Martyn Wyndham-Read

Who is Martyn Wyndham-Read?

Martyn Wyndham-Read is an English folk singer, notable as a collector and singer of Australian folk songs. He lived and worked in Australia from 1960 to 1967 and has been a regular visitor to the country since then.

Martyn Wyndham-Read has been involved with folk music since he heard singers on an Australian sheep station in the 1960s. In 1960 he moved from Sussex to Australia where he worked on Emu Springs sheep station in South Australia. It was while he was there that he heard, first hand, the old songs sung by some of the station hands at Emu Springs and he became captivated by these songs and decided he needed to know more of them and where they came from grew. He moved to Melbourne and became part of the folk song revival there and throughout Australia during the early 1960s.

Wyndham-Read returned England in 1967 and met up with the renowned singer and song collector Bert Lloyd, who himself had spent time in Australia. Wyndham-Read was asked by Lloyd to contribute to the album ‘Leviathan’ on the Topic label. Soon afterwards he started recording for Bill Leader.