Joan Taylor

Joan Taylor: daughter of Hyram Brazil.  She was born in Swindon in 1933, lived in Gloucester in a caravan, and travelled in the summer.  In about 1969 she and her husband, another traveller, settled into a house in Gloucester.  She remembers well her father singing the old traditional repertoire, but she did not learn any of those songs from him.  When younger, she did a variety of different jobs around the Evesham area; fruit picking, hop picking, selling pegs from door to door, and so on.  She even worked on a threshing machine at one time.  She has fond memories of the family and their singing and step dancing.  She sometimes used to provide the mouth music, or 'tuning' as she calls it, for her uncles Danny Brazil and Harry Brazil to dance to.

One of her songs can be heard on the Musical Traditions 3-CD set The Brazil Family: Down by the Old Riverside (MTCD345-7).

--RodStradling 12:54, 1 June 2007 (BST)