TINA LAWTON

The so-called 'folk boom' of the 1960s in Australia brought to public notice a number of very fine musicians. One of these was Adelaide singer Tina Lawton who, before her tragic death in 1968 at the age of 24, achieved national attention with three critically acclaimed LPs. She is now largely forgotten and the albums remain unreleased on CD but I have been informed that these albums have been added to Spotify which is great news. After attending Walford House Girls Grammar School and later Unley Technical High School, she enrolled at the South Australian School of Arts in 1961.

While studying art she continued to sing in the Churches of Christ Youth Choir, enjoying especially their annual light opera performances. She also began singing with a friend at The Catacombs, a newly opened jazz and folk venue in Adelaide and it was at this time that her deep interest in traditional folk music blossomed. Her inherent desire to sing had finally found its most appropriate form of expression. With this commitment her life changed. While holidaying at Victor Harbour she took part in a charity concert and was asked by the compere, Roger Cardwell, to audition for his new television program, The Country and Western Hour. The show went national and she became a popular and regular guest, her classic voice and traditional folk songs an interlude between and somewhat at odds with the dominant country and western.

As her popularity grew she appeared on other television programs including the Marie Tomasetti Show, Adelaide Tonight, In Melbourne Tonight, Bandstand, The Lively Arts, a number of children's programs for the ABC and folk music shows like Just Folk, Jazz Meets Folk and Dave's Place. A journalist of the time wrote about her television appearances: “Tina exploits that forgotten art these days of throwing her mouth wide open and transmitting full voice through it for her own sheer joy of singing.” By 1964 she was probably the most popular folk singer in Adelaide and, in August of that year, was chosen with ten other folk singers for a 'Four Capitals Folk Song' tour of the east coast, beginning in Brisbane and including concerts in Melbourne, Wollongong and Sydney.

The group included Gary Shearston, Martin Wyndham-Read and 'Duke' Tritton. An LP was recorded in Melbourne to commemorate the tour, to which Tina contributed two songs. In Sydney her face appeared on posters all over the city, advertising the country's first folk music festival at the northern beach suburb of Newport. Local engagements increased and interstate trips became more frequent. When Peter, Paul & Mary visited Australia, she travelled with them to Adelaide, befriending Peter Yarrow and taking him home for dinner with her family.

In December 1965, her first eponymous LP record was released, a beautiful album that received wide critical acclaim and on which, according to one review, “she concentrates on the purity of her unmannered voice and applies it to a handful of songs from the British Isles”. The musical arrangements were handled by the Welsh harpist, Hew Jones, who was then playing with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Her supporting musicians included Jones (harp) and Andy Sundstrom (guitar). The review quoted above concluded with the comment that “Miss Lawton is no flash in the folk-singing pan she would have happened, folk boom or not, and she has a style and quality which will endure.”

Two more albums followed. At the end of 1968, as winter approached, Tina accepted an invitation from an old Adelaide friend, Graham Wright, to spend Christmas in Kenya. Wright was working in Africa as a free-lance pilot and was able to arrange a free return flight for her on a charter aircraft. The only condition he put on her accepting his offer was: “bring your guitar and sing for your supper!” She arrived in Nairobi on 22 December and, after spending the weekend in Mombasa, she, Graham Wright and his friend Chris Paul, flew out of Nairobi en route to Lake Baringo where they planned to spend Christmas. They never arrived, the small Comanche aircraft in which they travelled crashing into the crater of Mount Longonot soon after take-off.

The wreckage was not discovered until several days later and, on December 28th, a rescue party climbed into the crater and located the bodies of the three victims. The nature of the terrain made recovery impossible and a decision was made to bury them in shallow graves on the crater floor. The Accident Investigation Report concluded that, flying inside the crater, the pilot had been blinded as he banked directly into the rays of the setting sun.

ALBUMS

'Tina Lawton' 1965 CBS
'Singing Bird' 1966 CBS
'Fair and Tender' 1967 CBS