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[BoldHighlander]

Son of P/M John Cameron – who was a pupil of Donald MacKay and Sandy Cameron, and who won the Gold Medal at Oban in 1885, the Gold Medal at Inverness is 1892 and the Clasp in 1899 – Charles Cameron joined the Cameron Highlanders in 1908. He became a Non-Commissioned Officer and featured in the piping and dancing prizes at the Regimental games. It was when he was with the 1st Battalion around 1913 that he met Captain Craig Brown, the subject of his most famous tune. He served with the 1st Camerons throughout the Great War under Pipe Major Willie Cruickshank and when Cruickshank retired in 1922, Craig-Brown appointed him Pipe Major, a posting he held until 1928 when he became Pipe Major of the Depot at Inverness. He retired from the Depot in 1933, became tutor and Pipe Major of the Dagenham Girl Pipers and died in 1943. In the article cited below, David Murray noted that when Cameron died he was “still a young man.”



http://www.pipetunes.ca/composers.as...&composerID=90

[BoldHighlander]

Immortalized in the great six-part competition march named for him, Donald Cameron was the greatest piper of his generation, and one of the most influential piping figures of the 19th century....

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Donald Cameron strikes a jaunty pose in 1868, the year of his death.


Donald Cameron after winning the "Champion of Champions" title at Inverness in 1867 to become "King of Pipers."


Donald Cameron, left, with his son Keith, right, and pupil Donald MacKay, a nephew of Angus MacKay.

[BoldHighlander]

Though not a household name among pipers, Roderick Campbell's contribution to the catalogue of great pipe tunes is outstanding: “Royal Scottish Pipers Society,” “Edinburgh City Police,” and “Cecily Ross,” to name just three. He was extremely prolific, and his tunes are dotted throughout many older collections, including Logan’s Collection, Volume 3, and the books of John Wilson, Edinburgh, who was his most famous pupil.

He was Born on May 24, 1873 in Lochbroom, Ross-shire. Sandy Cameron reportedly heard him play before he’d received any formal tuition, was amazed by his ability, and subsequently became his teacher. He was no second-rank player, winning the Gold Medal at Oban in 1908, and the Open Piobaireachd there in 1910. He was piper to the Count de Serra Largo, who lived in Tain, Ross-shire, and then to Colonel Scott in Derby, England, and was instructor to the Royal Scottish Pipers Society.

After the Great War he settled in Edinburgh, where he spent most of time making reeds and teaching. Aside from these details, very little is known about him.

John Wilson, spoke highly of him as a teacher and friend. In his autobiography, A Professional Piper in Peace and War, Wilson wrote:

“Roddie died in August 1937. Dr. Simpson told me that there was nothing organically wrong with Roddie but that he had lost the desire to live and just turned his face to the wall and died. He was buried in Liberton cemetery and I attended the funeral on my way to Games. Some people thought it strange that I didn’t play a lament at the graveside, but I was never asked, and I was never one to thrust myself forward. His death was a great loss to me, for we had a very happy relationship. He was not only my teacher for 20 years, but also my good friend, for we had so much in common. As is so often the case, once he was gone, I bitterly blamed myself for not doing more to help him. I redeemed his two medals from the pawn shop, and one of them was the Argyllshire Gathering Gold Medal. It was thicker and heavier than mine and when I met Roddie’s brother Alex at Oban in September I told him that if he didn’t want to pay what it cost me to redeem the medals, I would be very happy to keep them, but no such luck.”




http://www.pipetunes.ca/composers.as...&composerID=58

[BoldHighlander]

James Alexander Center was born into an Edinburgh pipemaking family on April 14, 1875. His father John, born in Aberdeenshire in 1831, was a well known Edinburgh photographer and pipemaker by 1869. John and his wife Jane (his first cousin) would have nine children.

James was originally taught by his father, then became a pupil of John MacDougall Gillies and a top competing piper and Highland dancer. He won the Gold Medal and the Clasp at Inverness on the same day in 1904, one of only a handful of pipers to achieve that distinction. He won the Gold Medal at Oban in 1906 and the Strathspey and Reel and March there in 1903 and 1906 respectively.

He followed his father into the pipemaking business, and the family emigrated to Australia in 1907, when Jimmy was 28. At the time, many regarded him as the best piper in Scotland.

His father John died in 1913.

James Center competed regularly in Australia, dominating the prize lists wherever he went, not only in the piping, but also in the Highland dancing. Prize money was good in Australia, and on a good day he could pocket £60, a huge sum at the time.

