"When Robert Plant introduced me I achieved closure. I had my song back for the first time since 1961." How Bonnie Dobson's post-apocalyptic first song finally found its way home via the Grateful Dead, Nazareth, Jeff Beck, the Allman Brothers and more

Bonnie Dobson playing an acoustic guitar.

Robert Plant tells the story of how he first met the Canadian folk singer Bonnie Dobson: “A few years ago I bumped into Bert Jansch – I dared to knock on his dressing room door. Anyway, it was fine, and we found amazing similarities in roots and influences from the places we’d been. It was a beautiful thing. It reminded me that in the 60s I used to sing this song, with Band Of Joy, that was immortalised by Tim Rose and the Grateful Dead.

"Later I recorded it [with Strange Sensation on 2002’s Dreamland]. And now there’s a knock on my door, and there’s this lady standing there who says: ‘Hello, Robert. You’re singing my song.’ That was the great Bonnie Dobson, and the song is called Morning Dew.”