Frances Butt – Brief Biography
F, the youngest of ten children, grew up in Wolverhampton. All the family played instruments and fooled around singing while washing up. F wrote short classical and jazz pieces as a child, but never imagined it possible to write ‘for real’. In her teens she played keyboards and sang BVs with punk band Self Drive, borrowing keyboards from and jamming with reggae band Weapon of Peace.
During a happy career in the film business she met and married producer/director Bill Butt and they settled in Bristol. F started writing music again: 10 years of TV soundtracks followed, mostly for wildlife films – one of which resulted in the jazz suite Calls Of The Wild (see sound clips and shop).
After writing her first song ‘Sometimes’ in 1999, F collaborated with Jimmy Galvin (Lushlife EP) and the Pindrop Band before releasing her first album ‘I Wonder’ in 2005.
She has recently worked with members of Massive Attack, Portishead, Goldfrapp, Placebo and Strangelove.
Why Bossa Nova?
“I’ve hardly scratched the surface of Brazilian music and probably never will. Brazil holds a whole world of music by itself, but bossa nova still really captures my mood. It combines understated but funky rhythm with surprising, beautiful harmonic progression and gorgeous melodies. The original bossa nova aesthetic was admittedly ‘love-flower-sea’ – not exactly the stuff of hard-hitting protest. But it’s the sound I love, especially combined with Brazilian Portuguese – the most sensuous sung language in the world. If you reckon bossa nova’s extinct, check out amazing artists like Joyce and Vinicius Cantuaria who continue to develop the sound and repertoire.
“When I was about 7 I first heard the ‘Getz/Gilberto’ album and was totally smitten with the sound. I never dreamed then that I’d be singing those songs today but it’s been the most fulfilling thing I’ve done musically. People at gigs were asking me for recordings of the Brazilian stuff and that’s how The Girl From Wolverhampton came about. My own material is so deeply influenced by bossa nova I felt I should acknowledge the roots. Saúde!”
