Stalwart of Glasgow folk scene and a 'singer who wrote songs'

The Herald Scotland

04-05-2025

Died: January 7, 2025
Geordie McIntyre, who has died aged 87, was a fine traditional singer whose involvement with traditional music and song stretched back to the early days of the folk revival in Glasgow in the 1950s.
He was an accomplished interpreter of traditional material and, although he always described himself simply as a 'singer who writes songs', he was also the composer of many finely crafted songs in the traditional idiom.
He was lauded by his musical peers, including luminaries such as Bert Lloyd and Hamish Henderson. More recently, in 2018, he was inducted into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame. He was many other things too: teacher, mountain man, naturalist, mentor, a fine song collector, book lover, radio restorer, husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather.
To those who knew him, it was clear that family, landscape and nature, music and song were the lodestones which directed, nurtured and energised him throughout his long, joyful and well-lived life.
I first met Geordie in 2004 and drawn to him especially through his song writing and his generous spirited friendship, which was part of my life thereafter. He was always upbeat, always curious, always talkative. He loved people and he loved knowledge and he was a joy to be around. These were qualities that would have made him an inspiring schoolteacher. He was also, as anyone who knew him would confirm, a champion of the truly awful joke.
Family was always central to his sense of being. His own family unit was small: just his mum and his grandparents. From his evangelical lay-preacher grandfather, Dugald, he was exposed to the power of music and its ability to communicate. Dugald was also responsible for an early and pivotal experience with the landscape of Scotland beyond Glasgow when he took Geordie on a bus trip to Arrochar.
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Geordie had been watching the natural world around Govanhill by this time, noting, for example, the cry of the corncrakes near the industrial wasteland at Polmadie, but seeing the mountains at the head of Loch Long expanded his horizons. Aged just 13, he got his first bike and so began his adventures in the hills beyond the city.
Geordie enrolled to serve his radio apprenticeship when he was 15 and it was here that he struck up a lifelong friendship with Jim McLean in the sharing of their love of music and song alongside their youthful kilted escapades across Europe.
Geordie's mum, Ada, was another huge influence in his life. She was a working mum, a cinema usherette at a time when going to the pictures was a huge part of Glasgow social life. Geordie had immense admiration for Ada and recalled her encyclopaedic knowledge of cinema.
Geordie had a daughter, Eileen, by his first marriage to Maureen and his second wife, Catherine, died too young after they'd been together only nine years. When he married Alison McMorland, herself a highly acclaimed singer and writer, he gained three more daughters, Anna, Kirsty and Katy. Geordie and Alison agreed that it had been a miracle that they had found each other and their deep connection and mutual support was evident to anyone who knew them as a couple. Theirs was a partnership of equals which allowed both to thrive and grow.
But what made Geordie want to be a singer and then a songwriter in the first place? Geordie himself recognised a number of pivotal moments. Although there was a piano and music was already present in the family home, an important event was the arrival of first electricity and then a radiogram into the Govanhill home when Geordie was 11 or 12. This brought into the home the voice of Tennessee Ernie Ford with songs like, Sixteen Tons, and Dark as a Dungeon, strong narrative songs that Geordie was immediately drawn to.
Another pivotal moment came when he was climbing Ben Ledi, when the lad he was with spontaneously burst into song, with a version of The Barnyards o Dalgetty. Geordie described this moment, of hearing the unaccompanied voice singing, as a kind of watershed point for him.
Yet another came when he was working as a broadcast technician and he met Andrew Tannahill, a descendant of the weaver poet, Robert Tannahill and consummate book lover. Through a fortuitous bump with a garden wall and the gift of books the men became firm friends and this led to Geordie making some of his first fieldwork recordings. As his life as a fieldworker developed, Geordie recorded and then wrote songs for a number of those he interviewed, including International Brigadier, Eddie Brown, for whom he wrote, Another Valley.
Geordie was developing as a singer and a songwriter and as an interpreter of traditional songs and he loved the intellectual challenge of interpreting songs texts – a process he described as 'joyful'.
He was also reaching out to find others who shared his passion. 'I felt immediately at home' he said of his first encounter with the Glasgow Folk Song Society, and he would go on to be a central member of the club, supporting and nurturing singers, encouraging their development in both performance and as students of song.
In honouring Geordie's song writing, my own favourites among his compositions are those about nature, such as Cloudberry Day, Rowan in the Rock, Where Ravens Reel and, especially, Inveroran, a deceptively simple song: just 12 lines and a repeating refrain. The simplicity of the song hides the huge depth of meaning and the skilful artistry that Geordie brought to his craft. Each line, each word is full of meaning and resonance. In a way, the song is like the man himself. At a casual glance, pretty straightforward, easy going, certainly memorable. Look a little closer and you'll see the layers of reflection, subtlety and integrity that lie within.
Alison told me that Geordie had planned his farewell gathering in minute detail: the humanist celebrant, the music and song, the images and the film. I'm not sure if he could have left directions for the weather, the time of year, or the setting, but it could certainly have been the case. Up among the mountains on a clear, crisp, shiny, sunlit day with a smattering of snow on the hills, it felt as if this would have been just the setting that he would have arranged himself.
Geordie said of his song, The Carrying Stream that it was 'a goodnight song which acknowledges our debt to the countless contributors, known and anonymous, who have enriched our song tradition'. Geordie's farewell gathering ended with a film of him standing among the hills, naming each one in turn. It was a joy to hear his voice. In that same spirit, the final words of this tribute also go to the man himself, quoting from The Carrying Stream: 'So before we depart/ Here's to the next time, Safe be your journey/ As you take to your road.'
Caroline Milligan
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