Kenneth McKellar

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy seven, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:32

For our New Year edition we welcome the Scottish singer Kenneth MacKellar.

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Kenneth, what part of Scotland do you come from?

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I was born in Paisley and lived in the Aberdeen area for some time and uh now we live in the north east part of Glasgow, up towards Stilling.

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You come from a musical family?

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I think they could all sort of hold a tune. We didn't have any cloth eared members of our family. None of the others, I don't think, did it professionally. Did you sing or play an instrument as a child?

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I went to have lessons on the violin for some years.

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But I didn't quite derive much joy from that. Neither did my family. What was your first ambition? I used to, as a child, do imitations of Paul Robeson, Richard Tauber, Marian Anderson, and people like that. I can't imagine what they sounded like when I was about five.

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But I always had some kind of hankering to sing.

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Uh but the thought of doing it to make a crust, as my father used to say, didn't enter my head. You took a BSC at Aberdeen University. With what in mind?

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That was uh forestry. You did in fact work in forestry for work? After I graduated, yes, I I worked for two years. It's a very lonely job, isn't it?

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Well, yes, I suppose it is. You've got seagulls and sheep to sing to and things like that.

Kenneth McKellar1:57

I was

Kenneth McKellar2:02

You've experienced it.

Kenneth McKellar2:03

Yeah.

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Let's have your first record. What's that?

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I would want within the first few weeks anyway s uh something to cheer me up, having uh left behind all this gaiety that we

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Experience in Britain at the moment. I think I would want something which would cheer me up in the morning, particularly.

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One of the most uh cheerful things I know is something we play at home. It's uh

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Selection of Lendler, Swiss Lendler, uh played by one of those little bands with a high clarinet, an accordion, and a double bass.

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Of course your wife is Swiss, isn't it?

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A tune called Bern Lütschberg Samplon played by the Lander Capella.

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Dawn

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Two owners say

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Uh

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How did you start to take a serious interest in music? How did that come about?

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When I was at university some one persuaded me to go into the choir.

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and I sang in the bass section. You were a bass in this. What that's what I thought I was. I just happened to be standing there, and one of the basses next to me said

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I really think you should do something about that voice of yours.

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I think he meant it kindly.

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and he suggested I should go and have some singing lessons from a director of music.

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who uh gave me the lessons and got me involved in some of the musical activities at the university. What were they? One of the first things I found myself doing was the tenor solo work in the B minor Mass and Mozart Requiem and the Saint Matthew Passion, which was uh

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Quite a jump.

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considering I had been sort of brought up on the ink spots.

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But I found Bach a very, very welcome change. I think he wrote.

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the most noble music for the voice, particularly choral music, and I would certainly want to take something of that on the island with me.

Kenneth McKellar5:07

On the island.

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What? I think the Sanctus from the B minor Mass.

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The opening of the sanctus from Bach's B minor Mass, conducted by Herbert von Carrion.

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Now you did your two years in forestry. When did you decide that you wanted to give that up and be a professional singer?

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While I was doing the two years in forestry, I was still having singing lessons, and my uh singing teacher at Aberdeen, Mr. Swenson,

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uh suggested and in fact insisted

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that I should go in for a scholarship a cared scholarship.

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which was to pay my fees.

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and various other expenses.

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at the Royal College of Music in London. So I thought I had nothing to lose by at least trying to get it, and I got it. Well, this was a big decision, going back to college all over again.

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What did you want to specialize in? What sort of singing had you in mind?

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It was um opera and uh oratorio. There's a story that you made your first record while you were still a student.

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Oh, yes, yes. That really was what started me off recording. My singing teacher at the college, the first one I had.

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said I had something wrong. I should see a specialist, which I did, and he said I had cryptic tonsils. Cryptic tonsils. Cryptic tonsils. So that's terrifying. Oh, it was terrifying. I didn't know what it was, but it I thought, well, I better get rid of them.

Kenneth McKellar7:25

So I've

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Uh I don't want to have uh the name of having cryptic tonsils tied round my neck.

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Before I was to have them taken out, a friend of mine and myself went to a recording studio in Oxford Street just to sing a few songs, so that if the surgeon's knife happened to slip I would always have some record of my singing.

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And so we did it.

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We did four titles on this seventy eight record and the recording engineer sent, without my knowledge, a copy of this record to Parlophone.

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and they asked me up for a test to make a test record and from that that was nineteen fifty one.

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And from that time on I started recording. Yes, and you've made a good many records since then? About, I think, thirty-five L P s.

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Well, that was a very lucky chance that you decided that you wanted to perpetu perpetuate the sound of you and your cryptic dontage.

Kenneth McKellar8:27

Okay.

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What's your next record to be? Well, I've got, if I may, play this thing which was uh recorded, as I say, almost thirty years ago, before I started commercially recording, and it's a song by Roger Quilter, O Mistress Mine.

Speaker 48:50

Let's find a way.

