Brenda Wootton was a Cornishpoet and folk singer and was seen as an ambassador for Cornish tradition and culture in all the Celtic nations and as far as Australia and Canada.
Early life and career
Wootton was born in London, but grew up in the fishing village of Newlyn. She began her musical career as a young schoolgirl, singing in village halls throughout the remote communities of west Cornwall. Wootton became active on the folk scene in the early 60s, helping to keep the Cornish folk song tradition alive for many years. Her early albums were recorded on Cornwall's Sentinel label, often with John the Fish, with whom she sang for six years. Wootton later sang with Robert Bartlett and with guitarists Pete Berryman, Mike Silver, Al Fenn, David Penhale and Chris Newman. Many of her songs were composed by Richard Gendall. Her repertoire over the years covered folk, rock, blues, jazz and even hymns, but she is best remembered for her Cornish "standards" such as Lamorna, The White Rose, Camborne Hill, The Stratton Carol and the ballads Mordonnow, Tamar, Silver Net and Lyonesse. She was equally at home when singing in Cornish, Breton or English and was as famous in Brittany, which she visited regularly, as she was in her native Cornwall. She opened her own folk club, the Pipers Folk Club, at St Buryan, Cornwall and appeared in the first ever Lorient Interceltic Festival in Brittany. Wootton was a member of the Gorseth Kernow, where she was known by her Bardic name of Gwylan Gwavas. In her later years, she became well known in Cornwall as a presenter for BBC Radio Cornwall where she hosted the popular weekly request show Sunday Best, until her death in 1994. She was also the Honorary President of Radio Beacon, the hospital radio service for St Lawrences Hospital in Bodmin. Wootton died in March 1994, aged sixty six, after a long illness, at her home in Penzance.
Legacy
In 1994 Wootton's daughter Sue Luscombe published a book of her lyrics, comic-verses, ballads and stories entitled Pantomime Stew – An Anthology of Poetry, Doggerel and Nonsense by Brenda Wootton. , Brittany, in 1980 In 2010 it was announced that a previously unreleased audio tape had been discovered of a concert given by Wootton in June 1984 at the 'Bobino' theatre/music hall in Paris with Camborne Town Band and local musicians Ray Roberts, Dave Freeman and the renowned British acoustic guitarist Chris Newman. Analogue master tapes of the concert were discovered by John Knight, her recording engineer, in his studio in Cornwall, and were then digitally mastered and edited for the new album. Knight commented at the time "Brenda wanted to have a personal record of the concert. She never released a live album. I don't think it was intended for release. But now I think we have the potential there" adding "Ideally we would love to release it on cd with some of the stories from the tour." Subsequently, a new CD, , was released. The recording is unique as all nineteen tracks were previously unheard and represents a fitting tribute to Wootton, performing at what was considered to be the peak of her international career. A sixteen-page souvenir booklet, researched by Gloria Knight, is included featuring unpublished photographs, many from Wootton's own private collection.
