Brig O’ Blair march

By George Bell I believe. Good march, goes well with something like Battle of Waterloo for a nice Gay Gordon’s set.

“Blair” is Blairgowrie, in Perthshire, where I went to school. I heard George Bell play many times .
From CD sleeve notes :
“George Bell
George Bell formed his Scottish Dance Band in the late 1960s. During their distinguished career, they played regularly on the BBC’s Scottish Dance programmes, for royalty at Balmoral Castle and had a very busy schedule as guest band at accordion and fiddle clubs throughout Scotland.

A well known and very popular character in his home town of Blairgowrie in Perthshire, in addition to being a band leader and accordion tutor, George was organiser for the Blairgowrie Accordion Club, the Blairgowrie Accordion Festival, the Blairgowrie Braemar Night and the Blairgowrie Highland Games. Although all of this might point to him being a very busy man, George also found time to be a fund-raiser and organiser for the Perth and Kinross fund for the blind“.

One of the main reasons he raised funds for blind causes was because he lost his sight in his early 30s. It was Sandy Tulloch - an eye surgeon in Dundee - who transcribed Bell’s tunes, the same service he gave to Jimmy Shand. “The Brig o’ Blair” is one of his most popular compositions, but a few others (e.g. “George Work” for a fellow Blairgowrie musician) were popular with dance bands. I like “Brig o’ Blair” a lot.

(p.s. I’m not sure I would include the apostrophe in “Gay Gordon’s”, pb. 🙂

Great little tune that I recently discovered. However, if you’re wanting to play along with smallpipes or border pipes, the above setting won’t work. Here’s the link for the pipe-friendly version in D.

http://www.ceolsean.net/content/B2B/Book03/Book03%2018.pdf