Alan Brown: Press

Here's my September article in Comment, the local news magazine. It's marking the recent death of bandleader Jim Johnstone.

LORD OF THE DANCE

The death last month of bandleader Jim Johnstone saw a further depletion in the ranks of the survivors of the Golden Age of Scottish Country Dance music.

It’s sometimes difficult for us in this sophisticated 21st century to realise how popular the music was, but in its heyday between the1940s and the 1960s, Scottish musicians played to stadium-sized crowds around the world and reached radio and television audiences in their tens of millions.

Jim Johnstone was born in Tranent, near the place where Johnny Cope had his little bit of bother with the Jacobites in 1745, and there was never any doubt about his musical future as his father and three uncles all played 5 row Continental accordions.

Jim began lessons at the age of 9 but because the only 5 row boxes available were big, clumsy pre-war models, he started instead on a piano accordion with the intention of changing over later.

The lessons were conducted by one of Edinburgh’s most renowned teachers, Chrissie Leatham, whose son, Owen Murray, is now Professor of Accordion at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Jim began learning continental classics, supplementing this at home with traditional music and listening to 78s on the gramophone.

The breakthrough came at age 13 when Jim’s dad heard a radio announcement looking for young musicians to broadcast on the BBC. Jim auditioned successfully and in May 1950 on Children’s Hour he played Dundee City Police Pipe Band, McDonald’s Awa’ Tae the War and The Black Mask Waltz. Two years later, his friend and fellow Boy Scout, Bobby Colgan, bought a set of drums and the duo began playing for dances and weddings.

One Monday evening in 1962 came a phone call from another doyen of the dance band scene, Andrew Rankine, asking Jim if he was available to do a “broadcast on Wednesday”. It went well and he was asked to join the band, whose line-up at that time was Andrew, Ron Gonnella, Billy Thom, Tom McTague and Bill Hendry. “What a swing the band had,” recalled Jim later, “but what else would you expect with a jazz rhythm section like that?”

In 1963 Andrew Rankine emigrated to Australia and Jim formed his own band before joining the great Jimmy Shand full time, accompanying Scotland's greatest ever accordionist on his historic tours of Australia and New Zealand. In 1967 came another change when he became a member of Jimmy Blue’s band after the departure of Mickie Ainsworth.
The following year, BBC producer Iain MacFadyen asked Jim to form a band to carry on the tremendously popular White Heather Club in theatres. This was the line-up of Pam Brough, Billy Craib, Billy Thom and Tommy Lees, the band which also made the groundbreaking A Measure of Scotch album which many of today’s established musicians frequently place on their list of inspirational music. The Jim Johnstone Band became one of the hottest properties and they often played six nights a week.

Jim was also a hugely talented and prolific composer, with probably his most often played tune being the wonderful Billy Thom‘s Reel. His Inveresk March, The Banks of the Nith and Fisherrow Polka were composed for the BBC programme On Tour, while Radio Forth commissioned his Pure Scotch Two-Step as signature tune for its programme of the same name. Readers of a certain age will also remember fondly another signature tune The Thingummyjig Polka, and during the 1970s, Jim was a regular guest on the long-running Songs of Scotland.

Jim Johnstone was very much one of the link men of Scottish dance music. He brought together the closing years of the original bands and the formative years of the young and exciting bands of today, and while the musical enthusiasts still rave about the sophistication and subtleties of his recordings, his own musical credo remained simple: “Always play for your audience.”

In 2005 he was inducted into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame, an honour awarded to musicians who have been in the industry over 30 years and who have altered our musical landscape for the better. Thankfully, we’ll be dancing to Jim’s tunes for a long time to come.

Here's my Brown's Around article in the August edition of Comment, the Highland Perthshire News Magazine.

IF YOU HAD SEEN WHAT I HAE SEEN …

As we go to press, it’s the week after the anniversary of the Battle of Killiecrankie. Many readers of this column will know that it took place some three miles up the old A9 from Pitlochry at a spot called the Pass of Killiecrankie. Most people will know also that the site of the battle is looked after by the National Trust for Scotland, thus ensuring lots of visitors.

It’s a very popular place for Japanese tourists, and last time I visited there was a coach load of around 60 of them just about to leave the car park. The coach driver kindly waited to let me drive past but while he was stopped, someone jumped out from the cover of the trees, ran up the steps of the coach and stole the driver’s wallet. Police are not worried, however, as they have 366 photographs of the suspect.

So why the interest in Killiecrankie? Well, while I was researching some songs (otherwise known as desperately looking for new material) I came once again on that old chestnut called Killiecrankie, sometimes known as The Braes o’ Killiecrankie. It’s a very popular song but try as I might I can’t get to like it. Its origins are obscure, though we know that Robert Burns amended it and there are also followers of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, who claim it as their man’s. It certainly isn’t one of Burns’s best ones; with lines like “I’ve fought at land, I’ve fought at sea, at hame I fought my Auntie, oh” how could it be?

I’ve found recordings of it lumped under the general catch-all of ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobite Risings’ though the Bonnie Prince himself would not catch his first sight of a Roman sky until more than thirty years after.

The actual battle was fought on 27 July 1689 between Jacobite and Government troops and it wasn’t, repeat wasn’t, between the Scots and the English. There were Scots on both sides and there were English on both sides. Some say there were Irish on three sides, but that‘s another story.

What we do know is that the leader of the Jacobites was John Graham of Claverhouse, known to his followers as Bonnie Dundee and to his detractors as Bluidy Clavers. The Government troops were led by another Scotsman, General Mackay from Scourie. Dundee was victorious but made a bad career move by getting himself killed and was never the same man again. In fact they buried him twice, but, as above, that’s also another story next time you visit Old Blair.

