Profile: Davy Steele, folk singer-songwriter

An ebullient singing-songwriting presence on the Scottish folk scene, within such well-kent line-ups as Drinkers Drouth, Ceolbeg, Clan Alba and, latterly, the Battlefield Band, Steele was a powerful and sensitive interpreter of traditional material - witness his notable contribution to the Linn Complete Songs of Robert Burns series - but also the composer of songs which often reflected a keen sense of place and change - particularly in his native East Lothian - as well as social and political conscience.

Almost ten years on from his untimely passing on 11 April, 2001, his widow, harpist and singer Patsy Seddon, has produced, in collaboration with Davy's friend and fellow-singer Ian McCalman, an album of 16 songs, performed by former musical compadres including Dick Gaughan, Karine Polwart, Sally Barker, Andy M Stewart and Patsy herself (and including an affecting contribution from their son, Jamie). The album, Steele the Show (Greentrax Recordings) was launched at an emotional Celtic Connections concert last month, while a song book is planned for the future.

Inevitably, there is an elegiac tone here - often as much in the songs' subject matter as in remembrance of their writer. Hence Dick Gaughan's gently measured rendering of The Last Trip Home, with pipes from Steele's former Ceolbeg colleague Gary West, whose interviews with his ploughman uncle inspired this anthem for the passing of the heavy horse. Likewise, the McCalmans' benchmark recording of Farewell tae the Haven, Steele's lament for an end to fishing from Morrison's Haven, at his native Prestonpans.

Steele's political vision is here as well, with Karine Polwart giving delicate but resolute voice to Scotland Yet (although I was surprised the collection didn't include the similarly minded clarion call he recorded with Ceolbeg, Stand Together). Siobhan Miller gives powerful, unaccompanied voice to the stark Eyes of a Child, which reflects Steele's time working with children in crisis. There's also the unabashedly sentimental, as in Butterfly, intoned tremulously here by Kate Rusby, while Sally Barker's exuberant hollering of Lost in the Long Grass echoes Steele's early infatuation with R&B.

To my mind, it is Steele's deeply-rooted sense of place and social history that inform some of his most memorable songs, and it's gratifying, these days, to see his features beaming irrepressibly from a mural at Summerlee, Prestonpans, where he grew up.

This year is also an anniversary, if of a cheerier hue, for the Greentrax label on which the album is released, founded 25 years ago this summer, after one Inspector Ian Green retired from 30 years' exemplary service in Edinburgh City Police.Never can a police pension have been so creatively invested and Green, now proprietor of Scotland's largest traditional music label, has published his autobiography. And if you think is Steele the Show a terrible pun, the title of Green's memoir, Fuzz to Folk: Trax of My Life easily tops it.

Davy Steele's life was sadly curtailed but it was a full one. Few, however, can boast a career trajectory quite like Green's, ranging from an apprenticeship as a gardener (like his father) in his native Morayshire, through national service in Korea as an army mechanic then into the police, with interludes of cycle speedway, folk club running, Sandy Bell's Broadsheet editing and chrysanthemum growing along the way, before establishing Greentrax.

I suspect Green won't be adding the Booker Prize to his diverse accomplishments - Fuzz to Folk, published by Luath Press, could have done with some serious editing. However, it does tell the intriguing tale of how a self-confessed "wee ragamuffin loon from the backwoods of Moray", who left school at 15, ended up with an honorary degree of Doctor of Music from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, for services to Scottish music.

• For further details, see www.davysteele.com and www.greentrax.com