Jean Redpath, an esteemed Scottish folk singer whose arresting repertoire of ancient ballads, Robert Burns poems and contemporary tunes helped energize a genre she described as a “brew of pure flavor and pure emotion,” 

Ms. Redpath, who recorded some 40 albums, combined voluminous historical knowledge, a winning stage presence and a voice that could be both bright and melancholy to become perhaps the most prominent Scottish folk singer of the postwar era.

She once sang for Queen Elizabeth II in a command performance, but she began as one of the gaggle of young singers who arrived in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s. For a while, according to histories of the era, she dated Bob Dylan. They slept on the floor of an apartment at One Sheridan Square with other folky hopefuls like Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.