And what’s all this to do with music? Well, thanks to the glories of the internet and, in particular YouTube, you can see again that wonderful BBC TV clip of The Corries marching proudly along Pitlochry’s Atholl Road and heading out towards the battlefield on the aforementioned old A9. They are strumming guitars and lip-synching to the song as they go along and what is amazing in this day and age is the lack of fuss in filming it. There they go, just two guys out for a stroll in 1966, with locals and visitors alike standing on the pavement outside Fisher’s Hotel or heading into the Post Office as if it was a common occurrence to see a television crew at work. Perhaps it was. Some viewers may notice, too, that no roads required to be closed off.

Now Roy and Ronnie are beyond the town and almost in the middle of the road, with traffic driving past unconcerned. Look out for the driver of a 3-wheeler who cuts out to pass and nips in smartly, almost removing the right leg of the striding author of Flower of Scotland. It’s a marvellous clip of film and you can see it by clicking on YouTube then keying in Corries Killiecrankie 1966.

On another matter, it’s been necessary to cut short my summer show at Castle Menzies and there will be no more performances this year. I blame sub-prime mortgages and the credit crunch myself but I’d like to thank John, Anne, Mike and Eassie at the Castle for all their help over the past five months.

Here's my Brown's Around article in the July edition of Comment, the Highland Perthshire News Magazine.

CATCHING UP

Now that the great excitement of Euro 2008 and Wimbledon is but a thing of the past, here’s a trio of news items which may have escaped your notice during the past few weeks when their deserved inclusion in the press was put on hold for what was deemed more important news.

The first item concerns a piping aficionado, as they say in Gaelic, who set out to fund-raise in an unusual way. Alastair MacGregor, chief executive of Argyll Community Housing Association, sheared fifty sheep without a break in a five hour session at his father’s farm at Connel, near Oban.

The event raised £4,100 and this will go towards tuition of pibroch, the classical music of the great Highland bagpipe, for schoolchildren in Argyll and Bute. Mr MacGregor had the idea for the event while attending the Highlands and Islands Music and Dance Festival held at Oban in May this year. He was very impressed by the number of young people involved in the pibroch competitions and by the commitment shown by them, their parents and tutors to develop this vital part of piping’s heritage.

His son Jamie, 12, is a keen chanter player who hopes to progress to the pipes. While Mr MacGregor does not play himself, he has always been interested in piping, and enjoys the music. He was taught to hand-shear as a boy nearly 40 years ago but says: “It’s been a long time since I’ve done any shearing at that level.”

And from one clip to another, for Billy Connolly has recorded a video clip to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of Paisley folk musician Danny Kyle. Danny was very well known in this part of Highland Perthshire and was for many years associated with the Killin Traditional Music & Dance Festival.

The Big Yin's on-screen tribute to his friend was scheduled to be shown at the Danny Kyle Memorial Concert, held in Paisley Town Hall as part of the town's Sma' Shot Day. Acts taking part included the Tannahill Weavers, Skelpaig, Maeve O' Boyle, Dave Acari, Doghouse Roses, Maria Hall, Wing and a Prayer and House of Cheese, plus extra special guests Malky McCormick, Tich Frier and Brian Miller from the original Vindscreen Vipers.

Danny's son Rikki, who organised the event, said: "My dad would be proud. This was his main thing all his life - giving people who wanted to play a platform to do it."

And finally, as a role model for both disabled and able-bodied young people, it would be difficult to find someone to match Evelyn Glennie. In a career spanning more than two decades she has performed regularly on the international circuit and has become well established as a composer.

Her extraordinary achievements were honoured last month when she was made a dame by the Queen for her services to music. Evelyn, who has been profoundly deaf since the age of 12, was born in Aberdeen and went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music, becoming the world’s first solo percussionist.

When asked what her inspiration was at the beginning of her career she replied: “I just wanted to do it; it felt right to me to follow that type of career. If you want to do something, just do it.”

She added: “My deafness was more of an issue with the press and I suppose it helped to get me noticed but at the end of the day you’ve just got to focus on what you want to do.”

Incidentally, on the subject of being kept off the front pages, spare a thought for the archaeologists who unearthed the Anglo-Saxon longship at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk. Their discovery of what was an important cultural breakthrough was made in the last week of August 1939 but for some unaccountable reason news editors around the world unanimously decided to lead with the outbreak of World War Two. Ah, well, put it on the website and see who notices.

Here's the June edition of my monthly articles in Comment, the Highland Perthshire news magazine.

BROWN’S AROUND - JUNE 2008

MORE LINES FROM A SONGWRITER’S FOREHEAD

Regular readers of this column - greetings to you both - will know that when it comes to the wonderful world of entertainment I like to keep my finger on the pulse, or some other vegetable.

This month, I had intended to have you in convulsions with my witty asides on the Eurovision Song Contest, the final of Britain’s Got Talent and the prospects for a new series of Pop Idol, but two factors have held me back. Firstly, I haven‘t seen any of these programmes and secondly, my computer was offline for a period of twelve days last month.

It all came about when I upgraded my account with my Internet Service Provider. Now, for the Luddites out there, this is the company which allows me, for a consideration, to receive electronic communications from people I have never met and, if I never did meet them it would still be too soon. They offer me genuine Rolex watch imitations, pick-me-ups for various parts of the body, and hitherto dormant claims to kingdoms in Africa.

But they also offer me unlimited access to the greatest reference source of them all - the World Wide Web, without which this column might even stray into the realms of boredom. No! I hear you cry, or was it the wind?

