CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · General Reference

Silly Sisters

English folk music duo

Cross-disciplinary reference desk with index cards, atlas, dictionary and catalogue
General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 26, 2024
Entity authorityQ7515436 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Silly Sisters is an English folk music duo, formed in 1976 by Maddy Prior and June Tabor. Both of their albums were well-received by reviewers.

History

Prior and Tabor met at Oxford in the 1960s. At first, they performed together under their own names. They released their first album, Silly Sisters, in 1976, and later took this name as the name of their duo. They toured together in the 1980s, and released a subsequent album No More to the Dance in 1988, on the Shanachie Records label. "The Silly Sisters was conceived as a one-off project," Tabor explained in 1990. "We said, let's see if we can still sing together, and we could." A Chicago Tribune review of this second album called it "nearly flawless", "elegantly understated" and "brazenly witty".

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Silly Sisters” is english folk music duo. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Silly, Sisters and English, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1976, 1988, 1990—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Silly, Sisters and English is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “english folk music duo” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 26, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q7515436. VIAF identifies the subject as 154395743. The Library of Congress control number is no98106948. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1976, 1988 and 1990.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Silly Sisters”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Silly Sisters primary sources, Silly Sisters archive and Silly research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Silly Sisters”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Silly Sisters” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.