John Scott was a larger than life character in the Glasgow piping scene in the ’60s and ’70s, writes the editor. A fine piper himself, he regularly stewarded at the Scottish Pipers and Uist and Barra competitions and kept the audience entertained with his wild brogue and pawky humour. He was also a noted composer. Readers will probably know his reel Dolina MacKay (Dolly was the Treasurer of the SPA for many years and a noted beauty). Another reel, the Three Peaks of South Uist (pictured below), is also a highlight (it’s in John MacFadyen’s book 1), as is Captain Alex M. Fraser, Merchant Navy, another regular at the Glasgow competitions. Alex was also President of the Glasgow Highland Club. His tune is in my Glasgow Collection. In the early 80s John moved to London and there he took on a few pupils. One of them relates this touching memoir…….
I have many fond memories of John. I first met him when I bought a cheap set of pipes and asked my brother in law Mike, a piper, if he could teach me how to play them. He said ‘come to my factory I’ve got a pretty good sound proof room there’.
While I was waiting for him to finish what he was doing, his sister came in and said, ‘hello Tony, what are you doing with the pipes?’ I said I was waiting for Mike to show me how to play them. And she said, ‘och he has’na played them for at least 35 years or more’!
By Tony Daniel
Then she said she knew a great piper recently moved south but he ‘only teaches people who are related to him in some way, but I’ll ask him if he will teach you. I’ll call you later’.
I got the call and she said he had worked out a family relationship with this piper, albeit a bit tenuous. ‘He will give you a half hour introductory lesson and if he thinks you are worth teaching he will.’ She said his name, John Scott, and gave me his address in New Addington and I had to be there on the given date at 5.30pm
I got there on time. He said, ‘well there’s nothing wrong with your timing; come in, I’m John. Is that your pipes in the bag?’ I said yes. ‘Let’s have a look at what you’ve got…. oh my God, kindling! You are seriously expecting to play those are you?’ I said yes.
He chuckled and said ‘never in a 100 years will they sound good. There are at least seven holes in the bag and the drone reeds are useless….there are no words to describe the chanter…och man I need a dram.’
I produced my practice chanter and he said ‘more stuff for the midden’. So he handed me a spare Lawrie practice chanter and started teaching me the scale plus gracenotes and embellishments.
Every time I made a mistake he would lightly tap my finger with the sole of his chanter, not hard but after a fair amount of taps they did start to hurt.
‘Come back next Wednesday but practice what we have gone over…and get a new bag sent down from Scotland.’ So I went back on the Wednesday, and he said ‘that was quick, a pipe bag from Scotland tied in and returned in five days’.
I said I had tied it in myself following the instructions in a piper’s handbook. I reasoned that if I’m able to secure 20 ton loads on my truck with rope, I should be able to tie some drones in a bag tight enough. He said he’d been playing all his life but had never learned to tie a bag in.
He asked if I’d seasoned the bag. I said no, I was waiting for his advice on that. He said he used glycerine and his bag was 17yrs old and still airtight. He poured some of the stuff into my bag and told me to rub it well into the welt. While I was doing that he played his pipes. They were sounding magical.
Then he corked and blew up my bag. Fifteen minutes later I could get hardly any more air into it. He said he was really impressed. He fitted some good cane drone reeds in the pipes added the chanter and got them going fine to me.
But John said they were not brilliant and didn’t think they would hold their tone for long, He talked me into investing in some pukka Scottish-made pipes, so I got set from Grainger & Campbell. John liked them but I really loved his pipes. He said they were Thow of Aberfeldy.
When he was teaching John would often say you had to feel the soul of a tune, to go deeper than just the notes on the paper, to try to express the tune with your heart, not just rattle it out.
When playing a strathspey I had think of the way a springbok prances across the plains of Africa because the landing and take off are as one; it had to be graceful. I can remember these things as if it were yesterday, not some 44 years ago.
- Part 2 to follow. If any reader has other memories of John or any photographs please forward to editor@pipingpress.com
