I'm copying the obituary from the Guardian here for posterity:

Robin Morton obituary
Leading Scottish folk musician, producer and manager who was a founding member of the Boys of the Lough

(Robin Morton, right, with his bodhrán, and fellow members of the Boys of the Lough in 1975. Photograph: Tony Evans/Timelapse/Getty Images)

Derek Schofield
Tue 12 Oct 2021 17.27 BST


Robin Morton, who has died aged 81, was, for more than 50 years, a leading figure within the Scottish folk music scene, both as a performer – he was a founding member of the Scottish-Irish band the Boys of the Lough – but also as a record producer and manager.

The Boys of the Lough were originally a trio of Irish singers and musicians, based in Northern Ireland. Robin, who spent his early life in Ulster before moving to Edinburgh in 1970, played concertina and bodhrán and teamed up with the flute and whistle player Cathal McConnell and fiddler Tommy Gunn, both from Co Fermanagh.

All three men also sang traditional songs from Northern Ireland and the band was named after one of their tunes. Gunn soon left and, during a period as a duo, McConnell and Robin recorded an album, An Irish Jubilee (1970).

Robin assumed the position of performer-manager and, now living in Scotland, invited another duo to join them: the young and highly talented Shetland fiddle player Aly Bain and the guitarist Mike Whellans. Whellans left shortly afterwards, as did his replacement, the Glasgow-born Dick Gaughan, but the lineup settled with the addition of the Northumbrian musician Dave Richardson.

Even before the band’s eponymous first album was released in 1973, to great acclaim, the band had headlined the Sunday concert at the Cambridge folk festival and made the first of many visits to the US.

The Ulster, Shetland and then Northumbrian lineup of the band meant that each performer brought a range of repertoire and style, although the close links between Northern Ireland and Scotland were illustrated in the commonality of the music. Each performer remained true to their traditional style and there was no dilution of the music: they believed it was entertaining in its own right. As Robin said in a 1973 interview: “We’re putting the music across, not ourselves.”

After a second album on the Trailer label, they switched to Transatlantic Records for The Boys of the Lough III (1975). Concerts in village halls on their annual Scottish Highlands and Islands tour resulted in a live recording, Wish You Were Here, in 1978, the year that Robin left the band.

Having had some experience of recording, and frustrated that he could not get anyone to release an album by his wife, Alison Kinnaird, a Scottish harp player whom he had met through Bain and married in 1974, Robin established his own company, Temple Records, in their home village of the same name in Midlothian, south of Edinburgh. Alison’s album The Harp Key was the first release.

With his newly installed recording studio, Robin recorded several albums of Scottish performers for Topic Records. Cilla Fisher and Artie Trezise’s album Cilla & Artie was Melody Maker’s folk album of the year in 1979, and this was followed two years later by Gaughan’s Handful of Earth, another Melody Maker winner in 1981: it was a turning point in Gaughan’s career and was later voted folk album of the decade by fRoots magazine readers.

With Temple, Robin was a pioneer in recording several genres of Scottish music. People told him it was preposterous to release albums of Gaelic songs, but his records of Flora McNeil and Christine Primrose helped pave the way for a resurgence in interest. He received similar reactions to albums of bagpipers and fiddle orchestras. Temple’s longest recording relationship was with the Scottish-based Battlefield Band, with Robin producing their first album for Topic in 1977, and every record since, through all the many changes of band personnel. He also acted as their manager for many years.

Robin served as chairman of the Scottish Record Industry Association and was director of the Edinburgh folk festival for three years from 1986 to 1988. He remained an outspoken and inspiring influence on Scottish music, receiving the Hamish Henderson award in the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame in 2008.

He was born Robert, but known from childhood as Robin, in Portadown, Co Armagh, the son of John Morton, an electrician, and his wife, Mary (nee Macreery). He began performing as a youngster alongside the future broadcaster Gloria Hunniford, when both were at school at Portadown college and also in a local children’s theatre group. From his father, he inherited a love of jazz, learning to play the cornet, but was disappointed to discover there was no family connection with Jelly Roll Morton. Jazz led him to folk music via the blues, skiffle and Woody Guthrie.

After leaving school, Robin taught children with learning disabilities, training for a year (1959-60) in Manchester, where he was introduced to the early days of the folk club scene in the north-west. Back in Northern Ireland, in 1963 he gained a diploma in social work at Queen’s University, Belfast, where he also started a folk club. During further training as a psychiatric social worker at the London School of Economics, he met Ewan MacColl, who encouraged his interest in Ulster songs.

In 1967 he returned to education again, studying for a degree in economic history at Queen’s, while also becoming a founder member of the Ulster Folk Music Society. His 1970 move to Edinburgh was to study for a doctorate, which he never finished, on the history of madness.

By this time, and inspired by MacColl to sing the songs of his own locality, Robin was recording some of the older traditional singers in rural Ulster. The result was a book, Folksongs Sung in Ulster, accompanied by two albums of his field recordings.

The most notable of the singers was John Maguire, a farmer from Rosslea, Co Fermanagh. Fascinated by Maguire’s songs and life story, Robin turned his detailed recordings into a musical biography, Come Day, Go Day, God Send Sunday (1973), recently republished by Routledge, with a record of the same name for Leader Records.

Robin is survived by Alison, a distinguished glass artist as well as a musician, and their children, Ellen and John.

Robin (Robert Samuel) Morton, folk musician and record producer, born 24 December 1939; died 1 October 2021