He frequently toured the USA and Canada 1959-1977 with other Scottish entertainers such as Helen McArthur, often appearing in small local venues. McKellar made the majority of his recordings on the Decca Records label. He also recorded several classical works, including Handel's Messiah alongside Joan Sutherland in a performance conducted by Sir Adrian Boult.
McKellar also recorded the musical Kismet with Robert Merrill. He was also notable for his recordings of Gaelic songs in translation such as the Songs of the Hebrides arrangements by Marjory Kennedy-Fraser.
Company sleeve
"The Skye Boat Song" is a Scottish folk song, which can also be played as a waltz, recalling the escape of PrinceCharles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie) from Uist to the Isle of Skye after his defeat at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. The song tells how Charles escaped in a small boat, with the aid of Flora MacDonald, disguised as a serving maid. The song is a traditional expression of Jacobitism and its story has also entered Scotland as a national legend. The lyrics were written by Sir Harold Boulton, 2nd Baronet, to an air collected in the 1870s by Anne Campbelle MacLeod (1855-1921), who became Lady Wilson by marriage to Sir James Wilson KSCI (1853-1926) in 1888. The song was first published in Songs of the North by Boulton and MacLeod, London, 1884, a book that went into at least fourteen editions. In later editions MacLeod's name was dropped and the ascription "Old Highland rowing measure arranged by Malcolm Lawson" was substituted. It was quickly taken up by other compilers, such as Laura Alexandrine Smith's Music of the Waters (published 1888).
According to Andrew Kuntz, a collector of folk music lore, MacLeod was on a trip to the isle of Skye and was being rowed over Loch Coruisk (Coire Uisg, the "Cauldron of Waters") when the rowers broke into a Gaelic rowing song "Cuachag nan Craobh" ("The Cuckoo in the Grove"). Miss MacLeod set down what she remembered of the air, with the intention of using it later in a book she was to co-author with Boulton, who later added the section with the Jacobite associations." As a piece of modern romantic literature with traditional links it succeeded perhaps too well, for soon people began "remembering" they had learned the song in their childhood, and that the words were 'old Gaelic lines'," Andrew Kuntz has observed.
The song was not in any older books of Scottish songs, though it is in most miscellanies like The Fireside Book of Folk Songs. It is often sung as a lullaby, in a slow rocking 6/8 time. In addition to being extremely popular in its day, and becoming a standard among Scottish folk and dance musicians, it has become more widely known in the modern mainstream popular music genre. Among the modern renditions which became well known were Glen Ingram's Australian pop rendition in the late 1960s where it became a big hit in that country, Roger Whittaker's duet version with Des O'Connor released in 1986, which combined O'Connor's vocals with Whittaker's whistling version, which was part of his repertoire since at least the mid-1970s. The track was recorded at London's Holland Park Lansdowne Studios ( now a high end residential underground property ) with session drummer supremo Peter Boita along with all the high profile studio session players of the day. Calum Kennedy also included a version on Songs of Scotland and Ireland (Beltona 1971). The cellist Julian Lloyd Webber recorded an instrumental version of the song on the album Encore! / Travels With My Cello Volume 2.
Mairi's Wedding (also known as Marie's Wedding, the Lewis Bridal Song, or Mairi Bhan) is a Scottish folk songoriginally written in Gaelic by John Roderick Bannerman (1865–1938) for Mary C. MacNiven (1905–1997) on the occasion of her winning the gold medal at the National Mod in 1934. In 1959, James B. Cosh devised a Scottish country dance to the tune, which is 40 bars, in reel time.
J. R. Bannerman was born in South Uist but left aged seven for Glasgow where he later joined the General Post Office (GPO) as a telegraph boy and rose to become general superintendent. He was brought up in the Glasgow Gaelic community where most social activities were conducted in Gaelic and he developed a lifelong interest in the songs and literature of that culture. His son, John MacDonald Bannerman became a well known Gaelic broadcaster and singer, but better known as a rugby international (37 caps for Scotland; Oxford Blue) and Liberal politician, ultimately being ennobled as John Bannerman Lord Bannerman of Kildonan. Winning the Mod gold medal was (and is) regarded as the highest singing award in Scottish Gaeldom, and Mairi's Wedding was composed to recognize this achievement. A track of Mary C. MacNiven singing her winning song at the 1934 Mod is still available and the Mod has founded a memorial salver competition to honour her name. Her wedding did not in fact take place until some six years later when she married Captain John Campbell of Glendale, Skye.She continued to sing at Gaelic concerts and céilidhs for most of her life, and died aged 91 at her native Portnahaven, Islay in 1997. The song "Mairi's Wedding" was first performed for her at the Highlanders' Institute, then in Glasgow's Elmbank Street, and, at that time, a focal point of cultural and social activity for the Highlands and Islands community in the city. It was probably through this performance that Sir Hugh Stevenson Roberton came to know the song. Roberton was conductor of the Glasgow Orpheus Choir, which had by the early 1930s acquired international recognition under his leadership. His knighthood in 1931, promoted by his friend Ramsay MacDonald, whose radical politics he shared, established him as the leading British choirmaster and as a colossus within the Glasgow musical world. Although the choir had a vast repertoire, Roberton had inherited a particular fondness for folk music from his mother, and in addition to writing choral arrangements of traditional songs, he composed his own. Roberton had collaborated with John R. Bannerman on other songs destined to become internationally successful. For the song "Joy of my Heart" Roberton wrote the English words and asked Bannerman to produce a Gaelic version; the tune for the "Uist Tramping Song" was written by Bannerman with the English words by Roberton. John M. Bannerman claimed that his father had written the tune for the song "Westering Home" yet this was not acknowledged in Roberton's published scores. In a London court case in 1960 Sir Hugh's executors failed to prove that he had written the tune and costs were awarded to Miss (now Dame) Vera Lynn who had recorded "Travellin' Home" to the same tune, a recording which made 20th place in the music charts. Roberton wrote the English words for "Mairi's Wedding", which was, as can be seen by the lyrics below in both languages, a very loose translation of Bannerman's original. He published this in 1936 giving the song the alternative title of "The Lewis Bridal Song". Roberton presented an original signed copy of his score to Mary C.MacNiven and it became one of her most prized possessions. When the song was published in Roberton's "Songs of the Isles" by J Curwen & Sons Ltd (1951) the Gaelic words did not appear and Bannerman was not acknowledged, the tune being "noted from Dr. Peter A. MacLeod."
| Artist: | Kenneth McKellar |
| Label: | Decca |
| Country: | UK |
| Catalogue: | F 10901 |
| Date: | May 1957 |
| Format: | 7" |
Side A Side B
| Track | Artist | Title | Composer | Producer | |
| A | Kenneth McKellar | Skye Boat Song | Lawson, Boulton | ||
| B | Kenneth McKellar | Lewis Bridal Song | Robertson |
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The four-point centre release 78rpm release label
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