IT'S EASILY said in retrospect, of course, but from the very start Mary Black had the star quality which is universally recognised now.

Her long and successful association with producer/ musical director Declan Sinnott began with the release of her eponymous debut album. Mary Black was an album which relied not so much on the more complex arrangements of later outings for its impact, but rather on the elemental interplay between singer and song. In Mary's hands, songs like 'Anachie Gordon' a classic tale of blighted love was given an added lustre as her intuitive voice got inside the lyric, to the very heart of the song. The impact of her debut has not diminished over the years.

Her second album Mary Black Collected encapsulates various phases of her career from her work with General Humbert - the Sliabh Luachra song 'Mo Ghile Mear' is featured here - through material recorded when she worked with De Danann and solo material including pieces by Scotsman Archie Fisher, Dick Gaughan and Eric Bogle. If it is, in retrospect, a tad bitty, it's still a very useful reference point as to how her voice, her material, and her arrangements, have developed since the early days.

Mary Black's support for, and encouragement of Irish songwriters has long been a cornerstone of her performance, both live and on record. On Without The Fanfare this commitment was forcefully underlined with ten of the album's twelve songs coming from the pens of Irish writers, Jimmy McCarthy copping four credits, and another fine Cork writer Donagh Long coming in with two. She has done bigger and better things in the intervening years, but this album contains two of the all-time classic Black tracks - Jimmy McCarthy's 'Neidin' and 'Ellis Island' written by Noel Brazil.

By The Time It Gets Dark saw her straddling the folk/contemporary divide with considerable assurance but it was with No Frontiers, released in 1989, that Black got seriously into her stride, the power of her vocal performance matched by the punch and sophistication of the arrangements. It is a tribute to her and to Declan Sinnot and co. that material such as 'I Say A Little Prayer' sits so comfortably alongside pieces like 'Carolina Rua' and 'Columbus', both long-time staples of her live set.

The Best of Mary Black which was released in 1990, is now deleted but is still well worth checking out if you've ambitions (and haven't we all!) of being a Mary Black completist.

The 1991 release, Babes In The Wood seemed to polarise opinion but as with the previous six albums, the sales figures told the story as 'Babes In The Wood' became the biggest seller of 1991. With songs on board of the calibre of Thom Moore's 'Still Believing', Jimmy Mac's 'Adam At The Window' and Julie Matthews 'Thorn Upon The Rose', it's not hard to see why it proved so popular.

Last year saw the release of The Collection, a fourteen-track opus which included among others, the year's biggest song (Ah go on, youse know the one I mean). It also had three newly recorded songs, two by Noel Brazil, 'Roisin' and 'Tearing Up The Town' and a lovely version of Mary Chapin Carpenter's 'The Moon and St Christopher'.

Her most recent release, which currently stands at Number One in the British Roots Charts, is The Holy Ground. It sports two songs of the same name, one traditional, based on Jimmy Crowley's arrangement, the other written by Gerry O'Beirne, formerly of Midnight Well and Patrick Street, and currently working with Sharon Shannon. The arrangements this time seem more sparse, but are no less effective for that, and songs like 'One Way Donkey Ride' - another from the pen of the late lamented Sandy Denny - and Paul Doran's brilliant 'Poison Words' will doubtless see The Holy Ground hovering at or around the top of the charts till year's end. Even at this early stage, it seems that it wears the mantle of classic Mary Black exceeding well.

There can be few people who have released nine solo albums in ten years only to find that as many as two or three might be nudging each other for pole position in the popularity stakes. Equally, few performers exist who have the power to dazzle the way Mary does.

Black Magic indeed.