In 1960 Elizabeth was 21, living with Lucy Stewart along with her sisters and her mother. Her mother was a talented musician , leading a dance band on accordion, and Elizabeth began playing piano in the band. KG and Arthur Argo were very taken by the way she played and with her sister Jane sang both traditional Scots and currently popular songs, in a bouncing syncopated style. When visiting Ewan MacColl heard them he took their exciting version of a song 'Up among the heather in the hills o Bennachie', and wrote a new lyric beginning 'Come aa ye fisher lassies, aye come along wi me'. This new song was performed by the girls as part of the acclaimed award-winning Radio Ballad 'Singing The Fishing'.
In 1972 another US academic, Professor Charles Joyner, invited Elizabeth to go to perform at the Laurinburg Folk Festival in the USA. The invitation was as a pianist, but she pointed out she could sing some of the old ballads that Lucy and other Stewarts sang, and song was incorporated into her performances. On the tour she visited the Goldstein family in Philadelphia, and he recorded her singing and telling stories to his university students - hear the tracks on the right.
Elizabeth became one of Scotland's best-known and most respected unaccompanied ballad singers, but she could still give it laldy on piano. Listen to her on Tobar an Dualchais laying into Tom Paxton's song 'The Last Thing on my Mind' in 1988, in the august confines of the School of Scottish Studies.

Natalie Chalmers is one of our finest younger singers, Scots Performer of the Year at the 2023 Scots Language Awards in Renfrew. Here Natalie sings songs she was taught by Elizabeth, tells how she was taught song by Elizabeth, and shares pages from Elizabeth's writing of lyrics in her notebook.