Anyway, it transpires that my upgraded account was registered in the name of another Mr Brown. This is incredible; it’s not as if it’s a common name. But somewhere in the civilized world, or possibly even in Perthshire, the other Mr Brown was reaping what I had sowed, in a manner of speaking. It’s a pity he couldn’t have written this column, I hear you add.

The net - or lack of net - result was that when the fault was diagnosed and normality restored, thanks to my local help desk technician Jude, who is based in a call centre in Durban, South Africa, there were 566 emails awaiting my urgent attention.

Now that I’m back up to speed, and, what’s more, I see I’ve just been offered the post of Financial Comptroller of the People’s Republic of West Munrovia-by-the-Niger, here‘s a few nuggets from this entertainer’s goldmine of gigs over the past few months.

At a hotel between Perth and Dundee it was ceilidh band time for my first ever civil partnership ‘wedding‘. There were two ‘brides’, one of whom wore a white wedding dress and the other wore morning suit and a top hat. And which dance did they ask for specifically to begin their new life? Got it in one: the Gay Gordons. Incidentally, if you remember Barbra Streisand’s song in Funny Girl when she marries Omar Sharif, this was the only other occasion I’ve seen where the groom was lovelier than the bride.

A local restaurant was the scene of a magical event. I was facing the diners with my back to the picture window which overlooks Loch Tay when I sensed that I didn’t have their undivided attention. It was the shouts of “Get out the way,“ which made me suspicious. On turning round I saw the reason for the excitement: two ospreys diving into the loch in pursuit of their seafood diet.

And finally, next time you’re in the castle where I do my “This is Scotland … and You’re Welcome To It” show, have a look at the Visitors’ Book. There is an enthusiastic entry from a couple who had visited from Ireland. Now, I know you’re thinking this is going to be an ethnic joke … and you’re quite correct. But as a Scot, I am a member of one of the most ethnically stereotyped races ever, so I can only quote what is written in the book. It says “A once in a lifetime experience. Hope it will be the first of many.“

I rest my case. I’ve got emails to answer.

Here's my article for the May edition of Comment, the Highland Perthshire news magazine.

BROWN’S AROUND - MAY 2008

I’D WALK A MILLION MILES …

If you were asked to supply the next part of the song in the title of this article you would probably answer in one of two ways. If you are of a certain age, you might complete the line with “for one of your smiles, my Mammy.” This was the version of the song recorded successfully by Al Jolson.

However, if you follow up “I’d walk a million miles …” with “for one of your goals”, then you might just have an interest in football, and you might be asking for which team the song’s writers Messrs Donaldson, Lewis and Young provided the midfield trio.

The infiltration of popular music into football is relatively modern. Your grandfather would have baulked at any form of chanting at a football match; shouting was permissible, of course - think of the Hampden Roar - and there might be community singing before the game began, but singing was definitely aff.

The modern form of terracing chanting began with the fans of the great Brazilian World Cup teams of the Sixties and spread over here like their style of football never did. Today it is commonplace to hear the Latin American classic Guantanamera sung with words featuring a favourite player along the lines of “One James McFadden, there’s only one James McFadden.”

But who could have foreseen a football crowd singing a song from a Broadway musical with the original words? The Rodgers and Hammerstein 1945 stage show “Carousel” was made into a movie in 1956 and provided an inspirational song called “You’ll Never Walk Alone”. The original soundtrack version, featuring Shirley Jones and Gordon MacRae, was an enormous success and there the story seemed to end. But in 1963, just as The Mersey Sound was emerging from Liverpool, the song was recorded by Gerry and the Pacemakers. It was played at Liverpool FC’s ground at Anfield and adopted as “their song” by the famed Kop End.

On the other side of the city, Liverpool’s great rivals Everton take the field at Goodison Park to the original version of the theme from Z Cars, played by an Edinburgh musician called Johnny Keating for a television police series which began in 1962. Everton had one of their most successful times during this era and the playing of the tune is probably intended to spur them on to greater things.

Incidentally, I’m sure you know that Liverpool is the current City of Culture, despite its reputation as a good place for crime. I played a gig there recently and when I came out of the hall, my car was sitting on four encyclopaedias.

West Ham United fans have an unlikely choice of song: “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles”. In 1927, an advertising campaign appeared for soap and featured a curly haired child blowing soap bubbles. He was likened to one of the West Ham players and the song is sung to this day. Meanwhile, Manchester City supporters belt out their version of “Blue Moon”, another Richard Rodgers song, this time with lyrics by Lorenz Hart and written in 1934.

But perhaps the strangest club song - and one with a definite Scottish link - is that of Birmingham City. Before every game you will hear fans on the terracing (not sure about the ones in corporate hospitality) singing a song composed by Sir Harry Lauder. The song is “Keep Right On to the End of the Road” and it was written by Lauder in tragic circumstances, after hearing that his only son, John, an officer with the 8th Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, had been killed in action at Poiziers in 1916. His last words to his comrades were to the effect of “Keep on” and Lauder constructed the very moving song around this. A Scots-born Birmingham player named Alex Govan may have been responsible for introducing the song to the club.

Finally, there are tribute songs. It’s back to the Sixties again and my home town team of Dundee. They had three fabulous seasons from 1961-63 when they won the Scottish League, made the Scottish Cup Final and reached the semi-finals of the European Cup. A Glasgow comedian called Hector Nicol, along with the Kelvin Country Dance Band, brought out a song to the tune of Bonnie Dundee. It contained a verse listing that team of teams: “There’s Robertson, Penman and Alan Gilzean; with Cousin and Smith they’re the finest you’ve seen; a defence that is steady, heroic and sure; Liney, Hamilton, Cox, Seith and Wishart and Ure.”

Within a year the stalwarts of the team (and the internal rhyming) Alan Gilzean and Ian Ure were on their way to Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal respectively and the song was no more, once again proving that you’re only as good as your last hit record.

