Shirley Abicair, who has died aged 96, introduced British audiences in the 1950s to new sounds and songs from around the world. She played the zither, a stringed instrument with its origins in Austria and Bavaria, and her repertoire included folk songs not only from her native Australia but also from France, Italy, Ireland, the US and Asia. A great storyteller, she became a regular fixture on British TV variety shows and children’s programmes.
She arrived almost penniless in London from Australia in 1952 – after stops in Singapore and Karachi to play at nightclubs to pay for her onward journey – and her career took off almost instantly. A newspaper photo of Abicair arriving at Heathrow was seen by a BBC radio producer looking for Commonwealth artists to appear in a radio programme. The band leader Geraldo heard her and booked her for a concert and a further audition, after which she appeared for the first time on the BBC TV programme The Centre Show, on 20 January 1953. Within a few weeks she had her own series with her zither and “a rhythm quartet”, and later that year released her first 78rpm single, an orchestra-and-zither treatment of Careless Love, once recorded by Bessie Smith.
