Obituaries: Geordie McIntyre

Geordie McIntyre was inducted, along with with Alison, into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame in 2018 (Picture: Allan McMillan)

Geordie McIntyre was a mainstay of the Scottish folk music scene as a traditional singer, song collector and songwriter. His lifelong involvement in traditional song took him to folk clubs and festivals in the UK, Ireland and North America. Over the past two decades he became best known in folksong circles through his musical and life partnership with the ballad singer Alison McMorland.

With family roots in Highland Argyll and Antrim in the north of Ireland, Geordie was brought up in Govanhill by his mother Ada and her parents. His grandfather, Dugald, an evangelical preacher as well as a postie, played a role in his early musical education. Scots song was not the family tradition outside of Hogmanay. However, with the advent of electricity in the family home when Geordie was 11, Dugald purchased a radiogram, regaling the family with the sounds of American country-gospel music and Al Jolson. Geordie recalled being struck by the passionate singing style.

School was not a hugely positive experience, with Geordie leaving at 15, lacking the qualifications to work in his preferred profession as a telephone engineer. After National Service, he became a radio repair apprentice instead and, like many urban working-class young folk at the time, spent weekends cycling out to the countryside, as the boom in hillwalking took off. Staying in youth hostels and camping, Geordie encountered a range of music from skiffle to jazz and Buddy Holly around the campfire. It was after climbing Ben Ledi that he heard a fellow camper sing the northeast bothy ballad, The Barnyards o Delgaty, that he knew Scots song was for him.

During a stay at Killin Youth Hostel, a rather serendipitous invitation to a party in Glasgow – with advice to bring his guitar and sing – turned out to be a meeting of the Glasgow Folk Song Club. Geordie soon found himself amongst a throng of emerging performers finding their way in the early days of the Scottish folk revival, with a regular flow of folksong publications appearing alongside, which interested him just as much as the singing.

There followed several years as a key organiser of two folksong clubs in Glasgow, including at the Grand Hotel in Charing Cross, bringing singers in from across Britain and Ireland as the folk revival took flight. Figures such as Ewan McVicar, Ewan McColl and Hamish Henderson were part of that era, and Geordie encountered traditional performers such as singer and accordionist Davie Stewart, Gaelic songstress Flora MacNeil of Barra, and the Traveller singer Jeannie Robertson – all of whom were being ‘discovered’ and celebrated by folklorists such as Henderson at the time. Speaking to music journalist Steve McGrail in 2004, Geordie recalled, “We had Luke Kelly before The Dubliners even existed… It was an incredibly exciting time."

What was less well-known from that period was Geordie’s important work as a folklore fieldworker, encouraged by Henderson and the writer and activist Dr Helen Fullerton, interviewing amongst others the Traveller storyteller Duncan Williamson, capturing his rare version of the ballad, Tam Lin in the 1960s.

Eager to learn more about the history of the songs he was singing and hearing, Geordie returned to education in his thirties, training as a teacher of history and modern studies, working at two Glasgow schools including one in Castlemilk for 18 years. The busy teaching life meant that singing activities took a back seat, although he still occasionally organised concerts, wrote sleeve notes for releases by the leading English folk label, Topic Records, and was a record producer for iconic Glasgow group, The Clutha.

Using songs from contemporary folksong writers like Adam McNaughtan to illustrate points to his pupils, Geordie caught a break when the father of one of his students turned out to be a BBC radio producer. He asked Geordie to contribute songs, often written to order, for the programme Crossfire, honing his skills as a songwriter in the traditional idiom. Geordie’s songs often melded place, Scots and Gaelic language, and wildlife, with one of his best-known compositions, Inveroran, celebrating a favourite place by Bridge of Orchy where he often camped, walked and took part in local ceilidhs over many years.

Geordie married Maureen in 1960 and their daughter Eileen was born in 1961, although the marriage ended in the 1970s. His second wife Catherine suffered serious illness during the 1980s, with Geordie and Eileen taking up marathon running to raise funds for Marie Curie. Catherine sadly died in 1989.

It was through Geordie’s concert organising and the folklorist Hamish Henderson that he reconnected with the acclaimed ballad singer Alison McMorland, having met her some years prior. They married in 1995 and set up home in Dunblane. From then on, many of us knew Geordie by his more common name, “Alison and Geordie” – for it was their brilliant partnership in which they both shone musically and personally. They produced a range of recordings together, and as steadfast supporters of Edinburgh Folk Club’s annual Carrying Stream Festival, in memory of Henderson, they contributed to books on his legacy edited by the late Eberhard ‘Paddy’ Bort.

In 2018, Geordie was inducted, along with Alison, into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame, the same year as his song collection was published, Ravens Reel. For the last seven years of his life, he lived with Parkinson’s but faced his illness with great fortitude, and it did not dull his enthusiasm for attending singing gatherings wherever he could. In his final years, Geordie’s folksong scholarship was very much still to the fore, contributing song notes to a significant new recording, sung by Alison and friends, of the ballads of Anna Gordon (1747-1810), the most significant female ballad source in Scotland.

He is survived by his wife Alison, daughter Eileen, stepdaughters Anna, Kirsty and Katy, grandchildren and great grandchildren, and more than 40 songs from his own pen.

Gentle folk like Geordie who contribute quietly and determinedly over many years might sometimes be described as “unsung heroes”. In this case, we would have to find another term for Geordie: very much a well-sung hero of the Scots folksong tradition.

Obituaries

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