Here's my article for the April issue of COMMENT, the Highland Perthshire news magazine.

BROWN’S AROUND - APRIL 2008

HEROES

Where would we be without our heroes? They inspire us to attempt unlikely tasks, to follow up crackpot ideas, to aspire to impossible dreams, all of which are probably well beyond our reach, but with a glimmer of hope that we might just be successful. Hence the popularity of those “How To …” books, passing on the secrets of the successful to the eager. Somewhere there must be one called “How To Write a How To Book.”

But this is a column about music, so there won’t be any mention of real heroes like Mr Smeaton of Glasgow Airport fame, though I think the restaurants of his city could adopt as an enticing visitor slogan “Come to Glasgow - We’ll Set (the Table) Aboot Ye!”. Incidentally, I’m amazed that Glasgow Jazz Festival hasn’t adapted the city’s former slogan and come up with “Glasgow’s Miles Davis”. But I digress.

I began compiling a list of my musical heroes for a project I’m presenting over the spring and summer months. Where to begin? Well, firstly, which artistes did I hear at an early stage in my development and decide that I wanted to be like them? Growing up in the early 1950s, the influences were mostly radio and record based.

Like millions of others, I came under the spell of rock ‘n’ roll from the young men and women of the United States. I didn’t know what bobby-sox were but they sounded glamorous; British singers wore bow ties and crinolines. It was the sounds of Elvis, Little Richard and the Everly Brothers that had me practising guitar night and day; at that age, even three chords is a lot for small hands.

But at home, ahead of them all was Anthony James Donegan, better known as Lonnie. He was a banjo player, born in Glasgow, but his father was no dustman; he was a violinist with the Scottish National Orchestra and the Donegan family moved to London. Lonnie joined the Ken Colyer Jazz Band at the same time as young Chris Barber and, as a result of their million-selling single “Rock Island Line”, helped set up the skiffle movement in the UK. The first Lonnie single I bought was Woody Guthrie’s song “Grand Coulee Dam” and the magic has never worn off.

I followed the example of young Brian Rankin. His skiffle group won a talent contest in South Shields and Brian set out for London with his best pal, Bruce Cripps. A change of name led to Bruce becoming Bruce Welch and Brian becoming Hank B Marvin, a role model for just about every schoolboy guitarist, incorporating a flawless technique with what can only be described as Specs Appeal.

Being brought up in Scotland, of course, meant an awareness of traditional music, running the whole gamut from Jimmy Shand to the dynamic new folk groups like The Corries. Listening to individual singers like Jean Redpath, Archie Fisher and eventually acquiring a taste for Bob Dylan, led to a great interest in the singer/songwriters, with the doyen of them all - for me - being a young man from Fife. Rab Noakes wrote songs that weren’t about North America but were songs with which I could identify, and much as I wanted to see the Grand Coulee Dam or to drive a pink cadillac or discover the mysteries of soda pop (I knew what bobby-sox were by this time), his work sent me in a direction which I have continued to follow, writing and performing songs that relate to people and places I have encountered for myself.

Looking back now, I agree with songwriter Sammy Cahn that youth is wasted on the young. I am fascinated by all the music I missed because it was either before my time or I was too busy growing up through it. But there has never been a better opportunity to buy recordings of that music, with internet retailers practically giving away out-of-copyright collected editions of the singers and musicians of the 1950s and earlier. Yes, we all need our heroes.

(Alan Brown is presenting “Heroes” each Wednesday at The Waterfront, Kenmore.)

Here's my March article in Comment, the Highland Perthshire News Magazine:

FOUR IN A ROW

A very famous person - Einstein? Voltaire? Jordan? - once said that the best laid schemes of mice and men seldom coincide. Someone equally famous - Gandhi or Gordon Ramsay, perhaps - set us all back on our heels with “See a pin and pick it up and all the day you’ll have a pin.“

Increasingly, it’s to the great thinkers and philosophers of our planet that we look in this time of turmoil as Scotland the Brave stands on the verge of actually having a clue what it’s about to do with itself in the years ahead.

To this end, I have set the ball rolling once again by reconvening my weekly residency in the fashionable North Bank district of the Tay for the fourth year in a row to present with great pleasure my one-man show THIS IS SCOTLAND … AND YOU’RE WELCOME TO IT! which has been described (mostly by me) as an irreverent but affectionate look and listen in words and music to that strange country which we know as Scotland, with particular emphasis, of course, on Highland Perthshire.

Originally I had thought of calling it a Revue, but, alas, that description went out with Beyond the Fringe and Flanders and Swann, so it‘s best to describe it as an evening of music and comedy, “where ancient myths are shattered; Mars Bars deeply battered.“

And it most certainly isn’t a Highland Night. Granny’s Hielan’ Hame will remain unoccupied for the evening, country music addicts will discover the Blanket on the Ground is still in the car boot along with the dog lead and the wellies, and fans of the Wild Rover will find him electronically tagged and far away from trouble. Incidentally, I recently took a leaf out of Johnny Cash’s San Quentin book and did Alan Brown Live at Castle Huntly, but there was nobody there.

As the evening unfolds, you’ll find out the true story of the goings-on at the Killiecrankie Burns Supper; discover the links between Pontius Pilate and Togas-R-Us in Fortingall, and hear how a Birnam bunny changed his name to Peter and became the brains behind a worldwide publishing empire. You‘ll marvel at Bonnie Prince Charlie (who stayed a couple of nights at the venue) and how he sold the blockbusting saga of his exploits over the sea to Skye Digital, and you’ll hear about the original steamship on Loch Tay.