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Uh

Speaker 48:58

Okay.

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O'er the high and low, drip no far pretty sweeting, jumping love us.

Kenneth McKellar9:09

Uh

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The Rotter Quilter setting of Her Mistress Mind, sung by a fully tonsilled Kenneth McKellar.

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What happened after you left the college?

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I went straight into Carol Rosa Opera Company as principal tenor. What roles did you seek? Uh Alma Viva, first of all, in The Barber, and Harlequin in Pagliace.

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Very hard work, wasn't it, with the Karl Rosa?

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Touring the whole time? Uh, touring, yes, that was hard work, getting into digs and things.

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But the actual singing wasn't when you're doing it full time and you're tuned to

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one, two, three rolls, then it's not really hard work because your whole mind, your whole voice is

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Focused on that. Yes. It's when you've to change from doing television or concerts and go back to opera and radio and so on and so that's when it becomes difficult. Mhm. It must have been magnificent experience, but in the Karl Rosa one didn't get much money, I understand. No. Uh the prestige was uh

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Well, it wasn't so good either, come to think of it. My

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Salary as principal tenor was fifteen pounds a week, but by the time I paid diggs out of that in places like Edgebaston,

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and Belfast and so on, at the end of the fust season.

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The bank balance showed thirteen and fourpence in the red.

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So I thought I better look somewhere else, you know, for

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Where did you look and with what result? Television started coming in and I was asked to do

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A television

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thing from Scotland in nineteen fifty three.

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It was one of the first things to come from Scotland, and for that I had to borrow a kilt from somebody.

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And um

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From then on radio started. I started doing a Song for Everyone series and uh That had a long run, a Song for Everyone. Yes, we did hundreds of programmes. And that went on television too. Then it came on television. And at that time it was all live, of course. Mhm.

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It was every man for himself, you know.

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And you played a lot in Revue and Pantomime in Scotland. You had special pantomimes written for you.

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Yes, we had one written. It was called A Wish for Jamie. It was John Law who wrote it, who used to be head of comedy at B B C Television.

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He wrote it for me, and then that ran for two uh consecutive seasons, and then we had a sequel written, called A Love for Jamie. That ran for two seasons.

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And then we had a thad

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written The World of Jimmy. Then it uh I felt uh

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I can't really keep on with this swashbuckling thing on the pantomime stage. It's gonna be a son of Jamier.

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I was a teenage Jimmy or something.

Kenneth McKellar12:06

It was a team.

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Then we had a repeat of the first one again. So that lasted about six years on the same theme. And you played in a lot of those famous reveals, the Five Past Eight series.

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That, I'm sorry to say, has

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gone. They still have summer seasons in Scotland, but the five pass tapes were very lavish, and I would say more lavish than um one would see normally in London. Yes, they were lavish out. But now the Alhambra Theatre in which they played is a

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A block of offices uh owned or rented by the Ministry of Energy. Hmm, that's progress. Have you been back to Opera?

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Back to opera, yes. I've been at Aldborough doing the Beggars' Opera and you see this is what I mean about changing from one thing to the other. When I finished doing that, Peter Piers and I did alternate performances. They wanted me to go to Russia.

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With them the English Opera Group.

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to do uh the beggar and um

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Albert Herring.

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But I was under contract to do a pantomime of all things.

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And so I couldn't go and that sort of lapsed.

Kenneth McKellar13:20

Yeah.

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Let's have record number four. What's that?

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Well, talking about Scottish humour, I think I would have to have something of that on the island with me, wouldn't I?

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The characteristic, I think.

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That I like best about Scottish humour is that it's so straightfaced.

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You've got to really know what's going on behind the eyes.

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Before you realise a joke is being made quite often in Scotland.

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Uh there's a record of John Laurie.

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Delivering McGonagall's poem or ballad The Taybridge Disaster.

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And to me it says it all about Scottish humour.

Kenneth McKellar13:59

So the train moved slowly along the bridge of Tay, Until it was about midway Then the central girders with a crash gave way, And down went the train and passengers into the Tay.

Kenneth McKellar14:15

The storm fiend did loudly bray, because ninety lives had been taken away on the last Sabbath day of 1879, which will be remembered for a very long time.

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The latter part of McGonagall's The Taybridge Disaster, read by John Lawry.

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A lot of your time, Kenneth, you spend overseas.

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Quite a bit, yes.

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Your visits must be big occasions for the local Caledonian societies in Canada or Australia or wherever.

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Well, that's maybe putting it a bit too strongly.

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Occasionally.

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One or maybe two of them come to meet me at the airport. So I suppose that is a big occasion. What sort of programmes do you give them? Scott songs, of course.

Kenneth McKellar14:56

What are

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Scott songs. The last uh the last once or twice in Australia and New Zealand and Canada and America I've given a sort of recital thing, some Handel or Mozart or some Donizetti or

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And then in the second half, do

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a repertory of Scots songs ranging from Hebridean to Buns and music hall things and

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Let's have a record. Number five, I think now.

