Thistle Records Just Missed the Tartan Army!

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
The Thistle Record label on a 45 rpm record cover, with the edge of a 45 rpm vinyl record, and a record turntable

It’s World Cup weekend – and as the saying goes, ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’. But what do I know about football? Absolutely nothing. I have two left feet, no eye for a ball, and have never watched a match in my life. (Not even Norwich City’s ‘Canaries’, though I expect my brother did!)

I imagine the proprietors of Thistle Records were a little more clued-up than me, because they included football songs amongst their other 45 rpm singles. Thistle Records was the Scottish record label in which singer Robert Wilson held a part-share, along with Kerr Music Corporation. It started trading in 1962, and Wilson died in 1964, so really he had little to do with it. Gavin D. Farquhar was the Managing Director, and John Cutler the Recording Manager. They overwhelmingly specialised in Scottish artistes, so the football songs must have just been a remunerative sideline. I’m assuming someone was interested in the sport, though they might just have taken interest in the profits from these records. (I’ve written about Robert Wilson and Kerr Music Corporation in my latest book – and I did make passing reference to Thistle Records, but I have to say that my specialism is printed rather than recorded music!)

Discographies like 45cat, and Robert Lyons’ Seventies Sevens (‘a site for seven inch record labels of the 1970s’, uploaded in 2008) enable us to reconstruct a list of Thistle’s football singles. I have quoted dates where they were given, but I haven’t verified them:-

  • Rangers With The Caledonian Accordion Band – The Blue Flag And Follow Follow / It’s Rangers For Me – Thistle – UK – TM 80
  • The Manchester United Team (With Soloist John Dunbar) – United! United! / The Red And White’s – Thistle – UK – TM 81
  • Everton Football Club – E-V-E-R-T-O-N / Everton For Me – Thistle – UK – TM 83 (45cat dates this to 1964)
  • The Celtic Team – Celtic! Celtic! / Slattery’s Mounted Fut – Thistle – UK – TM 85
  • Rangers Football Team With Lex McLean – Every Other Seturday / R.A.N.G.E.R.S. – Thistle – UK – TM 86 (45cat dates this to 1964)
  • The Partick Thistle F.C. – It’s The Jags / Firhill For Thrills – Thistle – UK – TM 97 (Lyons dates this to 1971)
  • The Clyde F.C. With Fraser Bruce – Song Of The Clyde / One – Two – Three – Thistle – UK – TM 98
  • Rangers [Scottish Football Team] – That’s The Team! / The Glasgow Rangers – Thistle – UK – R.1066

The firm was largely defunct by the late 1970s. Andy Cameron coined the phrase, the ‘Tartan Army’ in his recording, ‘Ally’s Tartan Army’ in 1977, when the Scotland team qualified for the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, but he didn’t turn to Kerr Corporation or Thistle Records to publish it – instead, the score and record were published in London by Klub Music/Mews Music.

So, Kerr Corporation and Thistle Records never got to mark Scotland’s visit to Argentina, and by now, few Scottish football supporters will even have heard of them. Times move on.

Mind you, I was listening to Skerryvore’s ‘Never stopped dreaming (Scotland World Cup Song)’ this afternoon, and reflecting just how much tastes have changed since the 1960s-1970s! I think Messrs Wilson, Farquhar and Cutler would have been a bit surprised.

Changing Styles

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

In the closing pages of my second monograph (currently at the publishers, pending approval of the revisions and then copy-editing), I comment on the changing approaches to folk music in the late 1950s and 60s. So, when a colleague presented me with a pile of music which used to be in the library, but needed recataloguing (don’t ask!), my immediate reaction to this book was, ‘Aha, see, I was right. Look how different this is to Mozart Allan, James Kerr’s and Bayley & Ferguson’s folk song collections!’ 

As a scholar, I smiled with satisfaction as I noted that even the COVER of Folk Sing: A Handbook for Pickers and Singers was more modern – huge white letters on a half-black, half-red background. As for ‘pickers and singers’: well, we didn’t have ‘pickers’ in any of the dozens of Scottish publications that I’ve been writing about! Guitar/accordion chords as an addition, assuredly, but not usually melody, chords and no keyboard line. And as for the term, ‘pickers’? No. A more savvy friend informs me that the book came at the end of the skiffle revival, which according to Oxford Music Online was particularly strong in the UK:-

“While the skiffle revival of the 1950s embraced the USA and Germany, it gained most ground in Great Britain. […] Donegan and his imitators enjoyed considerable popularity until about 1959, when skiffle gave way, both in the USA and Europe, to ‘beat’ music and to rock and roll.”

Oxford Music Online (2001). Skiffle. Grove Music Online. Retrieved 19 Jan. 2024, from https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000025930.

This song book was published in New York by Hollis Music in 1959, but distributed by Essex Music (4 Denmark Street) in London, and this particular copy was actually sold from a shop in Aberdeen. Notwithstanding this, it mainly contains American repertoire with just a few British songs and a single French one for good measure.

I examined it inside-out and backwards, observing contentedly that they indicated the names of the composer/arranger/lyricist above each song, along with which publishers owned the original copyright.

Then I sighed. This morning I had noted with pleasure that already this month, I’ve submitted a revised manuscript for my book, written a librarianship-ish article and two musicology abstracts, done a peer-review and a radio interview, with a research talk coming up to round off the month. That was my research-self.

But what I was supposed to be doing now, was cataloguing this anthology, not studying it. 

‘Recataloguing’ means that I have already catalogued the book at some stage in the past … yawn!

The librarian part of me spent half this afternoon re-cataloguing it and copy-typing 150+ song titles from the contents list. It’s certainly useful – it means people will be able to find the songs – but it’s not nearly as rewarding!

Folk Sing: a Handbook for Pickers and Singers, containing traditional and contemporary folk songs / edited by Herbert Haufrecht (New York: Hollis Music; London: Essex Music, 1959)

Do note and admire the contents lists!