And - keeping the end until last - following on from the fantastic news that Scotland might be allowed to take part proudly as a nation in the Eurovision Song Contest, you’ll be privileged to hear for the very first time - and, what’s more, to sing along with - my original, self-written, truly memorable bid to become the official entry: “Jings, Crivvens, Help Ma Boab - That Means I Love You”.
The setting for the show is the sumptuous wood-panelled Dewar Room in magnificent 16th Century Castle Menzies, situated on the trendy North Bank of the Tay just outside Aberfeldy on the B846, a road steeped in history which leads you over General Wade’s 1733 bridge, still with the original traffic lights, to the stunning vistas along the Road to the Isles by Tummel and Loch Rannoch and, if you’re really lost, Lochaber.

There’s an extended run this year and THIS IS SCOTLAND … AND YOU’RE WELCOME TO IT! is presented at 8 pm each Thursday evening from 3 April until 25 September. The fully-licensed bar at Castle Menzies is open before, during and after the show. Tickets are £6 and are on sale at the venue, or may be reserved by phoning Castle Menzies on (01887) 820982. For more information see my website at www.broonsreel.com

Over the past three years’ run, I have kept a visitors’ book which is crammed with comments from as far afield as Florida and Fearnan, Kenmore and Kentucky, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, all over the UK, and parts of Europe which, if they entered the Eurovision Song Contest (hey - we might be right there with them!), would necessitate a second or third night’s broadcast. I look forward to meeting old and new faces.

Here's my Brown's Around article for February's issue of Comment:

A WELL-CONNECTED CHOIR

There are days in your life when you have to pinch yourself to make sure that what’s happening really is. For the Aberfeldy & District Gaelic Choir and their temporary member Brown, A, Bass of this Parish, the last day of January was such a day.

Two years ago, the Choir got together with renowned singer and folklorist Margaret Bennett, described by Hamish Henderson as undoubtedly one of the major figures of the modern Scottish Revival, to contribute some backings to her solo album The Road to Aberfeldy. Margaret was so taken by the Choir’s ability and enthusiasm that she invited them to join her on stage at the prestigious Celtic Connections music festival in Glasgow for a production of The Cottar’s Saturday Night (What? Mentioning Burns outwith January? We’re doomed … aye, doomed …)

Fast forward now to January 2008 and Margaret is again performing at the same event, this time in a celebration of global music entitled Voices of the World, featuring three choirs - one from Bulgaria, one from Italy … and one from Aberfeldy. To be asked to perform again in Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall in such esteemed company was indeed an honour for the Choir.

Just how prestigious the festival is can be seen by the figures for Celtic Connections 2008. There were approximately 120,000 people present over the 300 concerts, ceilidhs, talks, free events, late night sessions and workshops in 14 venues across Glasgow over the event’s 19 days.

My temporary involvement came about through joining the Choir for the popular Rotary Christmas Carol Concert and staying on until Celtic Connections and the end of the transfer window, before returning from the Champions League to Division Two financial keepie-uppie.

There was a twenty-minute set to fill and only four practices allocated. The Old Library in Aberfeldy Town Hall was brought into use when line-dancers commandeered the Choir’s usual rehearsal space, and there was a temporary setback when the ceiling fell down, but - hey! - that’s show-business.

On the day, illness and heavy snow in Glen Lyon cut the first team squad by four and the weather worsened as the coach attempted its journey “through bloody flood and field to dash, oh how unfit” to quote that man again.

Siberian Glasgow was reached well after the scheduled time but a brief sound check was possible. The Choir was joined by new conductor Isobel Rutter but there was no time for a singing rehearsal.

The show began with the trio of Karine Polwart, Corrina Hewat and Annie Grace, and Annie remembered fondly her time in the band Iron Horse and their concerts at Ballinluig’s Mid Atholl Hall in the early days of Heartland FM. Mary Smith sang exclusively in Gaelic, then came Angelite, the Bulgarian Women’s Choir. They have performed in Red Square in Moscow, at the Nobel Peace Prize awards in Stockholm and at the Vatican and their unusual sound comes primarily from a second voice which is maintained at a slight interval from the leading melody. The result is a powerful jagged edge which is not soon forgotten.

Their precise sound contrasted with the Italian ladies of the Novi Choir, many of whom went to school together before leaving home to work in the rice fields in Piedmont. They met up again and began singing for fun, with much of their repertoire coming from the same songs they had devised and sung years before.

The Choir and Margaret, aided by two Highland dancers and a trio of young pipers, opened the second half of the evening and received rapturous applause for a Scots and Gaelic set which finished with Margaret’s very moving lament for her late son, the enormously talented Martyn Bennett, who died on the last day of Celtic Connections 2006.

Coming offstage, we were greeted by the Bulgarian choir with the universal word “bravo” before preparing for an impromptu massed finale featuring all the performers (plus an Italian folk rock band!) Several curtain calls were taken and the Voices of the World began to make their way back to their own small corners.

Of course we’re all too hard-boiled and cynical to admit it, but that same Mr Burns who wrote that bit about man to man, you know, and being brithers etc, might have looked down and smiled. I was so glad to have been there.

Here's my first Comment news magazine article for 2008

IN FINE COMPANY

Firstly, may I wish a very happy New Year 2008 to readers of this column and compliment you once again on your impeccable taste in literature. I expect you’re wondering how I’m going to angle this month’s article to present yet another fascinating insight into the genius of Robert Burns, for, indeed, it is his season; well, the answer is I’m not … yet.

When the first four Monday evenings of last month found me with no professional gigs, I joined up with my friends in the Aberfeldy & District Gaelic Choir to rehearse for the annual Rotary Club Christmas Carol Service held in Breadalbane Academy. The practices went very well - thanks in no small way to the Choir’s Interim Conductor, whose name escapes me but who I married almost twenty years ago.

