The Corries
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The Corries |
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The Corries were a Scottish folk group that emerged from the Scottish folk revival of the early 1960s. Although the group was a trio in the early days, it was as the partnership of Roy Williamson and Ronnie Browne that it is best known.
Early years
Roy Williamson was born in 1936 in Edinburgh. His mother played the piano. At school he learned to play the recorder by ear, pretending to read music. The teacher found out and banned him from music lessons. He went to Wester Elchies School, then Aberlour House and Gordonstoun in Moray. He taught seamanship and navigation at Burghead before going to Edinburgh College of Art. It was there that he met Ronnie Browne in 1955. The partnership lasted over thirty years.
Williamson teamed up with Bill Smith and Ron Cockburn to form the "Corrie Folk Trio" in 1962. Their first performance was in the Waverley Bar in St Mary's Street, Edinburgh. After a few weeks Cockburn left. They had already accepted an engagement at the Edinburgh Festival so Williamson suggested that Ronnie Browne should be brought in to make up numbers. They also added female Irish singer Paddie Bell to become the "Corrie Folk Trio and Paddie Bell". The audience was only eight people for the debut of this line-up but by the end of the festival it was house full at every performance. A corrie is a circular dip in a highland mountain. They chose it to evoke the Scottish landscape.
Television success
Within a year they appeared on television. Williamson and Browne were art teachers, Smith was an architect and Bell was a secretary. In 1964 they topped the bill at a show with The Dubliners at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh. The BBC began a television series set in a folk club. The resident group at the "Hoot'nanny Show" was the Corrie Folk Trio. This meant they became full-time professionals. Within two years Paddie Bell and Bill Smith left. Williamson was a talented multi-instrumentalist and Browne was the singer. They cancelled all engagements for a few months to practise intensively. Under the new name, "The Corries", they performed at the Jubilee Arms Hotel in Cortachy, Angus. The response encouraged them to continue.
Another BBC series "The White Heather Club" began in 1958. It featured Andy Stewart, Jimmy Shand and his Band, Robin Hall and Jimmie MacGregor, and the Corries. While the rest of the show was set in a studio, the Corries were filmed in location: sea songs were sung in a harbour, "Braes o' Killiecrankie" was sung at the Pass of Killiecrankie, and so on. They were effectively pioneers of the music video.
The Combolins
Williamson was a skilled woodworker. In the summer of 1969 he invented the 'combolins', two complementary instruments which combined several into a single instrument. One combined a mandolin and a guitar (along with four bass strings operated with slides), the other combined guitar and the Spanish bandurria, the latter being an instrument Williamson had played since the early days of the Corrie Folk Trio.
Originally conceived as a way to combine several of the many instruments they carried around on tour - the Corries' long row of chairs behind them on stage bearing instruments is legendary - the combolins in fact became an additional two instruments for the tour van. Most often, Browne played the guitar/mandolin instrument with bass strings, and Williamson the other, which also had 13 sympathetic strings designed to resonate like the Indian sitar. The wood for the instruments was obtained from antique hardwood furniture as well as premium grade Tyrolean spruce, and featured Williamson's artistic embellishments in silver and mother of pearl.
The Corries' next album, Strings and Things (1970), was specifically designed to showcase the new instruments and featured detailed descriptions of them on the rear sleeve. Many consider it to be their best album. On stage, when the combolins were played, the Corries would swap their seating position around from the conventional Williamson to Browne's right. Usually the combolins were played to accompany long ballads such as The Silkie of Sule Skerry and The Gartan Mother's Lullaby, as well as a number of the compositions of Peebles baker George Weir, including Lord Yester and Weep ye Weel by Atholl.
The immense strain on the instruments caused by the multitude of strings meant they needed regular maintenance later in their life, and one of Williamson's best friends, instrument repairer David Sinton, maintained them. After Williamson's death, Sinton was bequeathed the two combolins. He has since issued a CD of tunes played on them, Caledonian Sunset, although it took many years to perfect the playing of these complex instruments, as well as deal with the undoubted emotional difficulty in playing them.
Commercial success
The early 1970s were the Corries' finest hour. They had several albums in the top 50 album charts in Scotland, and released a single: - "Flower of Scotland" (1974). It was quickly adopted by supporters of rugby football, and (though not an official national anthem) is still used as Scotland's anthem at international matches. It is also heard at football matches, especially against the England national team. Their concerts frequently had the audience joining in with the chorus of songs, even without prompting. The Corries became closely identified with Jacobite songs, celebrating the final years of clan loyalty and military courage. In 1977, one of their best albums Peat Fire Flame was released. This saw a move towards love songs and celebrations of the landscape. They never achieved much acclaim outside Scotland, and even today are viewed as too populist to be classed alongside Ireland's Planxty or England's Martin Carthy.[citation needed]
As a young man, Roy Williamson played rugby for Edinburgh Wanderers. However, he suffered from asthma and before a series of concerts he would deliberately cease treatment in order to provoke attacks and gain temporary immunity. During the Corries' 1989 tour, Williamson's health went into decline and he was diagnosed with a brain tumour. He spent his last years living in Forres, close to where he spent his school years. He died on 12 August 1990.
Ronnie Browne continued recording and moved into acting, as well as expanding his career as a noted painter, including commissions for the 1990 Scottish Rugby team's Grand Slam victory, but has now retired from performing.
Paddie Bell made some solo albums following her departure from the trio, most notably with Irish musicians Finbar and Eddie Furey, but withdrew from the folk scene followed by a period of dependency on alcohol and anti-depressant medication. In the 1990s Bell, with the help of several friends and fans on the folk scene in Edinburgh, revived her singing career with a couple of new recordings and became something of a celebrity again. She died in 2005 aged 74.
In December 2007, The Corries were inducted into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame at the Scottish Trad Music Awards in Fort William, promoted by concertina virtuoso Simon Thoumire's Hands Up for Trad organisation.
Discography (original studio/live recordings)
- The Corrie Folk Trio and Paddie Bell (1965)
- The Promise Of The Day (1965)
- Those Wild Corries (1966)
- Bonnet, Belt and Sword (1967)
- Kishmul's Galley (1968)
- Scottish Love Songs (1969)
- Strings and Things (1970)
- In Retrospect (1970)
- Sound The Pibroch (1972)
- A Little Of What You Fancy (1973)
- Live from Scotland Volume 1 (1974)
- Live from Scotland Volume 2 (1975)
- Live from Scotland Volume 3 (1975)
- Live from Scotland Volume 4 (1977)
- Peat Fire Flame (1977)
- Spotlight On The Corries (1977)
- Stovies (album) (1980) (live)
- A Man's A Man (1980)
- The Dawning of the Day (1982) (live)
- Love From Scotland (1983) (compilation)
- Scotland Will Flourish (1985) (live)
- Barrett's Privateers (1987) (live)
- The Bonnie Blue (1988) (live)
- Flower of Scotland (1990) (new live recording on BBC Records)
Many of the Corries recordings have now been reissued on CD by Moidart Music, a company set up originally to release Williamson's posthumous Long Journey South solo album. The recordings are now overseen by Browne's son Gavin, who runs the official Corries website, along with original recording engineer Allan Spence and David Sinton.