ABSTRACT
Joe Wilson of Newcastle upon Tyne, the son of a cabinet-maker and a bonnet-maker, was an apprentice printer, a publisher, entertainer and publican, and a popular songwriter in a thriving Tyneside tradition. Wilson tells his own story well in the short autobiographical ‘Sketch’. There were a number of outlets for amateur singing and music on Tyneside. There was a common tradition of public house singing sessions, known as ‘free and easies’, and Saturday evening concerts in the ‘Lecture Room’, known as ‘People’s Concerts’. The spectacle of the traditionally macho Geordie male, for example, left ineptly holding his crying baby, while fretfully muttering, ‘Aw Wish Yor Mother Wad Cum’ is memorable, as are characters like the handsome but unreliable ‘Gallowgate Lad’. Wilson records that his father died at the ‘arly age o’ thorty-one’ leaving his mother to bring up four children alone, and his own life was cut short at just thirty-three.
