The Birth of the 'Glenfiddich'

" ‘Pie terror hits city’,  ‘Strange giant felled in Space-Age attack’, ‘Was it a meteorite? scientist demands’, ‘Naw – but it tasted like yin, victim mumbles’.

"Except it really wasn’t funny, was it?  The meeting was so secret that not even Donald MacP. knew about it.  And here it was blown by a homosexual, who it later turned out, specialised in small boys.  And if he hadn’t hated me so much for his ‘outing’ himself I very much doubt if any of us would have been any the wiser.  Then they all got into bed together to wreck the status of the Northern Meeting by deceiving decent folk into believing the Grant’s Whisky Contest was the world’s championship, which MacNeill was allowed to boast time after time on BBC for years." 

All because of a publicity stunt for a booze company.

The Cameron Style

 --  for yet a while

Now that it has been exposed how the Glenfiddich “contest” was conceived to destroy the Cameron style of pibroch playing as the principal aim of a publicity stunt for a booze company, more sense can be made of James McGillivray’s unsolicited claim that the Cameron-style never existed.  All by courtesy of the former Glenfiddich gold medallist turned judge himself, in a Bob Dunsire Bagpipe Web forum. 

According to him, the final doyen of pibroch, Robert Reid, distorted the music and passed it off as music taught to him.  “I would suggest that while Reid was Cameron-taught, what we hear is mostly Reid,” Mr McGillivray stressed. 

Here is the  undiluted Piob. Society’s toxic asset to cover up its own interminable distortions.  It falsely asserted Robert Reid had “gone his own way” because what he played differed from the settings in the earlier MS book discarded by MacDougall Gillies, which Campbell-K had illicitly “acquired”. 

However, Mr McGillivray, who never met Robert Reid, nor heard him in person, based his own findings on  alleged recordings of the final doyen’s playing,  “and I’ve heard many, courtesy of the late Andrew MacNeill”.  Robert Reid must have suffered from retrospective second sight when he wrote to me on 22 March 1954 about a similar piping sage:  “Probably another case of someone who has never really been in touch trying to impress those who have never been in touch.”   

Mr MacGillivray then dutifully claimed  “there really is no ‘Cameron’ school, and there were no more differences between Robert Reid’s piobaireachd and John MacDonald’s (sic)” and two modern pipers who played, from memory, roughly in the Piob. Society/Glenfiddich style.   

Not content with this sinister Glenfiddich device, Mr MacGilivray then claimed “John Burgess received the heart of his playing from Willie Ross” but it was John Burgess himself who told me that if there was any doubt over a pibroch, “Old Willie would reach for Glen’s book and consult it.”  Another poster claimed that “Willie Ross was a Cameron style player who taught that style to Burgess”, based on  allegations  by the same Andrew MacNeill.  He apparently did not even know that after Old Willie had gone down to England to stay with his daughter, Sir Douglas Ramsay asked Robert Reid on behalf of the Piob. Society,  to take on John Burgess as a pupil as he had been left without a teacher, but Robert Reid declined.  If Andrew MacNeill didn’t even know that, what else did he have to invent to become such a great authority on the final doyen?   

At first Mr McGillivray seemed not to have known about the incident at the unveiling of the MacCrimmon memorial cairn on 2 August 1933 when John Macdonald and Robert Reid were asked to play MacCrimmon’s Sweetheart in concert.  Reid already knew  that Macdonald could only play the tune in the clipped MacPherson style.  To avoid embarrassing the older piper, Robert Reid played the tune in the same, to him, alien MacPherson style. The incident is described in my MacCrimmon book on pp 50-53. 

By chance I  recently found a recording of John Macdonald playing the same tune c.1938 and, believe you me, the urlar alone disproves the glue-eared fantasy that Robert Reid played the tune the same way;  which casts much doubt on the integrity of the “many” Andrew MacNeill recordings heard by J. McGillivray.   I myself  was taught the tune by Robert Reid and when it came to the long F in the singling, I protested it wasn’t in the Piob. Society book like that.  Robert Reid looked at me and sharply said: “Just be quiet and do what you’re told”, with Ronnie Meldrum approvingly nodding beside him.  These are incidents you just don’t forget.   

The puzzle, to me, is from where Andrew MacNeill obtained these tapes?  The mystery was apparently revealed by blogger Maitland in an over-blown testament to Andrew MacNeill who must have himself supplied the information for the encomium, which conflicts with reason. 

