Aly Bain at 80: Virtuoso, Pioneer, Ambassador

Aly Bain: Fiddler on the Loose, an account of the earlier years of Aly's life, was written by Alastair Clark, with contributions from Aly, and published by Mainstream in 1993. This article draws on that very engaging portrait. In it, Aly recalls a childhood that was “one big adventure, with none of today’s dangers” and where “life at home was content and wonderful”. When he was two years old, the family moved to a new and more spacious house, with a garden, at 19 Russell Crescent. He also loved visits to his grandmother, uncle and aunt on the family croft in Sandwick, where he was introduced to another lifelong interest, trout fishing. Later, he also spent time with other relations nearby,

There were only two dampeners. One was the annual ritual of cutting and raising peats for winter fuel – his father would fill up to 300 bags – which Aly anticipated with all the “enthusiasm of a victim bound for the firing squad”. The other was his experience of school, especially secondary school, where he felt “closed in…nervous and lacking in confidence”. It began to feel like a prison, though there was some relief in the navigation classes taught by Tommy Moncrieff, which involved rowing in Lerwick harbour, and in the school band, the Rhythm Aces. He left as soon as he could, at 15, and worked for a time as a baker and then as a joiner.

Aly’s first fiddle

Aly was given his first fiddle at the age of 11, after much “pestering” of his parents; it was a three-quarter sized copy of a Stradivarius and cost half of his father’s weekly wage. On that first night, he managed to play The Grand Old Duke of York, and he learned more tunes from a neighbour and from listening to the radio and records. His parents were so impressed by his dedication to playing that they got in touch with Tom Anderson, and he began weekly lessons.

Aly recalls that, in those days, there was very little interest in Shetland’s traditional music; he thinks he was Tom’s only pupil. Partly, this was because rock ‘n’ roll seemed all-conquering, but Tom, an insurance agent who travelled all over Shetland, had realised that the kind of Scottish music then in vogue was supplanting Shetland’s own heritage. That led to Tom’s campaign to have music taught in schools, and he also collected Shetland tunes. In the years ahead, Aly would see it as his job to carry those tunes to a national and international audience; together, they agreed, “we would save the music somehow”.

Aly – like many young players – would have liked to play fast tunes but Tom insisted on teaching the more challenging slow airs and strathspeys, providing the broadest possible grounding. By the time he was 13, Aly was able to join the Shetland Fiddlers’ Society, established by Tom. The group played at events including the 1960 Hamefarin’ – a homecoming when the Shetland diaspora return to their roots. Playing with so many very talented players was really valuable, and also great fun, days that “were among the happiest of my young life”.

It was also, he recalls, a form of release.

When I started to play, I hated school, and when I came home, I would play. It was very therapeutic; I would just play the fiddle for a while, and everything seemed to go away. Music was a way out, for me, of all sorts of problems when I was young.

He also joined the Shetland Folk Society, committed to safeguarding all aspects of Shetland’s heritage, and played in its band. Through his teens, he played in other bands and in the Lounge Bar, a hub for traditional music to this day. The BBC featured the Fiddlers in a programme marking the commissioning, in April 1964, of the Bressay television transmitter and Aly caught the attention of one of the BBC team, Arthur Argo, who was later to help establish him nationally.

Excursions south: curiosity aroused

That same year, Aly was in Glasgow for the wedding of his brother Douglas, and was introduced to the Glasgow folk music scene, including clubs where people flocked to hear musicians and singers like Archie Fisher and Hamish Imlach. He joined in, playing a few tunes, and was immediately congratulated by a banjo player, none other than Billy Connolly, who was then known for his music rather than his comedy.

Aly went home to Shetland, but with a new curiosity about what was happening in Scotland. Three years later, Archie Fisher – clearly impressed by Aly’s playing – paid his fare to attend a festival at Blairgowrie. For Aly, that was “the real turning point”. He was becoming known; Blairgowrie led to an invitation to the Irvine Folk Club.

When I saw all those people who loved traditional music and liked what I did, I was just amazed. These were people I could relate to.

Decision made

Back in Shetland, he felt increasingly unfulfilled in his job as a joiner, considered his options and came to a life-changing conclusion. Encouraged by Arthur Argo, he moved initially to Glasgow, staying for a while with his brother.

