Patricia Lorraine Tutty

Tutty, Patricia Lorraine

Patricia Lorraine Tutty, "Paddy," folksinger, musician, song-collector (b at Calgary 12 Apr 1953). A gifted instrumentalist, she began performing contemporary FOLK MUSIC with her sister Leslie in the late 1960s, initially accompanying herself on guitar. After graduating from the University of Saskatchewan in 1975 she became involved with the Regina Guild of Folk Arts where she first seriously studied and sang English and Celtic traditional music.

Although Tutty has collaborated with the Regina folk trio Barley Straw, with harpist Chris Lindgren, and with the Saskatoon group The Pockets, she is best known as a solo artist. She has performed in folk clubs throughout Canada, also in 1978-79 travelling, singing and song-collecting in the British Isles. Her experience in Britain led her to concentrate on playing the fretted dulcimer and on singing traditional ballads; subsequently she also learned fiddle and piano, using a modal system of playing. Returning to Saskatoon in 1979, Tutty helped form the Saskatoon Folk Music Association and subsequently became an active member of the Canadian Folk Music Society (now the Canadian Society for Traditional Music).

In 1983 she released her first cassette album, Paddy Tutty, which included celebrated renditions of "Bonny Portmore" and Sir Francis Child's ballads "Bonny Lass of Anglesey" and "Lass of Loch Royal." Subsequent releases were the record album Who Liveth So Merry (1986) and the CD Prairie Druid (1992). Since 1992 she has led her own trio, performed at FOLK FESTIVALS across Canada, and appeared on a variety of radio and TV programs on the CBC and the Shaw-Cable National Network. Tutty remains one of the finest Canadian exponents of traditional narrative ballad singing, and her enduring popularity is an indication of the vitality of traditional Anglo-Celtic music in western Canada.