He must also have been the sole source of the information written in good faith by another poster:  “Apparently Andrew was one of the few people Reid felt comfortable being a house guest of and Reid used to holiday on the isles staying with Andrew.  I guess the talk was of piobaireachd far into the night.” 

It was later alleged that “27 or so” pibrochs had been taped on Colonsay.  At first 100 pibrochs were allegedly recorded there, where Robert Reid supposedly holidayed each year, meaning that he was still recording them long after he died in 1965, rather like the MacCrimmons were allegedly still composing the best tunes long after they themselves had passed away. 

 Robert Reid himself repeatedly told me that only about 30 pibrochs were worth recording, borne out by his own letters which stated how many hours of pibroch- playing he had taped in Glasgow. 

So what deal had Andrew MacNeill  done with Robert Reid’s son, Robbie, to part with the tapes?  It was known to be an almost physical impossibility to do so. Was it for writing those defamatory letters about me, ostensibly composed by Robbie, but in reality forged by Andrew MacNeill, to the managing director of Seagrams, accusing me of fraud and inaccuracies?  Inadvertently they revealed that Robbie’s father and I had deeply discussed the MacCrimmon myth and how it had been used to wreck traditional pibroch, from which Robbie had been excluded.  He had been bitterly hurt, but I had not realised how deep his actual enmity had become. 

I only discovered from the Craigie Calder tapes I had unknowingly been made one of Robert Reid’s five confidants.  He was a private man and kept his life in separate compartments.  Jimmy Barke, the author, was another.  So was Craigie. 

With me the doyen discussed music and his fears about the MacCrimmons and how they had been used to force the alien pibroch style on pipers, his concerns dating from his close friendship with G.S. MacLennan, who had the MacCrimmon pipes through his hands after World War I and described them as “a bunch of firewood”.  He considered they had not been bored out but burnt out with a red-hot iron, hence Robert Reid’s assessment of them after he played Children’s Lament at the unveiling ceremony of the MacCrimmon cairn in 1933. 

It was certainly clear, I was receiving special treatment. All my pibroch tuition had been given to me for nothing, all the unique fingering and exercises, all the lore, all the inside story.  I had already begun to write short stories and, more importantly, publish them. 

In those days there were no computers, no mobile phones, no internet.  People rarely had phones at home because of the expense, and the art of letter-writing still flourished. 

Robert Reid had asked me to take over his autobiography which he had drafted in hospital after his first heart attack and given to Barke, who had been unable to revise it, but the draft had disappeared, and my function was to write the story of the music for future generations, and what had been done to it. 

Robbie Reid’s enmity had actually surfaced at his father’s funeral, when, with the  coffin actually on his shoulder, Robbie hissed at me like a stage villain. “Fifteen.”  He was mistakenly referring to how often Robert Reid had consecutively won the pibroch at Cowal.  I had given the correct number in a short obituary for the Scottish Daily Express, based on galley-proofs of articles I had written about the doyen which he himself had corrected in his own hand.  In its obit. in October 1965, the Piping Times stated:  “He won the event in 1925 and 1926.  John Macdonald won in 1927 and Willie Ross in 1928.  From 1929 until 1938 Robert Reid won it without a break.”

The tapes definitely remained in the possession of Robbie Reid, long after his father’s death in 1965 and he would not have parted with them to anyone.  Indeed he wrote me an embittered letter on 5 December 1965:  “As you surmise, there has been the feelers out about the recordings, one of them was from a doctor in Dunfermline.  I received his offer before my father was cremated.  Another one was from the Scottish School of Social Studies.  They didn’t want to offer me anything.  The offering was to be done by me.  I was to get the honour of giving away a chunk of Scottish Culture free, gratis and for nothing.”

He followed up with a letter dated 21 June 1966 stating he “should have about ten L.P. records of Piob.  If they don’t prove commercially beneficial they will at least be beneficial to piping, which the scabrous records that MacNeill and company” (Seumas MacNeill and John MacFadyen on BBC records) “foist on the piping world.  The records of my father should do something to improve the standard of piping to some extent.”

He mentioned putting the tapes on discs.  “As you know, the recordings are of good quality and I wouldn’t like to let some numb-skull distort the quality of them.”