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Well, I think I would because I have had some very happy times with the Scottish societies we've just been discussing and uh

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Jimmy Shand has been with me on one or two occasions, so I would really like to take something which would remind me of that.

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Jimmy Chand and his band at Leeds University, a waltz country dance.

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You have radio interest in Scotland, haven't you? Yes, I'm a director of a commercial radio station in Scotland.

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In the west of Scotland.

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Which has been quite an eye-opener. I think we've supplied things there in the west of Scotland to the public which they have hitherto not had. You're giving them mixed radio? Mixed radio. Uh there's of course all the pop stuff.

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For commercials we do live stereo broadcasts of symphony concerts from the City Hall, some of them with B B C orchestras.

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We do citizens' advice things.

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The reason I think our particular company has been successful is that it came on the scene at the very time when Glasgow

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was being fragmented into many parts the Glasgow community feeling.

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in the centre round Maryhill Road and so on.

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The buildings have been torn down and the people have been sent out to Easterhouse, Kirkintilloch, Rutherglen, etcetera. And uh I think um our particular station has brought a sense of community back to the

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Greater West of Scotland area.

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What's your next record? It brings me to a kind of humour that I adore, which is Jewish humour.

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And there's a lady called Betty Walker who does a wonderful telephone conversation. It's got the essence of Jewish humour in it, which is among the funniest in the world. And it's called um A Call from Long Island.

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And I'll give them an aspirin so they shouldn't yell and I'll clean up the house and I'll cook something nice for the twenty ladies. They'll love it. Just don't worry, darling. Everything will be okay. Isn't that what a mother is for?

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Thank you. I feel so much better. By the way, sweetheart, if it's snowing and the car wouldn't stop this morning, how did Sam get to work?

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There.

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What, Sam? Sam, your husband.

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My husband's name is Paul. Is this Tremont Seven One One Six Six?

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No, this is Stream on 7.

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One one seven seven.

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Does that mean

Presenter19:20

Betty Walker with Arline Galonka in A Call from Long Island. We haven't discussed your practical abilities as a castaway. Could you look after yourself? I can grow potatoes and onions and things.

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Any experience of small bed?

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Only on the River Clyde.

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I don't suppose it's all that different. The temperature presumably would be a bit warmer, wouldn't it? Well, the temperature's gorgeous.

Kenneth McKellar19:43

Wallet

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Would you try to escape?

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If my efforts at agriculture didn't bear fruit

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I might try to escape, but otherwise I think I would be maybe quite happy.

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without tax forms coming in and telephone calls which I didn't want and uh things like that.

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What's your seventh record?

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Now this one goes back to about 1951.

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My

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Mother gave my father and I two tickets to go and see a concert by Gilly.

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whose records I had played since I was a boy, and at that time he was about sixty two years of age.

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And he sang all his repertoire, and it was entrancing, the whole thing. And as one of his encores, he sang a Neapolitan song, which I had not.

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How'd before?

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And I can remember the moment he started to sing it. It's the most beautiful singing experience I think I've had.

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and the song was corren grato or cattare.

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Gili singing Core Ingrato.

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Now what's your last record?

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One has over the years various

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loyalties to singers and I've had a few

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And

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The latest one.

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and I can't see it changing because the voice is so beautiful.

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is a soprano called Gundola Janovich, and she sings

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One of the four last songs by Richard Strauss Fruling.

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And I think I would certainly want to take this because the actual song itself is.

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the culmination to me of modern songwriting.

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and her voice seems to me to have everything that the human voice should have naturally.

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or should it be trained to have?

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Gunda Lejanovitz singing Frühling, one of the Richard Strauss's four last songs.

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If you could take just one disk of your aid, which would it be?

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Oh, that's very difficult. I think...

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Maybe that one. The last one.

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And one luxury to take to the island with you. Well, now, could I have um a five hundred c c trail bike get about quickly?

Presenter23:29

Don't see why not. We have to give you a limited allowance of petrol, otherwise you could keep fires going and do all sorts of useful things.

Kenneth McKellar23:33

Pause

Presenter23:36

Could I also have six Japanese mechanics to go with sand and the engine, you'll have to get it out just so.

Kenneth McKellar23:39

Yeah.

Kenneth McKellar23:43

Oh well I think

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Well, I have a book at home, which is the complete book of world cookery.

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And apart from those wonderful recipes which make you sort of drool when you read them,

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They have the most tremendous photographs of some of the dishes.

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looking as if they've just been made baked fish and wonderful pilafs and roast shoulder of lamb and things. I could look at the pictures. It would inspire me, yes.

Kenneth McKellar24:15

This is Gabriel Inspi.

Presenter24:19

Probably make me want to leave the island. Thank you, Kenneth McKellar, for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.

Kenneth McKellar24:25

Thank you.

Speaker 224:36

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.