Such is the musical talent carefully nurtured and developed by the Music Department of Breadalbane Academy - Gordon Murch, Melvyn Turnbull and all the visiting tutors - and the enthusiasm of both Primary and Secondary pupils, the Carol Concert itself was an all-too-short evening of musical excellence.

I enjoyed singing with the Choir and it’s reassuring to know that they still welcome opportunities to perform locally as well as nationally. On a personal note, too, the concert was exactly five years to the day that I said Bye Bye Blackboard to those same premises and embarked on a career as a professional musician.

And on the subject of national fame, I was delighted to find out that the Choir has been asked once again by Margaret Bennett to accompany her at the highly prestigious Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow. If you’re not familiar with her work, Margaret was described by the father of Scottish folk music and folklore Dr Hamish Henderson thus: “She is a folksinger of great sensitivity and versatility, and is undoubtedly one of the major figures of the modern Scottish Revival. There can be few scholars on either side of the Atlantic who succeed in combining such a wide range of skills as Margaret Bennett. Margaret embodies all that is best of the spirit of Scotland."

One of songs featured in the performance in Glasgow will be the Gaelic lament which Margaret sang so movingly on the second programme in the series Scotland’s Music with Phil Cunningham and which she dedicated to her late son Martyn.

The Aberfeldy & District Gaelic Choir sang with Margaret on her CD The Road to Aberfeldy and at the 2007 Celtic Connections festival in a production of The Cottar’s Saturday Night (you just knew I’d get Mr Burns in somewhere, didn‘t you!) and as you read this she will joining in rehearsals with the Choir.

The Glasgow event, in the Royal Concert Hall on the last day of this month, brings together two fabled female choirs from Italy and Bulgaria along with Aberfeldy’s finest in a massed celebration of world music.

Coro delle Mondine di Novi (the Novi Rice Weeders' Choir) began life as its original founders toiled in Italy's rice fields during World War II, singing to alleviate the drudgery, while at the same time smuggling messages and weapons for the resistance. After the war, the songs they shared became emblems of freedom, passed on in turn to their children, and now form the basis of the 35 strong choir's show Di Madre in Figlia (From Mother to Daughter), a collaboration with the young folk/fusion band Fiamma Fumana.

They will be joined by the legendary Bulgarian Women's Choir, Angelite, whose extraordinary harmonic and rhythmic blend draws on vocal traditions dating back some 2000 years.

The line-up of musical talent will be completed by the well-known Scots harmony trio of Corrina Hewat, Annie Grace and Karine Polwart as well as renowned Lewis Gaelic singer Mairi Smith.

It is a great honour for our home choir to perform alongside such illustrious names in representing Scotland and, fresh from their 40th anniversary in 2007, they continue to go from strength to strength both locally and nationally.

Tickets are available online from the Celtic Connections website at www.celticconnections.com

Here's the Christmas article from my BROWN’S AROUND column for December 2007

COWBOYS FOR CHRISTMAS

Picture the scene. Father Christmas and his wife Ursula - true: look it up! - are lying in bed one morning when he says “What’s that noise on the roof?” She replies: “It’s only the rain, dear.” And the best-known reindeer of them all was, of course, the one whose theme song was the first Number One hit record of the 1950s.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was recorded in 1949 by the original singing cowboy, Gene Autry. Born Orvon Gene Autry near Tioga, Texas in 1907, he moved to Ravia, Oklahoma in the 1920s and after leaving high school he worked as a telegrapher for the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway.

He sang to his own guitar accompaniment at neighbourhood dances before performing on local radio - yes, we all have to start small - in 1928 as ‘Oklahoma's Yodelling Cowboy‘. Signing a recording deal with Columbia Records in 1931 led to a move to Chicago and the radio show National Barn Dance where he met singer/songwriter Smiley Burnette.

He had his first hit record in 1932 with That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine, a duet with Jimmy Long, a fellow railroad man, before recording a song forever associated with him, Back in the Saddle Again.

But like many aspiring performers he adopted various recording styles and this is where the Christmas music comes in. His seasonal hits included Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and, one he wrote himself, Here Comes Santa Claus.

In 1934 he and Burnette made their film debut for the Mascot Pictures Corporation in In Old Santa Fe as part of a singing cowboy quartet before Gene was promoted to the 12-part serial The Phantom Empire. When Mascot became Republic Pictures, Gene made a further 44 films, all of which were B westerns in which he rode his horse Champion, had Smiley Burnette as his regular sidekick and, natch, still found time to sing. By 1937 he had become the top Western box-office star.

He was the first of the singing cowboys, and from 1940 to 1956 had a huge hit with a weekly radio show on CBS, Gene Autry's Melody Ranch, and his horse also had a radio-TV series The Adventures of Champion, on which Gene provided the coconut shells sound effects. No: I made up that last bit..

After the war, where he served as a pilot with Air Transport command, he formed his own production company and starred in and produced his own television show on CBS. He retired from show business in 1964, having made almost a hundred films and over 600 records.
He was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1969 and to the Nashville Songwriters’ Hall of Fame in 1970. Post-retirement, he invested widely in real estate, baseball, radio and television, including purchasing from the dying Republic Pictures the rights for films he had made for the company. He also owned the Challenge Records label, which had its biggest hit in 1958 with The Champs’ Tequila, which started the rock and roll instrumental craze of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Gene Autry is the only celebrity to have five stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one in each of the five categories, namely Motion Pictures, Radio, Recording, Television and Live Theatre.

In 1932 he married Ina May Spivey, the niece of Jimmy Long. She died in 1980 and he married Jackie Autry a year later. He had no children by either marriage and died in 1998 at the age of 91.

