OneTouch Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness,  14 October 2011

MEMORY can play funny tricks on the mind, and so much has changed since Kenneth McKellar was ever-present in the musical life of Scotland that it is hard to believe that he was performing right up to 1997 and died only last year, having gone to live near his daughter at Lake Tahoe in the United States.

But for fifty years he was known as “Scotland’s tenor” and it is fitting that his natural successor to that title, Jamie MacDougall should have put together a delightful evening of pure nostalgia.

Jamie MacDougall and Michael Barnett

The programme was so much more than just a list of the songs that are inexorably linked to Kenneth McKellar. Twice he was a guest on Jamie MacDougall’s BBC Radio Scotland show, Classics Unwrapped, and after his death Jane McKellar gave Jamie a collection of her father’s annotated scores. This formed the basis of the tribute, along with a collection of anecdotes that put some flesh on the singer’s memory.

Up to the interval, Jamie MacDougall and pianist Michael Barnett concentrated on the non-Scots element of McKellar’s career, from the time he graduated from the Royal College of Music as an opera singer and toured for two years with the Carl Rosa Opera Company, enough to put him off opera for life. We were told how Sir Adrian Boult considered that McKellar was the perfect Handelian tenor, illustrated by ‘Silent Worship’ from Ptolemy. We learned of his love of Neapolitan songs, such as ‘Funiculi Funicula’ that made his Decca album Ecco di Napoli so popular.

Jamie MacDougall gave a poignant rendition of Benjamin Britten’s version of ‘The Water Is Wide’ from his set of Folk Songs from Somerset, which when performed by McKellar drove the composer into persuading the singer to play the part of McHeath in The Beggar’s Opera at Aldeburgh in 1965 and then in Paris – his only foray onto the operatic stage after leaving the Carl Rosa Company. (Interestingly, I can remember seeing the production at the King’s Theatre during the Edinburgh International Festival that year, with Peter Pears in the role of McHeath.)

After a set of Irish songs, such as ‘Star of the County Down’, ‘Molly Malone’, ‘Londonderry Air’ and ‘Phil The Fluter’, we were told of the disappointment that was Kenneth McKellar’s appearance at the 1966 Eurovision Song Contest singing Cyril Ornadel’s ‘A Man Without Love’.

For the second half, concentrating on Kenneth McKellar’s contribution to the popular songs of Scotland, both MacDougall and Barnett wore tartan, and the elderly audience were treated to a collection of the songs that Kenneth McKellar made famous, such as ‘The Tartan’ used at the 1986 Commonwealth Games, the ‘Eriskay Love Lilt’, ‘Mhairi’s Wedding’, the ‘Mingulay Boat Song’, the ‘West Highland Way’ and ‘The Royal Mile’.

There were a group of songs connected with Sir Hugh Roberton and another with the Carradale Ladies Choir, there were Burns songs, such as ‘The Bonny Lass of Ballochmyle’, and we were told that Kenneth McKellar had vowed never again to sing ‘My Love is Like a Red Red Rose’ after his wife Hedy had died in 1990. However, at a Burns Supper when the other guest, Beirut hostage Tom Sutherland, recounted how he had been supported by a radio message from his wife and Kenneth McKellar singing that song, he relented and sang it once more.

The evening was brought to a climax with some of McKellar’s own compositions, ‘The Song of The Clyde’, and ‘The Midges’ (…with teeth like piranhas, they drive you bananas…), a song that got McKellar into trouble during an American tour when the politically correct promoter thought that he was making fun of midgets! And finally, the trilogy of ‘My Ain Folk’, ‘Roamin’ in the Gloamin’’ and ‘We’re No Awa Tae Bide Awa’, sending everyone out into the night with a smile on the face.

This was an affectionate tribute from Jamie MacDougall to a man for whom he had great respect. Outside of Scotland, Kenneth McKellar brings back memories of the kitsch of The White Heather Club or Ronnie Corbett’s impersonation, but this show reminded us of how much Kenneth McKellar did over half a century for Scottish song and how popular his memory remains.

© James Munro, 2011