26 Facts About Dick Gaughan

Richard Peter Gaughan was born on 17 May 1948 and is a Scottish musician, singer and songwriter, particularly of folk and social protest songs.

Dick Gaughan is regarded as one of Scotland's leading singer-songwriters.

Dick Gaughan was born in Glasgow's Royal Maternity Hospital while his father was working in Glasgow as an engine driver.

Dick Gaughan spent the first year-and-a-half of his life in Rutherglen, South Lanarkshire, after which the whole family moved to Leith, a port on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

Dick Gaughan's Irish-born paternal grandfather played the fiddle and his paternal grandmother, a Glaswegian born to Irish parents, played button accordion and sang.

Dick Gaughan got involved with the local folk music scene and, with two others, started a club called the Edinburgh Folk Centre.

Dick Gaughan turned professional in early 1970 and moved to London.

Dick Gaughan stayed with the group for about a year, during which he played and sang on their eponymous debut album.

Dick Gaughan gave his reason for leaving the group as fear of flying, which was incompatible with the group's travelling commitments.

Dick Gaughan resumed his solo career and on his next album, Kist O Gold, he sang mainly traditional songs, using only his guitar as accompaniment.

Dick Gaughan was becoming frustrated with the folk club scene and keen to work with other musicians, so he joined the Celtic rock band Five Hand Reel.

Dick Gaughan recorded four albums with Five Hand Reel, as well as two solo ones: the all-instrumental Coppers and Brass, and Gaughan, on which he played both acoustic and electric guitars.

Dick Gaughan collaborated with Tony Capstick and Dave Burland in an album of songs by Ewan MacColl.

Dick Gaughan loved playing with Five Hand Reel and is proud of its music, but as time went on he felt that the band was being pressurised into becoming more commercial.

Dick Gaughan left the band but found it difficult to get solo gigs and by the end of the decade he was only playing occasionally, supplementing his income by writing articles for the magazine Folk Review.

Dick Gaughan resumed playing in 1980, collaborating with several other performers on the album Folk Friends 2 and with Andy Irvine on Parallel Lines.

Dick Gaughan had never hidden his strong socialist beliefs and all his albums had included songs by such writers as Hamish Henderson, Ewan MacColl, Dominic Behan, Ed Pickford and Leon Rosselson.

Dick Gaughan extended his political activism to areas other than singing.

Dick Gaughan instigated the setting up of "Perform", an organisation which aimed to facilitate co-operation across the folk music world, he joined the agitprop theatre group 7:84 and during the UK miners' strike he was Chair of the Leith Miners' Support Group.

Dick Gaughan recorded three solo albums over the next few years: Live in Edinburgh, True and Bold, a collection of songs about mining and Call It Freedom, which was similar in style and content to A Different Kind of Love Song.

Dick Gaughan had studied computer programming during the 1980s, started building websites in 1994 and set up his own web design company in 1998.

Dick Gaughan continued to regularly play solo gigs and for a while presented a weekly music programme, "Crossroads", for the Scottish radio station Black Diamond FM.

Dick Gaughan's voice has been described by some as "capable of turning from aching tenderness to the high dudgeon of political rage within the space of a line, or, on occasion, even in the turn of a single word".

Dick Gaughan plays guitar in a variety of tunings, using both flatpicking and fingerpicking styles and has acknowledged Doc Watson and Hank Snow, Davey Graham, Bert Jansch and Martin Carthy as his prime influences.

Dick Gaughan has recorded extensively as a session musician and has been called "one of the finest and most original guitarists in the British Isles".

Dick Gaughan has been the subject of three television documentaries in the UK: BBC Two's Spectrum, Scottish Television's NB and BBC Four's Sessions.