Aly was all too well aware that he was breaking new ground.

When I left Shetland, I had no idea what I was getting into. I hadn’t a clue, because nobody had done it before, and there was no-one to ask how to become a professional musician. I don’t know what possessed me, but I did it. But I always believed that traditional music was good enough to be played in concert halls and in the end, we proved that.

Aly was a pioneer: he was carrying Shetland’s heritage to new audiences, working professionally in the tradition, and leading what became an instrumental revival – something that had already taken off in England, but not in Scotland. But, he says, “we were quickly accepted, and we brought new life into the music, which was great”. In those early days, he mostly played solo, as there were not yet any accompanists working in the same vein.

Away from his day job, Arthur Argo was agent for Billy Connolly and Barbara Dickson, and he promoted Aly to folk clubs and festivals. The sharpening focus on traditional music, and especially instrumental music, was very much in tune with Aly’s values, and he became even more conscious of the importance of pursuing ‘the real music’, rather than the narrower, tartan-wrapped repertoire that in those days dominated television and radio.

Soon afterwards, he played in Irvine again, at their Folk Festival, where a duo called The Humblebums – consisting of Billy Connolly and Tam Harvey – were on the bill. Aly joined them and the bond between Billy and Aly that developed then and subsequently remains unbroken.

Billy was meantime honing his comedy skills in the Scotia Bar, where Aly recalls lying on the floor, incapable through laughter at Billy’s extraordinary talent: “he seemed to be incapable of saying anything that wasn’t funny”. Aly joined the band for a while, but didn’t record with them. At one event in Dunfermline, Arthur Argo had him at the top of the bill, but had also booked guitarist Mike Whellans. The two hit it off immediately and played the last part of the concert together, blending Scottish tunes with Mike’s blues and bluegrass.

America beckons

Aly and Mike were soon very busy. In 1969, they went on a British tour, fitting in 25 dates in a month, and appearances at folk festivals cemented their reputation.

At one of those gigs, they were approached by an American banjo player and singer, Sara Grey, who went on to set up a hectic 45-date tour covering the east coast and some of the Midwest, with venues in universities and coffee shops. It was a turning point. Aly’s link with America was forged, and in the years to come it would lead to a host of transatlantic collaborations.

But alongside all this, an Irish connection was developing. Partly, this stemmed from a friendship with Irish piper Finbar Furey, who encouraged Aly to move from Glasgow to Edinburgh, where had noticed that the folk scene was more dynamic and eclectic than in the west. He and Finbar swapped Shetland and Irish tunes and techniques. Sandy Bell’s was a favourite pub for musicians, including leading Irish bands of the day, the Dubliners and the Clancy Brothers

Another seed had been sown when, at the Falkirk Folk Festival, Aly and Mike met the Boys of the Lough, who included Robin Morton, Cathal McConnell and Tommy Gunn. The admiration for their playing was mutual, and over the next couple of years the partnership blossomed. They began touring in 1971 and in 1972 played alongside such well-known names as Arlo Guthrie, Kris Kristofferson, Loudon Wainwright, the Dubliners and Ralph McTell at the Cambridge Folk Festival, England’s biggest. They went down a storm. By that point, Mike Whellans had left to pursue his own projects, to be replaced by Dick Gaughan.

Just a week later, the contacts made in America two years earlier bore fruit, and the Boys set off for a number of dates organised by Wendy Lawrence, who’d seen Aly and Mike on that first US tour; for Aly, there was romance, and he and Lucy Ullman married less than a year later. “Wendy booked us at the Fox Hollow Festival, where we met kindred spirits like Jay Unger, Jean Carrignan and a host of others”.

in the years that followed, there were dozens more tours, criss-crossing the country, and these sustained the band at a level that performing in Britain alone never could. “If it wasn’t for America,” he says, “we wouldn’t have survived.”

America was in any case fertile territory. Americans of European heritage were well aware of their roots, and American folk music enthusiasts were very conscious of the traditions on which their own music was founded: Scottish, Irish and sometimes Scandinavian. The interest and the enthusiasm was real and substantial, and audiences were always open to great music, brilliantly played.

