Tyson was born Sylvia Fricker in Chatham, Ontario. She was the second of four children; her father was an appliance salesman for the T. Eaton Company, and her mother was a church organist and choir leader. At a young age Fricker decided to become a singer; although her parents tried to discourage her from pursuing a career as an entertainer, she left Chatham in 1959 to perform in Toronto.
Ian & Sylvia
From 1959 to 1974, she was half of the popular folk duo Ian & Sylvia with Ian Tyson. The two met after a friend of Tyson's heard her sing at a party and let Ian know about her; Tyson had been performing in Toronto clubs as a solo artist, but after he and Fricker met, they decided to work together as a duo. Their full-time collaboration began in 1961 and would continue for a decade. From the late 1960s to the early 1970s, she and Ian Tyson also fronted the country rock band Great Speckled Bird. Sylvia wrote her first and best-known song "You Were on My Mind" in 1962. It was recorded by Ian & Sylvia in 1964. The song has been covered extensively, and became a hit single in the mid-1960s for the San Francisco-based folk-rock band We Five and also for the British pop singer Crispian St. Peters. Fricker married Ian Tyson on 26 June 1964. During their years together they recorded 13 albums. Tyson plays actual left-handed guitars, rather than merely flipping right-handedly-strung instruments. The Tysons were divorced in 1975. During their marriage, they had one child, Clayton Dawson Tyson.
Later career
After the Tysons separated and stopped performing together in 1975, Sylvia started a solo career; she released two albums through Capital Records, Woman's World in 1975 and Cool Wind from the North in 1976. She then established an independent record label, Salt Records, in 1978. Through this label she released the albums, Satin on Stone in 1978 and Sugar for Sugar in 1979. Sylvia Tyson contributed offstage to the Canadian music scene as a board member of FACTOR and the Juno Awards. With Tom Russell, she was an editor of the 1995 anthology And Then I Wrote: The Songwriter Speaks. In 2011, she wrote her first novel, a 420-page book entitled Joyner's Dream. Sylvia joined Ian to sing their signature song, Four Strong Winds, at the 50th anniversary of the Mariposa Folk Festival on July 11, 2010, in Orillia, Ontario. In 2012, Tyson and singer-songwriter Cindy Church wrote a campaign song for the Alberta Party, a centrist political party in Alberta.
