Wild Willy Barrett
Encyclopedia
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
folk singer
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
from Hemel Hempstead
Hemel Hempstead
Hemel Hempstead is a town in Hertfordshire in the East of England, to the north west of London and part of the Greater London Urban Area. The population at the 2001 Census was 81,143 ....
best known for his collaborations with John Otway
John Otway
John Otway, is an English singer-songwriter, who has built a sizeable cult audience through extensive touring, a surreal sense of humour and a self-deprecating underdog persona.-Biography:...
. His musical style is witty and his humour
Humour
Humour or humor is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement...
onstage is dry. He is known for virtuoso fiddle
Fiddle
The term fiddle may refer to any bowed string musical instrument, most often the violin. It is also a colloquial term for the instrument used by players in all genres, including classical music...
playing, ability with a great number of stringed instruments
Musical instrument
A musical instrument is a device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the...
, and playing slide guitar
Slide guitar
Slide guitar or bottleneck guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar. The term slide refers to the motion of the slide against the strings, while bottleneck refers to the original material of choice for such slides: the necks of glass bottles...
with a whole raw egg. During recent Otway/Barrett performances, he has also introduced the 'wah wah wheelie bin'.
He is credited with supporting guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
, fiddle and vocals in a number of other albums, from Rolf Harris
Rolf Harris
Rolf Harris, CBE, AM is an Australian musician, singer-songwriter, composer, painter and television personality.Born in Perth, Western Australia, Harris was a champion swimmer before studying art. He moved to England in 1952, where he started to appear on television programmes on which he drew the...
' version of "Bohemian Rhapsody
Bohemian Rhapsody
"Bohemian Rhapsody" is a song by the British rock band Queen. It was written by Freddie Mercury for the band's 1975 album A Night at the Opera...
" to playing fiddle, guitar and mandolin
Mandolin
A mandolin is a musical instrument in the lute family . It descends from the mandore, a soprano member of the lute family. The mandolin soundboard comes in many shapes—but generally round or teardrop-shaped, sometimes with scrolls or other projections. A mandolin may have f-holes, or a single...
for George Hamilton IV
George Hamilton IV
George Hege Hamilton IV is an American country musician. He began performing in the late 1950s as a teen idol, later switching to country music in the early 1960s.-Biography:Hamilton was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina...
.
Barrett has been performing vocal and strings
String instrument
A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...
for Sleeping Dogz, and closed the Cambridge Folk Festival
Cambridge Folk Festival
The Cambridge Folk Festival is an annual music festival held on the site of Cherry Hinton Hall in Cherry Hinton, one of the villages subsumed by the city of Cambridge, England. The festival is renowned for its eclectic mix of music and a wide definition of what might be considered folk. It occurs...
in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2009. He toured autumn 2009 with John Otway and toured with Sleeping Dogz in April/May 2010.
Barrett is also a skilled wood worker and carver and has produced highly unique furniture over many years. He once made a wooden record sleeve for his album Organic Bondage when he did not have the finances to get a sleeve printed.
Discography
- 1977 John Otway & Wild Willy BarrettJohn Otway & Wild Willy BarrettJohn Otway & Wild Willy Barrett is the 1976 studio album by English folk singer-songwriter duo John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett. Released first on their own Extracked Records, the album is a collection of recordings made between 1971 and 1976.The duo were signed onto Polydor soon after the album...
- 1978 Deep and Meaningless (with John Otway)
- 1979 Call of the Wild
- 1980 Way and Bar (with John Otway)
- 1981 Krazy Kong
- 1981 Gone With The Bin - The Best Of Otway & Barrett (compilationCompilation albumA compilation album is an album featuring tracks from one or more performers, often culled from a variety of sources The tracks are usually collected according to a common characteristic, such as popularity, genre, source or subject matter...
) - 1986 Organic Bondage
- 1989 The Wimp and The Wild (with John Otway)
- 1994 Open Toed and Flapping
- 2002 Gypsies Too
- 2004 Drum With No Ears
- 2006 Dogs Are My Favourite Human's
- 2009 Weirdy Beardy Plays The Blues