Johnny Collins: January 28th 2005
From Johnny’s Website ...
Johnny Collins, a native of the county of Norfolk but now based in London, England, is a well travelled performer specialising in the singing of shanties, sea songs and maritime ballads.
An internationally acclaimed performer and recording artist, Johnny has organised Folk clubs and topped the bill in concerts around the world since the mid-fifties: his vigorous style and his supreme ability to persuade audiences to join in choruses is unrivalled.
Johnny is a familiar and welcome figure at many of the world's foremost maritime venues and festivals, and has guested in the U.S.A. at Maine Maritime Museum, Kendall Whaling Museum and Newport News Maritime Museum. He has also delighted audiences with several concert appearances at Mystic Seaport (U.S.A.) and was resident shantyman at Expo '88 in Brisbane, Australia.
1983 was a highpoint in his singing career when, in partnership with Jim Mageean, he was a winner of the Intervision Song Contest in Rostock, GDR, with a medley of English sea shanties. In 1987, Johnny was invited by the government of the GDR to appear at the Berlin Shanty Festival which was organised to celebrate 750 years of that city.
Regular forays into Europe continue to be part of Johnny's yearly itinerary. He has been a main guest at the annual Liereliet at the Strontrace in Workum, Netherlands for the past 21 years. He also sings regularly in Belgium, Brittany, Germany, Holland, Poland and France.
Nearer home, he has been acclaimed as a shanty supremo at many of the Cutty Sark Tall Ships Race venues, including Southampton, Liverpool and Newcastle upon Tyne, and other U.K. maritime festivals at Hull, Lancaster, Bristol, Dundee, Maldon, Portsmouth, Gosport, Greenwich and Chatham.
Johnny Collins’s website can be found at www.johnnycollins.net