Nor of course was the American roots music scene isolated from the rest of the nation’s life. There was already an established genre of protest music, stimulated in the early 1960s by the civil rights movement and later by opposition to the Vietnam war. In those coffee-houses and universities, the music the Boys were playing fitted right in. As Aly put it, “we were anti-war, anti-establishment – we were anti everything they were anti.”

From 1976, their fame spread across to the west coast, with huge success in San Diego alongside Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Maria Muldaur and many others, followed by a sell-out in San Francisco. There were, in the end, more than 40 tours, playing in every state except Nebraska: “I used to know American airports as well as I knew Lerwick!” They travelled on tickets that were centred on the airline’s hub, “so if you wanted to go from New York to Boston, you’d have to go through Texas!”.

Moving into television

Not only was Aly’s commitment to presenting and promoting traditional music absolute, it also stretched far beyond Shetland and Scottish music or the repertoire of the Boys of the Lough. The American connections he’d made led to a number of television programmes and series; and in America, he discovered that there were many people – like the Cajuns – who wanted to preserve and revive their own particular musical traditions. “We had a lot in common”. Aly had also realised that one television programme could reach a bigger audience than forty tours.

The first of these series, in 1985, was Down Home, generously funded by the newly-established Channel 4 and commissioned by Mike Bolland. Aly ranged across North America from Nashville through the Appalachians to Cape Breton and Quebec. Jeremy Isaacs, the channel’s controller, who hailed from Glasgow, was very open to arts-based ideas and essentially said “here’s half a million pounds: go and do what you want”. Those days, Aly says, have gone. Raising production money is now much harder.

Down Home laid the foundation for later projects, the next of which, two years later, was Aly Bain Meets the Cajuns, also developed for Channel 4. Aly met and played with the leading exponents of Louisiana’s distinctive and infectious Cajun tradition, including among others the Bon-Temps Zydeco Band, Dewey Balfa, the Savoy-Doucet Cajun Band and D L Menard.

The next television outing was Aly Bain and Friends, made for Scottish Television and Channel 4 in 1988. It took Aly back to his roots, with appearances by those stalwarts of Shetland music and great friends, pianist Violet Tulloch, guitarist Willie Johnson and fiddler Willie Hunter. Among those joining them in front of a studio audience were the Boys of the Lough, Capercaillie, and the American fiddler Junior Daugherty.

Aly was back in Shetland in 1991 to record The Shetland Sessions, devoted to that year’s Shetland Folk Festival and transmitted on BBC2. Two CDs were also released, featuring, among others, D L Menard, Danny Thompson, Graham Townsend, Phil Cunningham and the Poozies.

The Transatlantic Sessions

The stage was now set for the largest and longest-running project of all. The Transatlantic Sessions, which ran to six television series and added concerts featuring a changing cast of the leading players from both sides of the ocean. Indeed, Aly thinks that was a great strength: “it’s always fresh, there’s always something new happening”. He counts the series as the greatest success of his life.

Those involved – to mention some names at random – included Cara Dillon, Tim O’Brien, Julie Fowlis, John Martyn, Alison Krauss, Bruce Molsky, Emmylou Harris, Karen Matheson, Béla Fleck, Russ Barenberg, Iris Dement, Guy Clark, Phil Cunningham, Rufus Wainwright, Dougie Maclean, Roseanne Cash and Kate and Anna McGarrigle.

Directed by Aly and the dobro maestro, Jerry Douglas, the programmes and the recordings form a truly remarkable snapshot of their musical times. The first series was broadcast in 1995 and the most recent in 2013, all of them produced by Glasgow-based Pelicula Films with funding from BBC Scotland, BBC Four and RTÉ. There was touring involved, too, and among others featured in live concerts was Eric Clapton, who “just loved” them, and recorded with Aly and Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood at Abbey Road studios in London.

With help from Donald Shaw, Davy Gardner and Celtic Connections, Aly managed to bring a 17-piece version of the show to Shetland in 2012. It’s fondly remembered by all those who packed the Clickimin Centre. Eddi Reader thanked Shetland “for making Aly Bain” and for the Scotsman’s Sue Wilson, the highlights

…ranged from Wailin’ Jennys singer Ruth Moody’s limpidly lovely pastoral paean The Garden to Douglas’s mesmerising solo dobro workout; from Mavericks frontman Raul Malo’s spine-tingling, Orbison-esque You’re Only Lonely to several ultra-classy yet suitably uproarious instrumental medleys from the stellar “house band”.

