Pair join the elite in music’s Hall of Fame

Dec 7 2007 Alison Anderson

TWO East Perthshire people were inducted into music’s Hall of Fame at the Scots Trad Music Awards 2007, held in Fort William at the weekend.

Joining the elite are ambassador for the travellers’ tradition, Sheila Stewart, and Ian Powrie, one of Scottish country dance music’s best-loved figures who now lives in Australia.

Induction to the Hall of Fame is only awarded to musicians who have been in the industry over 30 years and who have altered Scotland’s musical landscape for the better.

Sheila Stewart’s citation described her as “a national treasure, the last in a long line of a rich oral tradition and a singer of unsurpassed character, passion and power.”

Sheila described the induction as “wonderful – just like the Oscars,” but she stressed that this was an honour not for herself, but for the whole Stewart family.

“I did not accept this for myself, it was for the Stewarts of Blairgowrie and is in recognition of all the years we have put into folk music.”

Born on July 7, 1935, in a stable belonging to a hotel in Blairgowrie, Sheila grew up in a family of travelling people whose roots in Scotland have been traced back to the 11th century and whose music and song gained worldwide renown during the folk music revival.

Her mother, Belle, was a great singer and tradition bearer as well as a songwriter, and her father, Alec, was a piper and storyteller. It was Sheila’s Uncle Donald, however, who chose her to carry on the family’s songs and stories.

While other children were out playing, Sheila would be sat on her uncle’s knee learning another song. This paid off handsomely when, at regular family ceilidhs, Uncle Donald would ask Sheila to sing song after song in return for a ten-shilling note – quite a sum in the 1940s.

Sheila later sang with the family concert party, playing village halls all over Scotland and when, in 1954, journalist Maurice Fleming and then folklorist Hamish Henderson arrived in Blairgowrie looking for singers of traditional songs, the Stewarts of Blair became a folk club, festival and concert attraction on both sides of the Atlantic.

Henderson described trying to record the Stewarts’ repertoire as “like holding a can under Niagara Falls,” and Ewan MacColl, similarly impressed, made the Stewarts’ house in Blairgowrie the Scottish base for his radio ballad The Travelling People in the 1960s.

In America, the Stewarts of Blair – Belle, Alec, Sheila and her sister Cathie – were given the red carpet treatment, and Sheila went on to sing in the White House for then-President Gerald Ford during America’s bicentennial celebrations in 1976.

Six years later, on June 1 1982, Sheila appeared before her biggest audience ever, some 300,000, when she was chosen to represent the travelling people during Pope John Paul II’s visit to Scotland. From her specially-built stage, Sheila sang Ewan MacColl’s Moving On Song to huge acclaim from the Bellahouston Park crowd.

Sheila was just as proud, in 2003, to hear her singing of the same song being turned into brave new music, when maverick composer and musician Martyn Bennett incorporated it into the track Move on his final masterpiece, Grit.

Since her mother’s death in 1997 and her sister Cathie’s retirement, Sheila has continued to share her family’s songs and stories with audiences at home and abroad. She has lectured on travellers’ culture at Princeton and Harvard universities and for many years sat on the Secretary of State for Scotland’s advisory committee on travellers.

Sheila received her MBE a year ago for services to the oral tradition of Scotland's folk music and for travelling people.

Ian Powrie is one of Scottish country dance music’s best-loved figures, with a band sound and fiddle style which were instantly recognisable as his own.

Born at Bridge of Cally on May 26, 1923, Ian began playing violin at the age of five. His father, Will, played melodeon and was well-known on the Scottish country dance scene, but Ian’s teachers forbade him to play Scottish music in favour of the classics.

He made his first broadcast, playing solo violin, on BBC radio’s Children’s Hour at the tender age of 12. The pull of traditional music — which he heard at spontaneous gatherings in houses and in the nearby fields on summer evenings — proved too much, and before long he was playing with his father’s band.

After war service with the RAF, Ian took over the band and made his first broadcast as a bandleader in 1949.

The Ian Powrie Band became a popular attraction and became one of the mainstays on BBC television’s iconic White Heather Club, appearing on 86 of its 100-show run.

Before emigrating to Australia, Ian played solo fiddle at the opening of the new Pitlochry Festival Theatre. Once in Australia, Ian remained much in demand both as a fiddler and as a judge of fiddle competitions in America and Canada.

In 1986 Ian returned to Scotland and continued with his fiddle playing until 1999, when at the age of seventy-six he decided finally to retire, still a master of his beloved Scottish slow airs.

Other inductees to the Hall of Fame in 2007 were Aonghas Grant, Iain MacFadyen, Eric Bogle and The Corries.