I had already prepared costings for putting the tapes on long-playing records for his father in 1961 but the mention of Purchase Tax was enough to scupper the project, as he almost lost his business to the Customs and Excise just after the war, in turn leading to Bob Hardie’s pibroch tuition coming to a sudden halt.  The tapes had already been made, as Robert Reid explained in a letter to a Canadian friend in May 1954, which mentioned meeting “”Campbell Kilberry” in London last week (on Saturday 15 May).  “Of course he is aware I have something better in the form of six hours Piob (i.e. pibroch) playing which I have on Tapes.”

In another letter dated 1 May 1958 he stated  “I have roughly 10 hours playing on these tapes....also some talks...my son, a piper of sorts, with a fairly good knowledge gave me every assistance in the making of these and venture to say everyone is a real gem – played in the Cameron tradition.  The ‘Tapes’ now belong to my son and my guess is it would take much more than the P/Soc to separate him from them.”

After the MacCrimmon book was published in 1980, Robbie Reid’s anger burst apart in a most disturbed letter – beyond insult – which bizarrely changed its tone at the end and he now pleaded he wanted to come and see me, presumably because he had found the costings and he badly needed help.  He was still badly smarting over the number of Cowal wins, although his father had pointed out that a couple of pipers had “somehow got in along the way” and the correct figure was 12.

I should explain that after the MacCrimmon book was published I was asked by Seagrams, owners of 100 Pipers whisky, to prepare a presentation frame of famous pipers for which I supplied pictures, deep captions and tartan swatches.  The frames went ahead and I was to be paid a fee plus expenses, which were duly submitted and paid by Seagrams. 

Famous Scottish Pipers

I had visited Robbie Reid in Glasgow and had a long conversation with him.  In fact, that was when he told me what his father had done to Seumas MacNeill and his Uncle Archie.  They used to come slyly into the shop in George Street and bring the talk round to a specific tune and ask how it went.  Eventually Robert Reid was told that when they left the shop, they boasted how Gillies had taught Seumas’s uncle the tune, so it was bound to be right, another example of Seumas’s version of the truth. (It led to Seumas MacNeill later claiming that his uncle used to be consulted by Robert Reid about how tunes went, and this after Uncle Archie had been given a single term by Gillies, compared to Reid’s eighteen-and-a-half years).

When Robert Reid was afterwards asked by them  how a tune went, he crooned over some utter rubbish to Seumas and Uncle Archie, who would ask:  “Is that how it goes, Robert?”  And Robert Reid assured them it was just how it went, right enough.  Robbie Reid later asked his father if it was correct, and he just laughed and said: “Of course it wasn’t.”  A practical joke which has had the most unfortunate results, after Seumas was publicly informed of the value of his tuition at his own prompting.  (The story was later corroborated in every respect by Craigie Calder and indeed published in the Glasgow Herald, when Seumas did not deny it).

In Glasgow, I also called on Donald MacLeod, who naturally featured in the frame, but he was ill and his wife later sent me a photograph with a hand-written note, proving I had been in the city.

No sooner were the frames put on sale than I received a worried letter from Seagrams’ marketing manager, Doug Scott, saying that Robbie Reid had written a letter (photo-copy enclosed) claiming that the entry for his father was false, and again gave the wrong figure for his Cowal wins, although the Piping Times had also published the correct number, without any open complaint from Robbie Reid, and so had Seton Gordon in the Oban Times.

 I noted the letter to Seagrams was typed on a different typewriter from the one used to type his disturbed letter about my book.  The Seagrams letter asserted I had not even visited him, which I had no need to do anyway, although I did.  Whoever was advising Robbie had made a serious blunder in the way that tricksters often do.

In effect I was being accused of falsifying my expenses and swindling Seagrams out of the money concerned, a very serious allegation indeed.  I was justifiably appalled and wrote to Doug Scott, of Seagrams, saying I would have to take legal advice, because I had put up with quite enough, despite my deep regard for his father who also had his concerns over Robbie.  But by then “Robbie Reid” had already written to Seagrams’ advertising manager (6.1.1981), to the marketing manager (28.1.1981) and to Seagrams' U.K. Ltd managing director (23.3.1981) all accusing me of professional inaccuracy and dishonesty.

When Seumas MacNeill published the correct number in Piping Times, no public complaint was made by Robbie Reid to MacNeill, but afterwards Robbie still tried to make out my figure was false...and that was where it began to smell.

All of which brings me to the alleged recordings of Robert Reid’s purported playing and Andrew MacNeill.

