Question for Brit players ...
Colin
have any of you British banjo players ever heard of a Canadian
blugrass picker called Ian Jardine Macintyre? He lived in Edinburgh for a
couple of years around 1970 and was excellent. I recollect he played on
some Scottish TV programme several times with either
Aly Bain the fiddler or Dick Gaughan the singer - I
forget which. He was a disciple of Doug Dillard and got
me interested in melodic style picking.
He may well have remained in Britain and moved to London to do session
work - I'm not sure.
He was certainly good enough to do so.
Cheers,
Colin
Madison Wisconsin
Jon Freeman
> Folks,
> have any of you British banjo players ever heard of a
Canadian
> blugrass picker called Ian Jardine Macintyre? He lived in Edinburgh for a
> couple of years around 1970 and was excellent. I recollect he played on
> some Scottish TV programme several times with either
> Aly Bain the fiddler or Dick Gaughan the singer - I
> forget which. He was a disciple of Doug Dillard and got
> me interested in melodic style picking.
> He may well have remained in Britain and moved to London to do session
> work - I'm not sure.
It might be worth your while asking on uk.music.folk. Dick Gaughan is a
regular contributer to that group.
Jon
John
news:c4c7l2$qoo$1...@news.doit.wisc.edu...
I remember him in Edinburgh around that time. As far as I remember he moved
back to Canada in the early seventies. He did play with Dick Gaughan and, I
think, Chuck Fleming. He was a friend of Martin Sinclair, an excellent local
banjo player, who moved to the States in the mid seventies.
John
sa...@uvic.ca
Cheers,
Sibylle, Victoria.BC. I was there in Edinburgh when you were.
peteri...@gmail.com
In February 1989 I met Ian while applying for a visa in the Polish embassy in Beijing. He was muttering about the problems of having such a long name and there being not enough boxes on the visa application form. It was an icy cold Beijing winter. Ian and I subsequently spent the next six weeks or so travelling on the cheap overland to London by train via Mongolia and Siberia and it included spending a few days in Moscow staying with a couple of Russian university students appropriately enough named Boris and Igor.
Ian had his banjo and he was indeed a brilliant player. Many an hour were passed in our often crowded railway compartment, drinking tea from the samovar (in the vestibule of the carriage) while Ian played his banjo brilliantly. He was then in his early forties and he had lived in Beijing and spoke fluent Mandarin with a perfect Beijing accent; he had that musician's ear for sound, notes and intonation. By the time we travelled together he had been working as an English teacher while living in Taipei with his Taiwanese girlfriend and he was travelling to Scotland to see his ill father who was thought not to be long for the world.
Ian and I parted ways on Victoria Station in London on a cold winter's night 27 years ago. He was an excellent travelling companion and an all-round good bloke (as we say in Australia). I gather that he is now back in Canada. I wish him well if you track him down.
Best wishes,
Peter Donald.
