On the 1951 Edinburgh People's Festival Ceilidh CD, one of the signal releases in the Scottish folk music tradition, the late Hamish Henderson introduces a then-18-year-old Blanche Wood to sing a pair of songs from her native Portknockie in Aberdeenshire.
A few years later the same singer began taking a neighbour's young daughter out with her on singing engagements and when asked what Blanche did, Frieda Morrison told her mother "the wifie sings stories".
It may have been Morrison's onstage colleague Aileen Carr who gave the consummate demonstration of ballad singing – or singing stories, if you prefer – on this Tradfest presentation, but Morrison's recollection afforded Edinburgh's latest celebration of the traditional arts a direct connection to a predecessor of which it might have made more.
Accompanying herself on guitar, Morrison mostly chose her own songs over those learned from Blanche Wood and the mammoth Greig-Duncan folksong collection in her journey to the north-east and along with the estimable fiddler Sarah Beattie she presented a sturdy enough portrait of life among the farm touns and village dances.
Just by using her voice, its marvellous tone and inflections and her engagement with her material, Carr, on the other hand, gives an almost cinematic account of the action in dark dramas such as The Mill o' Tifty's Annie, a cruel storyline that even Tarantino might think twice about filming, and yet she also had the modest audience joining in on daft chorus songs. Her telling of the Canongate's own Mally Lee and her head-turning, heart-stealing strolls was a particular highlight and all the more involving for its setting being so close to the venue.
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