Graham Townsend (Fiddler)

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Graham Townsend, * 16. June 1942 in Toronto; † December 3, 1998 in Barrie was a Canadian folk musician (fiddle, mandolin, piano, composition).

Career
Graham Townsend was the son of Fred Townsend, the longtime square dance caller of Don Messer and His Islanders. He played the violin since his early childhood and won the fiddle competition 30 and under at the annual Music Day of the Canadian National Exhibition at the age of nine. Soon he learned repertoire and playing technique from Tom McQuestion and Billy Crawford and began to tour and perform with Don Messer. Eleven years old, he finished third at the Canadian Open Old Time Fiddlers Contest, which he won in 1963 and annually from 1968 to 1970.

From 1963, Townsend undertook tours promoted by the CBC and the Defense or Foreign Ministry to Germany, France and Italy (1963, 1964), Cyprus (1967), England and Jersey (1981), Australia (1982, 1983 and 1988) to the GDR and Scotland (1984). Since 1973, he has often been accompanied by his second wife, Eleanor Townsend. From 1985 to 1991 he performed annually at the Shetland Folk Festival.

In 1964 Townsend played 36 weeks in Toronto in the show Star Route. He then took over the radio and television program Happy Wanderers from Ward Allen in Ottawa. He also appeared on television with Don Messer and was a guest on the shows of Tommy Hunter, Ronnie Prophet and the Family Brown as well as the show Up Home Tonight by CBC Halifax TV and from 1991 That Country Feeling by mC TV.

Townsend recorded more than forty albums and recorded about two hundred of his four hundred own tracks, including Royal Princess Two Step, Rocking Chair Jake, Debbie’s Waltz, Maytime Swing, Black Jack Whiskey, My Dungannon Sweetheart, Swinging in the 80s and Ice on the Road. He accompanied musicians such as Carroll Baker, Stompin’ Tom Conners, Dolly Parton, Fred Penner, Raffi, Sharon, Lois & Bram and Sneezy Waters as fiddlers and also recorded as mandolinist and pianist (with the fiddler Joe Loutchan). He is a founding member of the Ontario Old Time Fiddlers Association. In 1982 he was inducted into the Fiddlers Hall of Fame in Oceola, in 1990 into the Ottawa Valley Country Music Hall of Fame and in 1998 into the Canadian National Fiddling Hall of Fame. In 1991 he was nominated for a Juno Award, in 1993 he received together with his wife the Porcupine Award and at the Canadian Grandmasters Fiddling Championships in 1998 the Lifetime Achievement Award. Townsend died of cancer in December 1998 and his wife Eleanor died in a fire on New Year’s Eve that year.

Weblinks
Dorothy Hogan: "The Fiddlers will play on three strings for quite a while", Canadian Folk Music Bulletin
Al Yetman: A Tribute to Graham Townsend, Canadian Folk Music Bulletin
The Canadian Encyclopedia - Graham Townsend

Geiger
Mandolinist
Pianist
Songwriters
Folk musicians
Canada