Biography
-
Born
23 June 1927
-
Born In
Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland, United Kingdom
-
Died
9 April 2010 (aged 82)
Kenneth McKellar (23 June 1927 – 9 April 2010) was a Scottish tenor
Kenneth McKellar is a Scottish singer who was born in Paisley in 1927. He originally studied Forestry at Aberdeen University, after graduation working for the Scottish Forestry Commission. He later trained at the Royal College of Music as an opera singer. He did not enjoy his time with the Carl Rosa Opera Company and left them to pursue a career singing traditional Scottish songs and other works. His albums of the songs of Robert Burns (now digitised) are considered by musicologists to be definitive interpretations. In 1964 he did a tour of New Zealand. On many occasions in the 60s and 70s he appeared on the BBC TV hogmanay celebration program, alongside Jimmy Shand and Andy Stewart (musician). In 1966 BBC Television selected Kenneth to represent the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest. He sang five titles from which viewers selected A Man Without Love as the Eurovision entry. Unfortunately it was not to everyone's taste and was placed ninth in Luxembourg. On December 31st 1973, the first Scottish commercial radio station "Radio Clyde" began broadcasting to Glasgow.The first record they played was "The Song of the Clyde" by Kenneth McKellar.
McKellar died of pancreatic cancer, at the age of 82, at his daughter's home near Lake Tahoe in the United States, on 9 April 2010
Artist descriptions on Last.fm are editable by everyone. Feel free to contribute!
All user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.
