Duncan McCrone
Born in Glasgow, Duncan knew from a very early
age that music would dominate his life. It started with the ‘official’ Tommy Steele
guitar (in reality an untuneable plastic ukelele!), moving on to a proper Spanish guitar four
years later and all the hours listening to 45s and watching bands on black and white TV.
A milestone was his first song writing credit, in 1982, when the big-selling Scottish singer Valerie Dunbar released a single of ‘Always Argyll’, written by Duncan and a friend, Jimmy Jamieson from Tighnabruaich, Argyll. He remembers getting a royalty cheque for over £500 from his publisher a year later - equivalent to three months’ wages! The song went on to be covered by over thirty artists in Scotland, Ireland and Australia, and Duncan has recorded it himself for the first time on this new album, a labour of love, he freely admits.
One of the artists who covered the song was hugely popular folk band The Clydesiders, and when
their guitarist decided to call it a day in 1982, Duncan stepped in, beginning an eighteen-year
career with the band, during which he recorded seven albums and several singles with them, and
appeared in countless concerts and TV programmes around the UK and Europe. The group finally
called it quits in 2000, but remain friends and got back together briefly for some radio and
recording work in 2002.
Composing and songwriting became the focus of Duncan's career at this point, and Cy and he were much in demand as writers and producers of music for film and television. Their production company, Ranza Music, went from strength to strength, and they wrote and produced over ten albums for several of the UK's top production music publishers, including Music House, De Wolfe, Carlin, Boosey & Hawkes and OPM, as well as undertaking a number of commissions to write soundtracks for a variety of TV programmes on BBC Scotland and STV. A number of artists picked up on their songs, including Irish stars Foster & Allen and Dominic Kirwan, who had a hit single with the Duncan & Cy ballad 'Absent Friends'. Together with an old friend, Colin Jack, they also bought one of Scotland's oldest-established music publishing companies, Jammy Music, and for a while it looked as though Duncan would be devoting the future to songwriting.
The need to play and sing burned just as fiercely within him, though, and in 2001 he accepted an offer from a small Glasgow independent label to record his first solo album ‘Just a Glasgow Boy’. This was a mix of studio tracks and songs from his live show, and attracted a great deal of radio play and press coverage.
In 2005, Duncan signed to fast-rising Edinburgh-based label The Music Kitchen, and the result was the stunning new album ‘All You Need to Know’ which brings many of the musicians from ‘Glasgow Boy’ together with the wonderful Scottish harp virtuoso Catriona McKay and legendary Glasgow-based blues harp player Fraser Speirs to create a marvellous collection of original songs, traditional ballads and covers, recorded in TMK’s Edinburgh studios by the renowned engineer and producer Stuart Wood.
Link to Duncan McCrone's website
In and Around Aberfeldy
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