Bob Davenport, who has died aged 94, was an unaccompanied folk singer and key figure in the British folk revival of the 1950s through to the end of the century. He had a powerful tenor voice that was guaranteed to silence the noisiest of bars. In 1963 he performed with Bob Dylan and Joan Baez at the Newport folk festival.
Not that he would have welcomed the description “folk” singer. Not for Bob were the definitions of folk music promulgated by the early 20th-century collectors such as Cecil Sharp, who rejected music-hall songs and parlour ballads, and who largely ignored what members of the urban working class were singing. For Bob, folk music was for the middle classes; he preferred the term traditional music.