When Johnny Marks wrote a song based on a poem by his brother-in-law about a reindeer with its own SatNav system who ignored the bullying and the taunts of the other members of his herd and eventually triumphed over adversity, I doubt if he ever expected it to last so long and to do such good business, but thanks to a Singing Cowboy, he DID go down in history.

May your Christmas be everything you wish it to be.

They're probably two of the best known Christmas songs of all - and here's the story behind them

OLD CHESTNUTS NEVER DIE

I never fail to be astonished by the imagination of songwriters. Whether it be the factory-farm occupants of the Brill Building in New York - the original Writers’ Block? - or those of a bygone age who sat at a piano and were visited by the muse, their powers of imagination are heartening for us mere mortals.

At this time of the year there are a few standard Christmas songs which have invaded public consciousness to such an extent that, in a walnut shell, Christmas wouldn‘t be the same without them. So here‘s a couple of examples of the songwriter’s imagination to see us over the festive period, beginning with the best-known of them all - Irving Berlin’s White Christmas.

Irving Berlin was born in Siberia in 1888, the son of a Russian Jewish family who emigrated to the USA when he was five years old. He became a songwriter in New York’s Tin Pan Alley and his catalogue of hit songs began with Alexander’s Ragtime Band. In 1940 he was working in Hollywood when he wrote White Christmas, which was sung by Bing Crosby in the 1942 musical Holiday Inn. Incidentally, there’s an opening verse to the song which is seldom performed:

“The sun is shining, the grass is green, the orange and palm trees sway
There’s never been such a day in Beverly Hills, LA
But it’s December the twenty-fourth and I am longing to be up north …”

Hmmm, doesn’t conjure up Scotland to me; how about you? But few knew how Berlin felt about Christmas. His first wife died of typhoid just five months after they were married. His second wife, Ellen Mackay, was from a wealthy Catholic family and their mixed marriage was a scandal at the time. The New York press hounded them and Ellen Mackay’s father disinherited her. Their first child, Irving Jr, was three weeks old when he died on Christmas Day 1928. The Berlins had three more children - all girls - and for their sake they put up a tree and gave presents each Christmas but after the girls left home, the Berlins celebrated Christmas no more.

On a happier note, let’s have a look at The Christmas Song, better known by its opening line of “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire …”

It was co-written by Mel Tormé, one of the most enduring singers from the big band era. He began singing for his supper at a Chicago restaurant when he was four and was working the vaudeville circuit soon after. He became a child actor on radio and began writing songs in his teens. In the early 1940s, he left high school to become a singer, drummer and arranger with Chico Marx's band. He wanted to be a jazz singer but his publicist sold him as a crooner, giving him the nickname of The Velvet Fog.

The Christmas Song was first recorded in 1947 by Nat King Cole, and Tormé and lyricist Robert Wells wrote the song on a sweltering day in July. Tormé recalls seeing a notebook on Wells‘ piano with four lines written in pencil. "They started: Chestnuts roasting ... Jack Frost nipping ... Yuletide carols ... Folks dressed up like Eskimos,“ he says. “Bob didn't think he was writing a song lyric. He said he thought if he could immerse himself in winter he could cool off. Forty minutes later that song was written. I wrote all the music and some of the lyrics."

And let’s finish with a lovely anecdote. The Farmer's Market is a tourist spot in Los Angeles. On a weekday in winter, not long before Christmas, a small choir of young people is serenading shoppers. It is pointed out to their leader just who the man sitting at a table engrossed in the newspaper is. “That's Mel Tormé down there. Do you know who he is?" The singer shakes his head. “Do you know The Christmas Song?“ Blank. “That's the one that starts: Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." He gets excited: “Oh yes! Is that what it's called?” "That's the name, and that man wrote it."

The leader returns to the choir for a brief huddle, then they stroll down towards Mel Tormé and begin singing the song directly to him. A big smile forms on Tormé's face, and the faces of the shoppers, many of whom know who he is and seem aware of the significance of singing that song to him. As they reach the end of the song, he gets to his feet and sings a chorus solo, before the choir - official and unofficial - join him on the closing lines. Oh to have been there!

My best wishes go with you over the festive period, and if you’re raising a glass to worthy champions, remember the songwriters.

I've always been interested in the stories of the Scots in America and here's one from an article I wrote for The Scots Magazine in 2001

HOOTS AND SADDLES

One of the great successes of this year’s Festival of Traditional Music and Dance held in the Perthshire village of Killin was a band of entertainers from North America by the intriguing name of Cowboy Celtic. The name is an obvious clue to their inspiration and direction but a listen to any of their three recordings to date sets the mind wandering. For example, take the opening track from their first album Cowboy Celtic. You’re listening to a tune called The Trail to Mexico, played sweetly on fiddle, mandolin and guitar and it’s conjuring up visions of a wagon train heading out to the American West. Memories are coming back of all the westerns you saw at the Saturday morning ABC Minors Club - the westerns as they were before they turned psychological with Native Americans saying Why? instead of How?

But hold your horses for a moment because the tune is about to slip seamlessly into another type of music completely. Suddenly there’s the unmistakable sound of a traditional reel. What’s going on? The answer, of course, is that the pioneers who opened up the American West came from the Old World, including the Celtic nations – and that’s where David Wilkie comes in.

David is the leader of Cowboy Celtic and has spent the past six years researching the Celtic origins of traditional cowboy music. His love of the songs and tunes is obvious and he’s at great pains to stress that the music is cowboy and not country and western. Already the band has toured in China, Hong Kong, Macao, Indonesia, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and, of course, in Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England as well as all over the US and Canada.

