The Sound of the Crowdy

If any artist is associated specifically with Sentinel, and indeed with Cornish music in general, it’s folksinger Brenda Wootton. Something of a legend in her home county (and in France too), Brenda deserves a website all her own, although the website that *is* all her own, www.brendawootton.com , is frustratingly lacking in context. There’s no denying that her voice is an acquired taste, but I’m sure we’ll be returning to her recordings again as this blog expands, so if you’re new to her, you can find more background here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Wootton , or, for the purist, here: http://kw.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Wootton


Among her most renowned work is the music she made with Robert Bartlett under the name Crowdy Crawn. The duo had a shared past, but were brought together musically by singer-songwriter Michael Chapman while on holiday in the early '70s at his home in Northumberland. Brenda’s voice & persona was never far from the Cornwall she loved, but with Crowdy Crawn there seems to be an attempt to push things beyond being “merely” a cultural ambassador for the west country, and to incorporate occasional pop/rock, latin & blues influences into the mix. Compositions by the likes of Bob Dylan & Antonio Carlos Jobim are included on 1974's “No Song To Sing” SENS 1021, the first LP on which the duo worked together (rather confusingly, Wootton’s previous Crowdy Crawn album was recorded with Cornish language maven Richard Gendall), suggesting a wider worldview than the usual songs of tin mines & pasties. Even so, this music couldn’t have been recorded without the performers being richly steeped in Cornish culture, and Gendall is again on hand to contribute a number of evocative pieces in Wootton’s mother tongue.

Personal picks from the album are Jan Knuckey, a Trad Arr. singalong primary school favourite of mine (thanks Mrs Ellery!), and the rather more reflective Michael Chapman-composed title tune. Great cover too; the drapes, scatter cushions & half-empty Courviosier bottle casually resting atop Bartlett’s Telecaster evoke the spirit of the times as precisely as the music itself does. And more intriguingly, at least in the context of this blog, hidden in the photomontage on the cover is –unless I’m mistaken- a small picture of Job Morris in his Riverbank Studio on The Strand in Newlyn...

Jan Knuckey



No Song to Sing