Bob Roberts

From the mid-19th century onward the accordion occupied a central place in British folk and popular music while also functioning as a staple among sailors. Roberts spent much of his working life aboard sailing cargo wherries, where he proved himself a skilled melodeon player and a vocalist whose broad repertory ranged from a comic saga about a North Sea oil rig to the Renaissance ballad “The Grey Hawk,” an eastern-English variant of “The Foggy Dew,” assorted shanties, and many other pieces.