Roy Williamson

Williamson's father, Archibald Moir Macrae Williamson, was an advocate (a lawyer); his mother, Agnes Ethel Cumming Buchanan Williamson, was a talented pianist who frequently took her two sons to musical events. As a schoolboy, Roy Williamson learned to play the recorder by ear, pretending to read music. A teacher found out and banned him from music lessons. He went to Wester Elchies School, then Aberlour House and Gordonstoun in Moray. He taught seamanship and navigation at Burghead before going to Edinburgh College of Art. It was there in 1955 that he met Ronnie Browne, with whom he would team up in The Corries. The partnership lasted almost thirty years. Williamson and Browne also shared a passion for rugby having played wing against each other for Edinburgh Wanderers and Boroughmuir, respectively.

Williamson's father committed suicide when Williamson was eight years old. Williamson had a brother, Robert Buchanan Williamson, two daughters, Karen and Sheena, and was married twice—first to Violet Thomson and then to Nicolette van Hurck, from Holland.

Williamson joined Bill Smith and Ron Cruikshank to form the "Corrie Folk Trio" in 1962.[1][2] The Trio's first performance was in the Waverley Bar on St Mary's Street, Edinburgh. After a few weeks Ron Cruikshank left because he had contracted glandular fever. The Trio had already accepted an engagement at the Edinburgh Festival, so Williamson suggested that Ronnie Browne should be asked to join the group in order that it would have three members again.[2]At a later date, the group added female Irish singer Paddie Bell to become the "Corrie Folk Trio and Paddie Bell". The audience was only eight people for the debut of the Trio, but by the end of the festival it was a full house at every performance.

By 1966, Paddie Bell and Bill Smith had left, with Bell saying that she wanted to perform songs that were different from the ones the Trio sang and Smith having fallen out with Browne (Smith cites that he himself was a perfectionist). These developments left Williamson and Browne to continue the group. Williamson was a singer who was also a gifted multi-instrumentalist; Browne, by contrast, was a gifted singer who had learned to play various musical instruments. The two men cancelled all engagements for a few months to practice intensively. Under a new name, "The Corries", they performed at the Jubilee Arms Hotel in Cortachy, Angus. The enthusiastic response encouraged them to continue as a duo, and they became highly successful in Scotland and eventually throughout much of the world. Williamson wrote Flower of Scotland during the 1960s; it is currently the most popular candidate for a Scottish national anthem. The song now represents Scotland at international rugby and international football matches, and at the Commonwealth Games.[3] It was sung in the 2007 Commonwealth Games by Ronnie Browne, though he swore never to sing it again, saying that it was a struggle not to be overcome with emotion.

As a young man, Roy Williamson had played rugby for Edinburgh Wanderers,[5] which incidentally were arch rivals of Boroughmuir, the team for which Browne had played. Williamson suffered throughout his life from asthma; he usually discontinued his asthma treatments before a show or a concert. [6] He continued performing until late in 1989, when his illness became apparent. He died of a brain tumour on 12 August 1990.[7]