Tina Lawton

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Christine Elizabeth "Tina" Lawton (born March 23, 1944 in Adelaide , South Australia ; died December 24, 1968 at Mount Longonot , Kenya ) was an Australian folk singer . She released three albums. She was killed in a plane crash when she was 24 years old.

Life

Career

Lawton was the fifth child in a musical family. She grew up with four sisters and one brother in Hawthorn , a suburb of Adelaide. Already in her youth she learned to play the violin and piano rather unwillingly, but attracted attention early on because of her singing and drawing skills . After graduating from school, Lawton began to study art at the South Australian School of Arts in 1961 and sang in the church choir, as before. At the same time, she followed her siblings into the Adelaide folk scene that was developing in the early 1960s, where she was able to develop a leading position.

National career

While on vacation in Victor Harbor , Lawton noticed TV presenter Roger Cardwell attending a charity concert, who invited her to his music show. She became a regular guest there and was able to set a counterpoint to the otherwise predominant country and western music with her classically trained voice and the traditional folk songs performed with British influences . As a result, she was often heard and seen in other music programs on Australian television. In addition, there were live performances initially regionally and later nationwide. Lawton took singing lessons at the Elder Conservatory at Adelaide University and began writing his own pieces.

In 1965 Lawton and her trio, which also included flutist David Cubbin and Huw Jones at the Welsh Harp , received their own prime-time music show, The Tina Lawton Interludes . Her first music album was also released on CBS Records in 1965, followed by two more within a year.

Performances and war experiences in Southeast Asia

Finally Lawton received from the Australian Defense Force , the offer together with Tim McNamara and Lee Gallagher a short tour to South Vietnam to take to there as part of the troop entertainment perform in front of soldiers in the Vietnam War were in use. Since she had played several times at anti-war events, Lawton was accused of opportunism from her environment . In Vietnam, she witnessed the violent crackdown on protests and the self-immolation of Buddhist monks, as well as the streams of war refugees . Here it was above all the homeless children whose fate influenced their further lives.

In mid-1967 Lawton went on a concert tour to Singapore, Malaysia, Bangkok, Manila and Vietnam. After the contract was unexpectedly terminated and she was stranded penniless in Saigon at the end of July , she accepted an offer from the US Army at short notice to perform in various military hospitals in Vietnam, Japan, Bangkok, the Philippines and Guam .

Withdrawal from the music business

Back in Saigon in October 1967, Lawton was physically and emotionally at the end of her tether. She decided not to return to Australia for the time being. After making trips to India, Greece, Italy and London, Lawton finally landed in Scotland in December 1967. At the Glasgow School of Art she resumed her art studies, which she had abandoned in Australia, and enrolled in the art print department .

Lawton's musical abilities were initially only known to their immediate environment, but ultimately seeped through. There were individual appearances in the local club scene, occasionally on radio and television programs. During this time, she came into contact with folk greats such as Peter, Paul and Mary ( she had been friends with Peter Yarrow for a long time) or Nina & Frederik , but consistently turned down offers to re-enter the professional music business. Influenced by her experiences in Vietnam, she came to the conclusion that she could better express herself artistically through her pictures. After completing her studies, she intended to return to her home country in order to support Vietnamese orphans from there. Most of the drawings and lithographs made in Glasgow were recognizably influenced by Lawton's war experiences.

death

In the late autumn of 1968, Lawton received an offer from Graham Wright, a friend from Adelaide who was now working as a pilot in Africa, to visit him over the Christmas period in Kenya. Lawton accepted and arrived in the capital, Nairobi , on December 22nd . After a two-day stay, the two made, together with another friend, with a small plane type Comanche the direction Baringosees on to spend the holidays. The machine did not arrive at its destination, on December 28, a search team reached the wreckage of the crashed machine with the three dead in the crater of Mount Longonot. Due to the inaccessibility of the area, the bodies were buried on site, and a memorial stone was later erected on the edge of the crater. Investigations led to the assumption that the pilot had been blinded by the setting sun.

Posthumous

In 1974, Lawton's mother Kathleen published a biography of her daughter, which she gave the title The singing bird (English for The Singing Bird ). Both the Art Gallery of South Australia and the National Gallery of Australia own prints by Lawton. For her niece, Jo Lawry , who was born around ten years after her death , Lawton's musical works became an early influence on the development of a successful singer and songwriter. Even in her home country Lawton is largely forgotten, her albums have not been reissued on CD .

Discography

  • 1965: Tina Lawton
  • 1966: Singing Bird
  • 1967: Fair and Tender

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tina Lawton leads a flurry of Adelaide 1960s folk talent from fusion with jazz and country. Adelaide AZ, accessed September 5, 2019
  2. ↑ Tina Lawton on the Art Gallery of South Australia website, accessed September 5, 2019
  3. ↑ Tina Lawton on the National Gallery of Australia website, accessed September 5, 2019
  4. ↑ Patrick McDonald: Adelaide singer Jo Lawry emerges from superstar Sting's shadow with her new album of original songs. The Advertiser , February 5, 2015, accessed September 5, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Lawton, Tina
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lawton, Christine Elizabeth (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian folk singer
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Adelaide , South Australia
DATE OF DEATH December 24, 1968
Place of death Mount Longonot , Kenya