The reason I knew he had forged the Seagrams letters, and others to the Oban Times,was that he then spent much of his time hanging out in Grainger 

and Campbell's shop boasting about his activities, presumably looking for approval, but they became so sick of his boasting, one of his victims phoned me 

and literally blew the whistle on him.

And this is the person on whom James McGillivray relies to prove the Cameron style never existed, based presumably on the constant annual holidays that

Robert Reid had with him on the mist-shrouded Isle of Colonsay, where he was supposed to have re-recorded “many” of his pibrochs.

How odd, therefore, that I retain a holiday post card from Robert Reid to me from a place called Six (? See postmark)  Mile Cross in Ulster, written in the early 1950s:-

The text reads:  “Arrived here in the rainy season but seems as if it has almost been continuous.  Expect to see a boat coming up the main road any time.  However, I’m a hardy ‘bloke’ so I’ll stick it out unless it turns to snow.

 “Hope you have been keeping yourself busy since I seen you.  Probably I gave you the wrong idea for ‘Unjust Incarceration’ as this is it but I didn’t realise that when we spoke it over.”

                                                                                                                                        Regards

                                                                                                                                               Robert Reid

                                                                                                                  *

 More confirmation of his annual holiday destination came in the last paragraph of a letter to the author James Barke, dated 23 June 1954, stated: “I go on holiday on 11th July (Sunday) to Ireland.”  

Seven years later Robert Reid wrote me a significant letter about his holiday plans dated 27 April, 1961, completely unaware of Andrew MacNeill’s allegation that he always went to Colonsay on holiday where he recorded more and more pibrochs to prop up MacNeill’s latest fantasy.  (Don’t forget to read the final paragraph). 

                                                                                          ....................................

During another Irish holiday, when Craigie Calder was left to mind the shop in George Street, an Irish MP called to see Robert Reid at his holiday home, armed with two copies of Irish pibrochs, which the final doyen studied and found authentic.  The MP asked if he would like to visit the original piping college in Ulster, where they found the original stones of the building, when the pipe major played a lament after saying:  “If these stones could only speak, they could tell us an awful lot that we don’t know.”

The MP arranged for Robert Reid to appear on a half-hour programme on Irish radio, when he was incidentally introduced as Mr Reid, and not by his military title.  

As for Andrew MacNeill’s pronouncements that Robert Reid didn’t know what he was playing, plus James McGillivray’s  theories, as befit a “Glenfiddich” judge, here, once again in Robert Reid’s own words is what he recorded.  He wrote to me in November 1955  mentioning a 90-year-old piper called Willie Boa, who won the Inverness gold medal in 1888, whom I had met at Poolewe:- 

“Your meeting with the old 90 year old must have been pleasant and no doubt he must have heard a lot of Piob in his day.  I can quite appreciate his switching off the Wireless when he hears some of the tripe and one can scarcely ‘brainwash’ a 90 year old.  I agree his time is too short to be dishonest but at the same time we have men well up in years who have never repented. 

“It must be rather disappointing to many people to know that about six hours of McD. Gillies and Sandy Cameron’s great music can be brought to life on a German Tape Recorder. 

“I feel particularly happy about this and it rather amuses me to think that in probably 50 years time should my Tapes survive, the Russians will identify it as a great music which the Scots are trying to emulate – without success!!!  There will be good grounds for this assumption also, keeping in mind that I’ve got this Machine when the Russians had a monopoly of the whole production of the “Grundig” machines.  Under these circumstances the theory would have a more sound foundation than the MacCrimmon myth.”    

The following year he wrote to me on 18 March, confirming what he had recorded: 

“I’m pleased to see you have at last seen through the confidence trick of the romantic background to the music, we are fooled even today by this approach.  Ifs, buts, probablys, and maybes don’t amount to facts, and the real authentic facts of Piob. Music stem from the Camerons.  Beyond that point we are only surmising but we definitely know the Camerons were a family of musical men.  Unfortunately, very few were gifted  with the musical ability to carry this on with the result that anyone with nimble fingers made it to suit themselves.   

“Naturally, the nimble fingered gentry were in the majority with the result that the true producer of the Great Music has been ousted.  I heard a pibroch on Radio last week which came off in single, staccato notes and could only create offence to a musical ear – but some people liked it!  Makes me wonder how sadistic piping enthusiasts have become, but I’m quite convinced they are musical sadists. 

