary boxed set Three Score and Ten "We Shepherds Are The Best of Men" from Songs of A Shropshire Worker as track twelve on the second CD.

Fred remained unchanged by his success and fame, continuing to live a simple life without radio, television or running water at his primitive cottage in Aston Munslow, near Craven Arms. He grew his own vegetables and was fond of his collection of horse brasses. He had his hair cut "once a month if it needed it or not" by a neighbour Mrs Hay. Jordan left his cottage in 2001 to live in a residential home in Ditton Priors due to poor health, where he died at the age of 80 on Tuesday 30 July 2002 following a heart attack.

Following the Second World War, Jordan was working for a blacksmith who heard that Alan Lomax was in the area, searching for songs in the way that Cecil Sharp had some 50 years earlier, and suggested that Lomax should listen to Jordan. Lomax made the first recording of his singing. In 1952 Peter Kennedy, working for the BBC on secondment from the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS) made further recordings of Jordan on a farm at Diddlebury.

Fred Jordan (5 January 1922 – 30 July 2002) was a farm worker from Ludlow, Shropshire, and is noted as one of the great musically untutored traditional English singers. He was first recorded in the 1940s by folk music researcher Alan Lomax and, over subsequent decades endeared himself to the English folk-song revival movement. Jordan was awarded the English Folk Dance and Song Society's highest honour, the Gold Badge, "for distinguished and unique contributions to the folk performing arts" in 1995.

Jordan was born in Ludlow, the youngest of 5 children. His date of birth has been given in various sources as 16 October 1922 but this is an error arising from Peter Kennedy's inaccurate date of birth published in an old EFDSS magazine and repeated also on Fred's first LP sleeve. At the age of 6 he won a £1 prize for his singing of "The Gypsy's Warning". At the age of 14 he left school to work as a farm labourer for three shillings (£0.15) per week.