PM Stuart Samson Gordon Highlanders

[OC Richard]

I was privileged to receive some small instruction from Stuart Samson in a camp setting a few years back. A surprisingly soft-spoken man with an occasional but wicked wit.

That is very cool!

Was he playing those Glens?

I saw an interview with him in which he spoke of those drones as being a bit difficult. (I'm assuming he means the drones are a bit difficult to reed.) Here's the interview, video #7 at around 0:30, he says he got those Glens in the mid to late 1980s and played them around 20 years.

http://www.piperspersuasion.com/stuartsamson/

They have the distinctive extra-wide ferrules on the drone tops which I've seen in only one other set, also Glens.

Perhaps the alterations to his uniform have to do with his not “currently” serving as a band PM?

Yes in the interview he says he retired from the army in 2008. The last band I saw him playing in was Spirit Of Scotland.

I've seen a few examples of ex-Pipe Majors wearing a mix of their old PM kit with civilian items. In those other cases they wore their old ornate Pipe Major doublets with all the arm-badges. Sometimes it takes a close examination to tell a serving PM from an ex-PM due to that. It's why this photo was so interesting, the first thing that jumped out to me was his plain sleeve! Then the more I looked the more odd it became, even the men in the background not quite adding up.

If the Gordons were amalgamated in 1994 and the Royal Regiment Of Scotland formed in 2006 how can you have the Drum Major of the Gordon Highlanders in the same photo with a piper of 4SCOTS?

So that photo is either a special performance with serving and ex-army participants, or it's photoshopped. That's the only possibilities I can think of.