Obit: Robin Morton (1939-2021)-Boys of the Lough

Subject: DEATH OF ROBIN MORTON
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Oct 21 - 08:01 AM

I heard yesterday of the death at aged 81 on 1st October 2021 of Northern Ireland born Robin Morton, a member of "The Boys of the Lough" folk group, who also founded Temple Records in Scotland, was manager of the Battlefield Band (a Scottish folk group) and was also Director of the Edinburgh Folk Festival from 1986-1988. There is a detailed article about him at https://www.folkradio.co.uk/2021/10/robin-morton-dies-aged-81/ and a shorter Wikipedia article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Morton_(musician).

He was involved with Temple records in Scotland but their website https://www.templerecords.co.uk/pages/robin-morton does not yet mention his death

Subject: RE: DEATH OF ROBIN MORTON
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 08 Oct 21 - 09:19 AM

Nigel Gatherer posted this earlier this week on thesession.org.

It surprised me there was no mention here until now.

Subject: RE: Obit: Robin Morton (1939-2021)
From: Anne Lister
Date: 08 Oct 21 - 04:14 PM

I'm surprised this thread isn't full of tributes to this highly influential man. I first met him when he was with Boys of the Lough in the early 70s, but his life is full of involvement and hard work on behalf of folk music. A great loss, and much sympathy to Alison and all who knew and loved him.

Subject: RE: Obit: Robin Morton (1939-2021)
From: Felipa
Date: 08 Oct 21 - 04:44 PM

Yes he had a big influence, much of it behind the scenes.

I'll sing something from a book Robin compiled, Folksongs of Ulster, in one of the online singing circles this week. I remember that the Factory Girl was one of the songs included in that book. When I think of Robin singing, the one that comes to mind is a song about selling a wife at a fair.

Subject: RE: Obit: Robin Morton (1939-2021)
From: GUEST,Derek Schofield
Date: 08 Oct 21 - 06:23 PM

Back in 1974, The Boys of the Lough, plus their guests Alison Kinnaird and Gaelic singer Flora McNeil did a tour. Looking back now, such a tour, with good publicity, posters and leaflets, was a relative rarity on the folk scene. Common now of course. I guess that this was all down to Robin. We had them in Crewe in Cheshire: all fondly remembered. I also remember Robin with John Maguire at the Loughborough Folk festival in about 1973, just before the book was published, Come Day, Go Day, God Send Sunday, with the accompanying LP on the leader label. Perhaps the same year I bought Folksongs of Ulster. Sad news and condolences to the family.
Derek

Subject: RE: Obit: Robin Morton (1939-2021)
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 08 Oct 21 - 07:23 PM

As is often the way these days, I first heard the sad news on Facebook, in a lovely post put up by his wife, Alison Kinnaird on 3rd October: there have been many tributes there, as also in response to Nigel Gatherer's post on thesession.org, as mentioned above.
And I guess it would have been Robin himself who did the updating of the Temple records website, hence no mention there.
Robin was certainly a huge powerhouse and driving force in both the Scottish and Northern Irish folk scenes. He will be very much missed.

Subject: RE: Obit: Robin Morton (1939-2021)
From: GUEST,Clive Pownceby
Date: 09 Oct 21 - 07:02 AM

Very much missed indeed. My partner Jean was at Edinburgh University in the early '70s doing a Post.Grad. and became friends with him there. Robin was doing a Ph.D. which was leisurely worked on - I don't think he ever completed it! Good company and hugely influential.

I recall the 'Boys' playing at Liverpool punk venue 'Erics' (it had eclectic scheduling) and having some pre-gig beers in The Grapes, Mathew Street with him a few years later. A warm, quietly humorous, erudite man with a vast knowledge of traditional music and song - he generously sent me a stock of gratis Temple CDs when I was presenting a Folk programme on local radio in the '90s which helped to swell the station's meagre library no end. Condolences to Alison and family.

Subject: RE: Obit: Robin Morton (1939-2021)
From: Waddon Pete
Date: 09 Oct 21 - 10:41 AM

I was sorry to hear this news. He will be missed. I have added his name to the "In Memoriam" thread and send my condolences to all those who know and love him.

Subject: RE: Obit: Robin Morton (1939-2021)
From: GUEST,John Moulden
Date: 10 Oct 21 - 02:23 PM

I'm glad this has at last appeared. I had posted by own thoughts at http://moulden.org and on the Facebook page "Irish Song Research and didn't want to exercise a monopoly.

Subject: RE: Obit: Robin Morton (1939-2021)
From: Felipa
Date: 10 Oct 21 - 02:46 PM

thanks, John, for that very informative article on your website. Condolences.

Both Julie Henigan and I sang songs from the "Folksongs Sung in Ulster" book at an online session of the Washingon D.C. based Getaway weekend.

Subject: RE: Obit: Robin Morton (1939-2021)
From: GUEST,Brimbacombe
Date: 11 Oct 21 - 04:16 AM

I had the pleasure of meeting Robin a handful of times when he was managing the Battlefield Band. A more knowledgeable, kind, decent human being you'd struggle to find. I'm very sorry to hear of his passing, and offer my condolences to his friends and family.

Subject: RE: Obit: Robin Morton (1939-2021)
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 11 Oct 21 - 08:08 AM

Very sorry to hear this sad news. I met Robin on various occasions when he toured the North East with Cathal McConnell prior to the formation of Boys of the Lough. Always very interesting to both hear sing and play and to talk with afterwards. RIP.

Subject: RE: Obit: Robin Morton (1939-2021)
From: GUEST,addison10
Date: 13 Oct 21 - 04:46 AM

The Guardian online has an obituary for Robin, not yet in the print edition.
Robin Morton in The Guardian

Subject: RE: Obit: Robin Morton (1939-2021)
From: keberoxu
Date: 05 Dec 21 - 09:32 PM

If there isn't already a link to this particular obituary,
here it is,
written by Rob Adams for the Herald in Scotland.

Subject: RE: Obit: Robin Morton (1939-2021)-Boys of the Lough
From: Noreen
Date: 07 Dec 21 - 07:27 AM

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

Subject: RE: Obit: Robin Morton (1939-2021)-Boys of the Lough
From: StephenH
Date: 07 Dec 21 - 03:23 PM

As others have indicated, this is a big loss to traditional music.
I have enjoyed a lot of music, over the years, that Robin Morton
was responsible for producing in one way or another, and for which I
am very grateful.
John Moulden, who posted above, has a really nice tribute to Robin
Morton in the latest issue of Living Tradition.

Subject: RE: Obit: Robin Morton (1939-2021)-Boys of the Lough
From: GUEST,Ewan McVicar
Date: 07 Dec 21 - 06:09 PM

My favourite memory of Robin was at a late night informal Glasgow Folk Festival gathering, I and a couple of others were getting wellied into a Muddy Waters number and Robin came barrelling across the room to join in.
We show and talk rightly of our love for our Irish and Scottish traditional song and tunes, but we also had and still have equal enjoyment in American blues, Old Timey songs, etc. Macoll once in the late 1950s dismissed us in Glasgow as 'Tartan cowboys'. Not sure what the Irish equivalent would be - Skiffle Micks' maybe? Robin was one of the really good guys, a sad loss.