Margaret Roadknight
Margaret Roadknight sings blues, folk, gospel and jazz with a personal, almost eerie timbre and the calm authority of the classical blues singers, captured live in the intimate club setting she prefers.
Her 1973 Melbourne folk-club set ranges from Curtis Mayfield and Duke Ellington to Joni Mitchell and traditional blues, given the weight of the old plantation songs rather than pastiche. She moves easily into Australian material, film themes, cabaret and, with the a cappella quartet Girls in Your Town, gospel, barbershop and drinking songs. The voice stays the centre: big, gruff when it needs to be, and hard to imitate.