There were many other television appearances: he discussed fiddle and violin playing in the folk and classical traditions with Nicola Benedetti and, with Billy Connolly, made a film celebrating the life of the Scottish poet, Norman MacCaig. Aly’s own 60^th birthday was marked by a BBC programme.

There were yet more partnerships, too, including one with Ale Möller, the Swedish composer and multi-instrumentalist; they made two albums and another with America’s Bruce Molsky, making up a touring trio.

In 1995, Aly collaborated with the BT Scottish Ensemble to produce Follow the Moonstone, a CD comprising three suites, Scandinavian, Shetland and Scottish.

Phil and Aly

But of all Aly’s many collaborations, the longest and closest has been with the extraordinary accordionist and composer, Phil Cunningham, whose career began with Silly Wizard and later featured many collaborations and solo work. He and Aly began performing together in 1986, so Aly’s 80th birthday coincides with their 40^th anniversary. In Phil, Aly found the ideal partner, and not only that missing accompanist.

He can do everything. He can accompany, he can harmonise, he can write great music, and he loves the same kind of music as me, which was mainly slow airs. He can write slow airs and we liked playing them. There were only two of us, and life was much easier! We had huge success and it was a really great experience working with him, because he’s such a talented guy.

It was only in 1995 that they released their first album, but they’ve subsequently added, at the last count, another eight. In the 30 years between 1989 and 2019, they were a fixture on BBC Scotland’s Hogmanay Live television show. Phil was made MBE in 2002.

Phil and Aly have also racked up innumerable tours in the UK and abroad, and audiences have not only been delighted by their supremely skilful playing, but moved to tears - of laughter - by the anecdotes, the characterisations and the musical jokes that lace their performances. It’s been an irresistible combination.

No compromises

Aly Bain has had an extraordinary career, reflecting his exceptional talent. He has won many awards and recognitions: an MBE in 1994, five honorary Doctor of Music degrees in the UK and more in the USA; and recognition in BBC awards, including one for Lifetime Achievement in the 2013 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. There were silver discs for Aly Bain Meets the Cajuns and, with Phil Cunningham, for The Pearl.

There have been other kinds of recognition, too. He played when the Scottish Parliament was reconvened in 1999 after its 292-year adjournment, and at the funeral of its inaugural First Minister, Donald Dewar, in 2000.

But in the light of all that success, it’s important to recall Aly’s original and enduring motivation, which was – and still is – idealistic rather than financial. As Aly put it in the 1993 biography, reflecting on the success of the Boys of the Lough:

In the beginning, all we wanted was to get traditional music heard, and we were going to make sure it was heard, because it was good music. We were young then. We weren’t doing it for money. We were doing it for other reasons, idealistic ones. But at the same time, we had to make a living. Opening up America meant that we could actually make money without ever losing the ideal.

Nor did they ever lose it; as a Shetland admirer put it to me recently, he has never compromised. It has always been about the music and there was never any prospect that, like one or two other musical giants, he would ‘sell out’. Those who know him understand that very well.

No short account – indeed any written account – of Aly Bain’s career can do it full justice or capture the sheer joy and unbridled admiration that his playing has generated over the decades. But the evidence is all around: the number of active young players has probably never been greater, and the success and scale of events such as Glasgow’s Celtic Connections is proof, were it needed, of the way in which the seeds of the revival were so successfully sown back in the 1960s and 1970s, by him and those he inspired. From the Lounge Bar in Lerwick to Carnegie Hall in New York was, as he says, “a long, long journey” but he got there.

Nor, of course, can mere words capture the energy, the subtlety, the gracefulness and fluidity of Aly’s playing. It’s essential to listen to the music and where possible, watch the television programmes and DVDs. A YouTube search will produce many videos.

And a comprehensive account would also encompass the many incidents that have punctuated his career, or at least those that are fit for publication: back in the Lounge Bar in the 1960s, he’d never have imagined that he would one day be granted the freedom of El Paso standing alongside – of all people – the hawkish US Defense Secretary indicted in the Iran-Contra scandal, Caspar Weinberger.

As we mark his 80^th anniversary, we’re in the company of countless musicians and audiences around the globe.

Happy birthday, Aly!