Folk musician and member of Fairport Convention

Born: April 5, 1941;

Died: June 3, 2016

DAVE Swarbrick, who has died aged 75, was a folk musician, singer and songwriter who first made his mark with the influential folk group led by the Scottish singer Ian Campbell but went onto become a member of Fairport Convention, one of the bands that led the folk rock movement of the 1970s.

Swarbrick began his career playing fiddle on the Radio Ballads, the groundbreaking BBC documentaries produced by Ewan MacColl and Charles Parker in the late 1950s that weaved the testimonies of working people with songs inspired by them. The recordings led to a meeting with Campbell and he was soon performing with the group at concerts and on several albums.

However, it was his work with Fairport Convention that made Swarbrick – who was always affectionately known as Swarb – into one of the most influential folk performers of the 70s and 80s. He was initially booked to play on a single track with the band, but was invited to join the band full-time and played on one of their most successful and popular album, 1969’s Liege and Lief.

He was born in London in 1941 but his family moved to Yorkshire when he was just three months old. He first started to learn to play the fiddle when he was six, but when he left school at 15 his first job was as an apprentice with a printer.

It was while working as a printer that he first started taking music seriously. He played with dance bands during the skiffle boom of the 1950s which led to the radio sessions with Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger and Charles Parker and his membership of the Ian Campbell Folk Group.

He left his job with the printing firm shortly afterwards and committed himself full-time to music, playing on the folk group’s first album Ceilidh at the Crown in 1962. Three years later, they had a minor hit with a cover version of Bob Dylan's The Times They Are a-Changin'.

After going his own way and living in Denmark for a time, he formed a duo with the folk guitarist Martin Carthy and they recorded three albums together: Byker Hill in 1967, But Two Came By in 1968 and Prince Heathen in 1969.

He was then asked to play on a session for Fairport Convention, which led to his invitation to join the group permanently and toured and played with them for the next 15 years. After the departure of Richard Thompson, he also became the band’s lead singer.

All the time, he was also working on solo projects and released three albums in the 70s: Swarbrick, Swarbrick 2 and Lift the Lid and Listen. He then left Fairport and, after living for a time in Aberdeenshire, formed a new band Whippersnapper with Kevin Dempsey, Chris Leslie and Martin Jenkins, before returning once more to solo work in 1989.

He made the occasional return to playing with his old Fairport friends, and also recorded again with Martin Carthy. In 2004, he underwent a double lung transplant after suffering from emphysema and continued to tour afterwards. In 2010 he also released a solo album Raison d’etre.

He received a lifetime achievement award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2004 and the Gold Badge of Merit from the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters.

He is survived by his wife Jill and by a son and two daughters.