He was a dapper, well-dressed man, and today, his name is perhaps best remembered not only for the family’s superbly crafted pipes, but for the great Willie Ross jig, “Center’s Bonnet.”

James Center died in Melbourne in 1919, the most prominent piper known to have died of the Spanish flu epidemic that killed 20,000,000 people worldwide.




http://www.pipetunes.ca/composers.as...composerID=134

[BoldHighlander]

William Fergusson was born in Arbroath in 1885 and died in Glasgow in 1949. Composer of such march standards as “The Australian Ladies,” “The Atholl and Breadalbane Gathering,” and “Kintara to El Arish,” as well as the strathspey “Dornie Ferry,” he learned piping in the 102nd Boys Brigade under ‘P/M Hutchins,’ and was then taught by 7th Battalion H.L.I. Pipe Major Farquhar MacRae, a pupil of Sandy Cameron. He would succeed MacRae as pipe major in 1914, though before this he was divisional pipe major of the 52nd Lowland Division. Most of his great tunes were written during the war years....

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William Fergusson (right) judges in Banff, Alberta, in 1931 with John Gillies of Vancouver (left) and Murdo MacLeod of Toronto.

[BoldHighlander]

Born in Dumfries, Scotland, on March 21, 1920, Pipe Major George Darroch Grant was raised with an uncle in the Highlands, and started pipes with his grandfather. He joined the Scots Guards when he was 17 and served during the war in the North African campaign and elsewhere.

He took the Pipe Major’s course from Willie Ross at the Castle, and served as Pipe Major of the Second Battalion of the Scots Guards for five months, from November, 1945 until March, 1946. Thereafter he spent seven years in the Edinburgh Police before emigrating to Montreal, where he joined the R.C.A.F. security police. He also became a member of the Rockcliffe R.C.A.F. Pipe Band, where he played with the likes of John T. MacKenzie and drummer Jim Blackley.

During his later years George Grant became extremely active in the Montreal piping scene. He was charming and well liked, and a huge supporter of all things Celtic. He organized dances, concerts, recitals and piping classes as well as serving as Pipe Major of the City of Montreal Pipe Band. As a composer, he excelled at writing jigs, and his “Wee Marie” and “Marjorie Lowe” are two of the finest in the idiom.

He was a prize-winning professional competitor in Ontario and Quebec, and his name graced all the major trophies at Maxville until they were destroyed in a fire.

On September 4, 1965, he had just finished playing in the professional events at the games in Schenectady, NY and was preparing to set up the City of Montreal band for the afternoon’s competition when he was stricken with a heart attack and collapsed. Though well enough to express his regrets at not being able to play a lament for his recently deceased friend George Duncan, he later fell into a coma and passed away two weeks later. He was 45.

His funeral service took place on October 9 in the R.C.A.F. Chapel in St. Hubert, and he was buried in Mount Royal Cemetery.

George Grant, in the kilt of the City of Montreal Pipe Band, in 1964.


http://www.pipetunes.ca/composers.as...&composerID=53

[BoldHighlander]

The death of Willie Lawrie at age 35 in 1916 remains to this day one of piping’s greatest premature losses.

A native of Ballachulish, Argyll, he was first taught by his father, but later by John MacColl, with whom he remained friends throughout his brief life. In 1910 he became only the second piper ever to win the Gold Medals at both Oban and Inverness in the same year, and he added Clasp to his Inverness Gold Medal the following year. He won the marches and the strathspeys and reels at Inverness on the same day.

But his prime legacy is as a composer. His output was small – around 20 tunes – but powerful. His distinctive gift for melody and structure gave us some of the best tunes in the art form: the marches John MacDonald of Glencoe, The Pap of Glencoe, The Braes of Brecklet and Mrs. H. L. MacDonald of Dunach, the strathspey Inveraray Castle, the 4/4 march The 8th Argylls and the 9/8 retreat march The Battle of the Somme, to name a few. These tunes are stunning achievements for a man who, it could be argued, was still short of his prime.

In 1914 he succeeded George Ross as Pipe Major of the 8th Argyllshire Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders – the 8th Argylls – and accompanied them to France in 1915. But in 1916 he became ill while in the trenches, was invalided home, and died in a military hospital on November 28.

While the common spelling of his name is “Lawrie,” older sources go with “Laurie,” as evidenced by the obituary reprinted below from The Oban Times, December 16, 1916. The piece suitably captures the spirit of one of the most talented pipers and composers of his day....

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Willie Lawrie in an undated photo