Sam Larner (1878-1965) was an English fisherman and traditional singer from Winterton-on-Sea, a small fishing village in Norfolk where 300 of the 800 residents were fishermen. He first went to sea as a cabin boy on a lugger at age 13, and from 1899 worked on steam trawlers. As he put it: “Why, for me and my brothers that was either sea or gaol, and that for my sisters that was service or gaol.”

He learned songs from his grandfather, his father, and fellow fishermen in pubs across Britain, building a repertoire of roughly 60 traditional songs, sea rhymes, and fishing lore. He was also a noted step dancer. He won a singing competition in Lerwick, Shetland in 1907, and recalled years later how the audience would not let him sit down. “I soon picked up the old songs,” he said. “The ruder they were the quicker I picked ‘em up.”

Larner left fishing due to ill health in 1933, but his singing career was only beginning. In 1956, BBC radio producer Philip Donnellan met him in a pub and recorded him for two programmes. Donnellan introduced him to Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, who were producing their innovative radio ballads for the BBC. Larner featured in the third of these, Singing the Fishing, about the East Coast herring industry. MacColl wrote “The Shoals of Herring” for the programme, basing it largely on Larner’s life. Singing the Fishing won the Prix Italia for radio documentary in 1960.

MacColl and Seeger’s recordings became Now Is the Time for Fishing, released by Folkways Records in 1961 and now regarded as one of the most important recordings of an English traditional singer ever made. A second album, A Garland for Sam, followed in 1974 from Donnellan’s BBC recordings. In 2014, Musical Traditions Records released Cruising Round Yarmouth, a two-disc set of 67 tracks from the MacColl and Seeger sessions.

Larner is considered a key figure in the folk revival of the 1950s and 60s. [[person:martin-carthy]] became a musician after hearing Larner sing at a concert in London. A blue plaque marks Larner’s former home in Winterton.