Two fitting tributes to much-missed musician

Published on Tuesday 30 June 2009 19:08

HE NEVER pursued commercial fame – unless you count a fleeting role in an early episode of Hamish Macbeth and a stint within the ranks of the Tannahill Weavers – but Willie Beaton, below, entertained vast numbers of people with his fiddling and singing, and his death from cancer at the beginning of this year was widely lamented.

Now, however, the convivial spirit of the extravagantly moustached, Ross-shire-based musician is being evoked not only to commemorate a popular character on the west Highland music scene, but also to benefit two deserving causes of which he surely would have approved. This Saturday evening, the Glasgow Merchant City folk music venue of Laurie's Bar will host a concert featuring such seasoned performers as Rod Paterson, Adam McNaughton, Scotia, Hannah Beaton and members of the Incredible Fling Band, the irrepressible ceilidh band of which Willie was a member for 25 years.

Not only does it promise to be a lively evening, but proceeds will go to the Highland Hospice in Inverness, in which Willie, who was 61 when he died, passed his final days.

Meanwhile, the veteran American bluegrass fiddler and banjo player Tony Ellis has donated a "Willie Beaton Memorial Fiddle" to the Sgoil Chiil na Gidhealtachd – the National Centre for Excellence in Traditional Music, based at Plockton High School, where Willie's daughter, Hannah, is among the students.

Ever the wild rover (although his rendition of the eponymous song was a wistful, slow version picked up by several singers), Willie was born at Balmacarra, near Kyle of Lochalsh, the son of Murdo Beaton, a native Gaelic speaker and singer, but the family moved to Glasgow and Willie grew up in Drumchapel, going on to spend time in London, Belfast and Dublin.

This writer recalls the Beaton bow enlivening Sandy Bell's sessions in Edinburgh in the 1970s and 1980s, but he finally settled with his family back on his native turf and became a familiar figure in back-room sessions at the Plockton Inn and elsewhere.

"I first met Willie in the Scotia Bar (in Glasgow] back in the Sixties," recalls Cy Laurie, proprietor of Laurie's and a member of the group Scotia, with whom Beaton sometimes played and toured. "We were all wondering how to mark his passing, and we'd been very impressed with the Highland Hospice in Inverness when we'd visited him there, so we thought it would be a good idea to run a concert commemorating Willie and in aid of the hospice.

"All the artists are giving their services free."

Just last Saturday, during the end-of-term concert at the National Centre for Excellence in Traditional Music at Plockton High School, Laurie and fellow-Scotia member Ronnie Clark handed over a "Willie Beaton memorial Fiddle" donated by Tony Ellis, an American musician who started his career with "the father of bluegrass", Bill Monroe, in the 1950s. Laurie, who knows Ellis well, introduced him to Willie Beaton some years ago when the American was visiting Scotland. "I took him up to Kyle and he and Willie struck up a friendship right away," he said.

Ellis, who refurbishes and occasionally makes instruments on his farm in Ohio, gave Beaton a fiddle: "Then two years ago Tony was back over here and he did a workshop up at Plockton High School and was captivated by the young people playing music there. When Willie died, he came up with the idea of donating a fiddle to the school at Plockton."

Meanwhile, Hannah Beaton can be heard singing and playing, along with fellow students, on Sgoil Chiil's latest CD, Three Cheese and a Teaburger, including a version of the Stephen Foster classic Hard Times, which she learned from her father.

Clearly the Beaton music line is unlikely to fade away.