Tim Hart of Steeleye Span dead at 61
Mystic
Tim Hart, a founding member of the British folk-rock group Steeleye
Span, has died of lung cancer, his daughter said Wednesday.
Hart, 61, died Dec. 24 in La Gomera in Spain's Canary Islands, where
the Briton had lived since retiring from the music scene, Sally Hart
told The Associated Press.
He had returned to La Gomera three weeks ago after spending a year in
Britain receiving treatment, she said.
"In the last few days he became very weak, and had chest pains. His
body had suffered greatly from the cancer treatment," she said.
Hart was a star of the 1960s folk scene in Britain, first gaining fame
in a musical partnership with singer Maddy Prior in 1966. The duo
recorded two albums of "Folk Songs of Olde England," with the
versatile Hart backing their singing on guitar, mandolin, dulcimer,
banjo and violin.
In 1971, Hart and Prior joined with Ashley Hutchings, who had left the
Fairport Convention to form a new band. The new project, at Hart's
suggestion, was named Steeleye Span after a character in a
Lincolnshire folk song, "Horkstow Grange."
Hart left Steeleye Span in 1983, but appeared at a charity concert
with the group in 1995. Last year, he appeared with Prior at a BBC
concert in London.
Living on La Gomera, Hart developed his interest in photography. He
called the island "my inexhaustible subject" and did his own pictures
for his English language guide to the island, published in 2004.
"In what now feels like a previous life, I once spent 16 years as a
member of the English folk-rock band Steeleye Span," Hart wrote on his
Web site.
"As the Everly Brothers so rightly sang we did it for the stories we
could tell. But after a few years of traveling too fast around the
world I got myself a camera, a Pentax Spotmatic, in order to provide a
more substantial, and accurate, archive of memories," he wrote.
Hart is survived by his wife and a daughter and son from a previous
marriage. Funeral arrangements were not announced.
burtonlmb
wore weird costumes, like Peter Gabriel would do later in the early Genesis
days. An interesting band, but not really my thing.
RIP Mr. Hart.
"Mystic" <mys...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
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