So how did a man from Calgary, Alberta, get into singing Scottish songs? David pushes back the fine stetson hat on his head. “Maybe 10 years ago, I don’t remember the exact date, I was at a Cowboy Poetry Gathering,” he says. “We have these all over the West and I was with this fellow called Ian Tyson. He’s a well-known cowboy singer and my neighbour down the road. I had finished the show and I was sitting at the bar having a drink about four in the morning when this big cowboy got up and started to sing an unaccompanied version of Annie Laurie. The whole place just came to a standstill.”

David was intrigued and decided to find out more about these songs at the source. “I came over here a couple of times,” he says, “and I would hear songs that I recognised as cowboy songs out West.” His initial idea was to find just enough material to make a recording. “I made the Cowboy Celtic album thinking that was going to be the end of it,” he says, “and I never planned on touring with the thing. It was just a project that I was working on, but people kept sending and bringing me more songs.”

Surprisingly, David seems to be the only one in Alberta, or in Canada itself, who knows the background to these songs. “I’ve never heard anybody else do it,” he says, “and even in the West there’s only Michael Martin Murphey. He’s a big cowboy singer and a good friend of ours, and as far as I know we’re the only ones doing it.”

One of the links between Old and New World is the cattle drover. David’s visits to Scotland revealed a domestic cattle industry in existence from at least the fourteenth century. As our cattle industry declined, so the North American one was just beginning. “They were looking for markets to open up,” he says, “and I think at one point maybe eighty per cent of the ranches in Texas and Colorado were owned by Scottish and Irish ranchers.” One of the largest and most famous Texas ranches was run by the Matador Land and Cattle Company, founded by men from Dundee in the 1880s and run from Dundee as late as the 1950s. “The biggest cattle trail in the States is called the Chisholm Trail,” he adds, “and the Chisholms were one of the big Highland cattle clans.”

I ask David how difficult it was to find the background to the songs. “You really have to look into it a bit,” he says. “Take the history of the drovers, for example. There’s not a lot of information on that. It’s taken years to get to this point and it hasn’t been an easy task.” He does admit, however, that being a non-Scottish researcher has its advantages. “People here wouldn’t be too familiar with our cowboy songs because they’re very obscure, even in North America,” he says. “But it was easier for me that way because I was able to recognise the tunes that were popular in the Wild West and I don’t think someone from here, maybe, would have known what they were.”

He tells some fascinating anecdotes on stage between songs. Did you know, for example, that General George Armstrong Custer’s mother was Scottish and that his favourite songs were the aforementioned Annie Laurie and The Girl I Left Behind Me?

David plays mainly in the USA. “We very rarely play in Canada because it’s such a small country really as population goes,” he says, “and we’re so close to the United States. There’s a lot of these Western Festivals which are just cowboy folk festivals and that’s where we spend most of our time.” Each year, however, David and the band come over to Scotland for a month-long tour and they’ve recorded here and in Ireland.

The band itself features David on mandolin and vocals, Denise Withnell on guitar and vocals, Scott Ring on whistles, Matt Woodward on fiddle, Nathan McCavana on bodhran and Keri Lynn Zwicker on Celtic harp. Isn’t it very unusual for a cowboy band to feature a clarsach? “I think this is a first,” he laughs. “Maybe we’ll put this in the Guinness Book of Records. And it’s even harder to find a clarsach player who wants to play cowboy music, but Keri is very open-minded and she’s really good. She has her own career but she always comes with us and we’re glad she does because I don’t think I could ever find another one to do it. There’s not too many cowgirl harp players!”

David is fully aware of the equation of cowboy with country and western. “It’s been a problem for us here,” he says, “and we’re trying to correct that. We’re not part of the Nashville music organisation,” he stresses. “They don’t like us at all, as a matter of fact. We’re too weird for them for sure.”

I leave David to pack up after the show and head out on the rest of his tour. From Killin it’s south to Melrose then back up to the Highlands - the band’s favourite area where they have a big fan base. “We’re going to Ullapool and to Stoer,” he says, “because everyone says to see Stoer. Then we’re going back to Skye and Inverness. We have a lot of friends there, especially in the Ullapool and Achiltibuie area.”

And that will be another opportunity to visit Coigach. Now Coigach might not seem a tourist mecca compared to, say, Loch Lomond or Edinburgh Castle but to David it’s one of the most important areas in all of Scotland. He elaborates. “That’s where the men of that village went to Montana to become cowboys.”

And there’s more, for one of the songs on the band’s first album is Mo Shoraidh Leis a Coigach or Farewell to Coigach, a song written in Montana in the early twentieth century by Murdo MacLean. MacLean was one of many Gaelic-speaking Highlanders who came to the American West and the song – beautifully sung by Skyeman Arthur Cormack – tells of the drover’s yearning for his homeland and loved ones. According to David, it’s the only surviving song written in Gaelic in the American West. “We get relatives of these people coming to see us and it’s just fantastic,” he says. “There’s a real connection between that area and the Wild West.”

I take the final opportunity to ask the man from Calgary, Alberta, if he’s visited the other one on Mull. “Yes,” he says, “We went to Calgary this trip. We expected to see MacDonald’s burgers and everything there but we didn’t. What a beautiful place.”

So, proving the old adage that what goes around comes around, David Wilkie will continue his search for the origins of his beloved cowboy music. “I’ve really enjoyed it and I got to meet Phil Cunningham, and Arthur Cormack sang on our CD and I just love the music so much that I can’t stop doing it. I’ve learned so much from these people and it’s been a real thrill all the way.”

His music has been described as “theatre and imagery and history and storytelling and more, all wrapped up in sagebrush and tartan.” Look out for Cowboy Celtic when they next hit these shores.