1. Brenda Wootton was a Cornish folk singer and poet and was seen as an ambassador for Cornish tradition and culture in all the Celtic nations and as far as Australia and Canada.
17 Facts About Brenda Wootton
1. 2.
Brenda Wootton grew up in the fishing village of Newlyn.
3.
In 1948 she married John Brenda Wootton, a radio engineer from Wolverhampton, and their daughter Susan was born in 1949.
4.
Brenda Wootton first found her voice as a young schoolgirl, singing in chapel choirs and village halls in the remote communities of West Cornwall.
5.
Brenda Wootton became active on the Cornish music scene in the early 1960s, taking over the recently formed Count House Folk Music Club at Botallack near St Just in 1967, to found her own Pipers Folk Club, at St Buryan, Cornwall.
6.
Brenda Wootton was later able to move Pipers back to the Count House, and subsequently into Penzance at the Western Hotel.
7.
In 1974, Brenda Wootton handed Tremaen Craft Market over to daughter Sue to manage, and turned professional as a singer.
8.
Brenda Wootton later sang with Robert Bartlett and with guitarists Pete Berryman, Mike Silver, Al Fenn, David Penhale and Chris Newman.
9.
Brenda Wootton 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.
10.
Brenda Wootton appeared in the first ever Lorient Interceltic Festival in Brittany in the early 1970s.
11.
Brenda Wootton became famous throughout the world where she was welcomed by Cornish exiles and others, and sang at the Kernewek Lowender in South Australia three times, and in Canada, as well as across Europe.
12.
Brenda Wootton reached number 1 in the pop charts in Japan with the maxi single 'Walk Across the World'.
13.
Brenda Wootton was made a bard of the Gorsedh Kernow in 1977, and took as her bardic name Gwylan Gwavas.
14.
Brenda Wootton was the Honorary President of Radio Beacon, the hospital radio service for St Lawrences Hospital in Bodmin.
15.
Brenda Wootton died at her home in Penzance aged 66, in March 1994.
16.
Brenda Wootton had been ill for about five years, forcing her to gradually withdraw from the music scene.
17.
In 2010 Brenda Wootton's recording engineer John Knight rediscovered the analogue master tapes of a live performance from June 1984, at the peak of her international career.