Article

Tom Brandon

Published Online June 20, 2007

Last Edited December 13, 2013

Tom Brandon. Folksinger, b Midland, Ont, 1927. He learned many Irish songs from his parents and uncles and, after he began working at 16, picked up others from the sailors on Great Lakes boats in the summer and from the men in lumbercamps in winter.

Brandon, Tom

Tom Brandon. Folksinger, b Midland, Ont, 1927. He learned many Irish songs from his parents and uncles and, after he began working at 16, picked up others from the sailors on Great Lakes boats in the summer and from the men in lumbercamps in winter. In 1951 he became a leverman for the CPR, first in Toronto and later in Peterborough. Edith Fowke began recording his repertoire of songs in 1957 and in 1963 prepared the album Tom Brandon of Peterborough, Ontario (Folk Legacy FSC-10, reissued in 1985 on cassette by the CSMT as The Rambling Irishman, CFMS 5-8502). Other Brandon songs appear on the LP Lumbering Songs from the Ontario Shanties (Folk FM-4052) and have been published in Fowke's Traditional Singers and Songs from Ontario (Hatboro, Pa, 1965). Brandon appeared at the 1961 conference of the IFMC in Quebec City and has sung at the Mariposa and Philadelphia folk festivals.