“I can only assume it sets up some tortured buzz in their hollow skulls, and they like it.  I’m pleased to think I have recorded much of the Cameron music in its traditional style and who knows, my Recordings may be discovered 100 years from now, put forward as an Ancient Culture and make a fortune for a future generation.  At any rate they will have something authentic to go on and not only the ‘Ghost’ which can be most unreliable”.    

                                                                                                                    *

  In the event I was persuaded not to sue Robbie Reid, but someone got him off the hook.  Seagrams did not believe the letters and no lasting damage was done.  But somehow Seumas MacNeill had been informed by Seagrams of the Famous Pipers frame. And one of Robbie Reid’s letters was typed on the same sort of typewriter in the College of Piping on which MacNeill had written to a certain piper in 1976, inviting him to join “my ‘jet-set to travel to North America and teach at a summer school. 

“There are a great many details you would need to know about these schools...” but he would get his airfare, food and accommodation and £150 expenses.”  The piper declined.  MacNeill also found space to make a malicious remark concerning Donald MacPherson’s own summer school, another example of his spiteful nature, knowing it would go back to Donald. 

The last ineffable words can go to Andrew MacNeill, which he uttered as he began his “lecture” to the Piob. Society in 1987, claiming it was on “Some Piobaireachd Thoughts of Robert Reid”, which had been taped. 

Andrew MacNeill stated, without admitting how he came by the tapes or what had been done to them:  “I must make apologies for the quality of the tapes because they’ve been dubbed once or twice and they are very fast, so you must make allowances for them. 

“I would ask you not to copy them because his son intends to bring them out in the near future, we hope.”  MacNeill had already copied them once or twice himself, breaking any alleged agreement.   

Now, it would be difficult to imagine that James McGillivray would claim he found little difference between the playing of Robert Reid on the tapes concerned and John Macdonald, Inverness, if it were not true.  Yet from my personal knowledge they specifically played tunes like MacCrimmon’s Sweetheart and Children’s Lament differently. 

If you therefore accept Mr McGillivray’s word the inference is inescapable.  The tapes that Andrew MacNeill had through his fingers have been corrupted.  You cannot have it both ways. It will be helpful to summarise some of what has been said on Bob Dunsire’s Bagpipe Web. 

James McGillivray:  “I believe there are about 100 tunes were made on a high quality (for the time) reel-to-reel...I’ve heard several of the tunes on them and the playing is absolutely unique and absolutely rivetting.” 

James McGillivray:  “I spent some time with Andrew (MacNeill) in the mid-1980s and heard many of the tunes on these tapes.  All were on cassettes which he told me were made from the original reels... he actually sent me a 90-minute tape” said to contain “about six of the tunes...Andrew would announce ‘The Bells of Perth’ followed by 12 minutes of silence, then Andrew announcing another tune and more silence.  I could see this as Andrew’s idea of a joke, but in reality I don’t think he knew how to jack two tape machines very well.” 

Jay Close joined in on the thread:  “Andrew obtained copies of ‘the tapes’ in a reel to reel format from young, Robbie, the P/M’s son, on the understanding that they were for Andrew’s use only.  I know Willie Connell has estimated that about 100 tunes were recorded, but Andrew said there were only about two dozen tunes  in the collection he got from Robbie.  Perhaps Andrew was only given a partial collection; or perhaps of the 100 tunes recorded Reid did some editing and deamed only a quarter of them worth saving”. 

According to Mr McGillivray, Andrew MacNeill wasn’t capable of re-splicing these tapes but, Seumas MacNeill had access to experts who could.  Robbie’s last message to me was from his final hospital bed:  “I know nothing of any tapes.”  Perhaps the MacNeills conned him into believing they had somehow got him out of the legal problem with Seagram and asked for a copy of the tapes for payback.  I simply do not know, but it still doesn’t explain how the reel-to-reel tapes were converted to cassettes. 

After all the love and affection for the music that went into the making of these tapes to provide an authentic record of the Cameron style of pibroch playing, is this how they finished up?  It wasn’t members of the Reid family who caused the long slow death of this “wonderful music”, as Jascha Heifitz described it.  The persons responsible, who are to my mind worse than Butcher Cumberland ever was in the destruction of our traditional music, are the guilty men, who somehow deceived themselves and others into believing they were intellectually equipped to standardise the oldest classical music in the West, as part of a publicity stunt for a whisky company, and corrupted it for free drams. And falsified the tapes to duplicate and obscure their own enormities.