Tim Hart Dies

Tim Hart, a founding member of Steeleye Span, one of the first British folk-rock groups, died Dec. 24 in La Gomera in the Canary Islands, where he had lived since retiring from music. He was 61.

The cause was lung cancer, his daughter, Sally Hart, said.

Mr. Hart first gained fame in a musical partnership with the singer Maddy Prior in 1966. The duo recorded two albums of English folk songs, on which he sang and played guitar, mandolin, dulcimer, banjo and violin.

A few years later Mr. Hart and Ms. Prior joined with the bassist Ashley Hutchings, who had been an original member of the folk-rock band Fairport Convention. At Mr. Hart’s suggestion the band they formed with two other musicians was named Steeleye Span, after a character in a Lincolnshire folk song, “Horkstow Grange.”

Steeleye Span, which recorded its first album in 1970, played a distinctly British brand of folk-rock, more tradition-oriented than the American version being made by Bob Dylan, the Byrds and others. The group had most of its chart success in Britain but gained a loyal following in the United States, especially after touring the country in the mid-1970s as the opening act for Jethro Tull.

Mr. Hart left Steeleye Span in 1983 but performed with the group at a charity concert in 1995. Last year he and Ms. Prior appeared together at a BBC concert in London.

While living on La Gomera, Mr. Hart became active as a photographer. He called the island “my inexhaustible subject” and took the photographs for an English-language guide to La Gomera that he published in 2004.

Mr. Hart is survived by his wife, Connie, and a daughter and son from a previous marriage.