Tracey Wisdom is a singer and fiddle player from Suffolk. She is a regular session-goer and a core member of Woodbridge Dance Folkus Ceilidh Band.
A summary of the interview can be downloaded above.
Interview Keywords: folk music, singing, choirs, choral singing, lessons, classical, Sole Bay Inn, Southwold, melodeon, The Butcher Boy, Pye records, story, suicide, teenage pregnancy, May bank holiday, Paul Wisdom, husband, father, Megan Wisdom, folk sessions, Butley Oyster, Suffolk, Golden Key, Ipswich, childhood, piano, Community and Standard Songbook, Cockles and Mussels, The Lass of Richmond Hill, The Oak and the Ash, seas shanties, Tony Hall, Nic Jones, Lord Nelson, pub, inclusive, community, sharing, group singing, chorus, tune, fun, pleasure, enjoyment, simplicity, fiddle, school, ceilidh, band, festivals
- Title: The Butcher Boy
- Performer: Tracey Wisdom
- Date recorded: 14.2.2020
- Location: Wissett, Suffolk
- Recorded by: Megan Wisdom
- Roud No: 60 (Died for Love) and 409 (VWML record here).
- Notes: This is part of a ‘widespread song family’ in which a betrayed lover commits suicide. (Gammon, Vic, Desire, Drink and Death in English Folk and Vernacular Song, 1600-1900(Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2008)). Percy Grainger recorded Joseph Taylor singing a version, Died for Love, on wax cylinder in 1908. Tracey learned her version from a Pye demonstration record of Irish band The Ludlows as a child (pictured right).
- Title: Tarry Trousers
- Performer: Tracey Wisdom
- Date recorded: 14.2.2020
- Location: Wissett, Suffolk
- Recorded by: Megan Wisdom
- Roud No: 427
- Notes: Trousers stained with the Stockholm tar used on standing rigging were a hallmark of a sailor, already set apart at the end of the 18th Century from other men, who wore knee breeches. (Palmer, Roy, (ed.) Folk Songs Collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams, (London, J M Dent and Sons, 1983)). It has been collected several times in the early 20th Century in Britain and America and exists in Broadside versions.
- Title: Green Grow the Laurels
- Performer: Tracey Wisdom
- Date recorded: 14.2.2020
- Location: Wissett, Suffolk
- Recorded by: Megan Wisdom
- Roud No: 279
- Notes: This version is from Norma Waterson, who learned it from a tape of traveller singer Queen Caroline Hughes. Versions have also been collected in Ireland. See https://mainlynorfolk.info/sandy.denny/songs/greengrowthelaurels.html.
- Title: Banks of the Sweet Primroses
- Performer: Tracey Wisdom
- Date recorded: 14.2.2020
- Location: Wissett, Suffolk
- Recorded by: Megan Wisdom
- Roud No: 586
- Notes: This song has been collected several times by Edwardian collectors, including George Butterworth, Anne Gilchrist and George Gardiner. It also appears in Broadsides, such as this one, which date to at least the first half of the nineteenth century. More recently, it has been collected from others such as The Copper Family. Tracey apologises that she could not remember the name of the singer from the LP, The Larks They Sang Melodious, and has since looked up her name – Linda Walker.
- Title: I Wish That the Wars Were All Over
- Performer: Tracey Wisdom
- Date recorded: 14.2.2020
- Location: Wissett, Suffolk
- Recorded by: Megan Wisdom
- Roud No: 2036
- Notes: This song has does not appear many times in manuscripts, although it was collected from Sam Fone in Dartmoor by Sabine Baring-Gould, and appears in the John McCall Songbook Manuscript from the County Carlow/Wexford border, Ireland (https://www.vwml.org/roudnumber/2036). Both are late-19th Century. There are also some broadside versions, such as this one, which is dated by Bodleian’s Broadside Ballads Online to 1799-1800. This ballad, although different, is also on a similar theme.
- Title: Wild Mountain Thyme
- Performer: Tracey and Megan Wisdom
- Date recorded: 14.2.2020
- Location: Wissett, Suffolk
- Recorded by: Megan Wisdom
- Roud No: 541
- Composers: Robert Tannahill/Francis McPeake
- Notes: Originally written by Robert Tannahill as The Braes of Balquhidder (published in Robert Archibald Smith’s The Scottish Minstrel), this was adapted by Francis McPeake, to whom its authorship is often attributed. Tracey is joined by her daughter Megan on this recording.
- Title: The Light Dragoon
- Performer: Tracey and Megan Wisdom
- Date recorded: 14.2.2020
- Location: Wissett, Suffolk
- Recorded by: Megan Wisdom
- Roud No: 162
- Notes: Peter Kennedy recorded Harry List singing this song in Framlingham, Suffolk, in 1955 (listen here). Steve Roud comments: ‘Often called The Trooper and the Maid, this song was collected frequently in Scotland and North America, but less often in England. Child prints the three earliest Scottish texts, dating from the 1820s onwards, and Bronson presents 27 tunes.’ (Sleeve notes, The Voice of the People Volume 23: Good People, Take Warning.) Tracey is joined by her daughter, Megan, on this recording.