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Linda Pettifer was born in London to an ex-variety girl who called herself Vera Love, daughter of a vaudevillian. Linda was 6 when the family moved to a nice neighborhood in the notoriously rough city of Glasgow - her mother's hometown - where her father opened a TV repair shop. Linda appeared briefly in local folk clubs circa 1966, under the spell of "The Times They Are A-Changing," then left in '67 to pursue a degree at London University. Modern languages proved a tough discipline for a girl to maintain if she seriously wanted to be a folk singer. She quit school after 4 months and hit the coffee-houses full time, careful to conceal her day job as a jingle singer from the purists.

She soon found her element, falling in with Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson, Nick Drake, John Martyn, John Renbourn, and producer Joe Boyd. A sound was born and passions ran high; there were various pairings, musical and otherwise, accidents and deaths. The chronology is murky now, even to her.

With her marriage to Richard Thompson and the release of I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight, Linda's name became linked inextricably to her husband's. She was keenly aware of the reverence for his previous muse, Sandy Denny - a reverence she shared - and that gossip held that anyone could shine given the great Richard Thompson's songs to sing. But the truth was - and is - that she possesses a remarkable instrument. Certainly her husband knew the spell she could cast and wrote a trove of darkly dramatic songs for her: "Withered and Died," "Dimming of the Day," Walking on a Wire," "For Shame of Doing Wrong," "A Heart Needs a Home." She sang them all into the folk-rock lexicon with grace and authority.

In 1985 she released One Clear Moment, her first solo recording, with seven of her own compositions. The title track can be heard as a precursor to the grown-woman's rock that Bonnie Raitt was to distill years later; another ballad, "Telling Me Lies" written with Betsy Cook, was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Country Song category. Sales were disappointing however, and by 1989 a formal diagnosis of hysterical dysphonia had been made. The vocal condition was unresponsive to treatment, medical or psychological; musically, she seemed finished. She raised her children, traveled the world with her husband, became a partner in an antique jewelry stall in Bond Street, did studio and theater work, enjoyed some success as a songwriter.

In 2003, she made an amazing return to form with a brand new album, and her second ever tour of the US. The aptly titled Fashionably Late was, of course, several years in the making, the sustained vision of the artist and her producer, Edward Haber, who also assembled the retrospective compilation of her work, Dreams Fly Away, in 1996. Chief concert recording engineer for WNYC, the New York outlet for National Public Radio, Haber captures, rather than manufactures, sound. There are no special effects here, no audio pyrotechnics. Just that voice, and exquisite musicianship. Her dysphonia is under control these days; in fact, she has appeared on stage in recent years with the Royal National Theatre and with the avant popist David Thomas, of Pere Ubu fame. Her children are grown - her middle child, Teddy Thompson, is a serenely gifted musician in his own right, and on Fashionably Late, served as her extraordinary music partner.

She remains obsessed with the deep British folk music that she and her circle reanimated with the electricity of rock and roll. Like all great folk singers - Sandy Denny in particular, Richard's partner in Fairport Convention in whose shadow she sometimes felt herself to stand - Linda Thompson has an ancient voice, wilting, wounded and wise. She sings with the conviction of an eyewitness of thieves, beggars, drunks, street urchins and circus freaks, spurned lovers and murdering swine, centuries-gone.