SCOTTISH traditional musicians are backing a campaign to help a folk legend win back ownership of his life's work.
Dick Gaughan, born in Glasgow and raised in Leith, has been hailed as one of Scotland’s leading folk singer-songwriters with a career that spanned more than four decades.
Gaughan received a Lifetime Achievement Award from BBC Radio 2’s Folk Awards ceremony in 2010 and was inducted into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame a year prior, before a stroke forced him into retirement in 2016.
Despite this long-standing success, Gaughan’s music is largely unavailable for purchase or streaming as the rights are currently held by an entity called Celtic Music.
As a result, a number of acclaimed Scottish folk musicians have backed a crowdfunding campaign to help the singer-songwriter with legal fees as he attempts to win back the rights to his music.
A GoFundMe was set up last week by Colin Harper, a music historian and record label consultant on archive releases and box sets, and has already secured more than £22,000 in donations at the time of writing.
In a video discussing the campaign, Harper said: “This is a crowdfunding appeal to raise legal fees to test Celtic Music’s claims to the rights of seven Dick Gaughan albums, solo and collaborative, spanning 1972 to 1995.
“It’s not a witch-hunt of personalities living or dead. It’s simply a matter of applying the law and, we hope, bringing the music back home to the man who made it and then sharing it far and wide.”
Earlier this year, Harper ran a successful crowdfunding campaign to create an eight-disk box set of a "lost" era of Gaughan's music, which is set to be released next January.
Speaking to the Scotsman, Harper said: “I found myself thinking about this late last year.
"It felt alarming – upsetting, in fact – that such an incredible artist who had seemed to be a powerful, righteous, invincible performer when I saw him at concerts in the ‘80s and ‘90s had faded almost completely from view. I had to do something about it.”
Celtic Music, which does not exist on Companies House, was founded by Dave Bulmer and his brother-in-law, Nick Sharpley, and operated as a record label from 1972. Its last release was in 2007.
Bulmer passed away in 2013, with Sharpley left in charge of Celtic Music and its related companies.
Several Scottish folk musicians have backed the initiative, including Kathryn Tickell, Patsy Seddon of super-group Clan Alba and renowned fiddler Aly Bain.
Speaking to The National, Bain – who has been friends with and worked alongside Gaughan since the early seventies – explained why he has backed the campaign.
“It’s not even about my friendship with Dick – it’s just wrong what has been done with these recordings”, he said.
“These recordings should never be kept away. They should be out there, and Dick should be able to sell them.
“I just think it's one of these legal things that we have to get sorted out, because it’s just not right that all these songs of his are just kept in mothballs. Nobody can hear them.
“If anything, Dick has become even more appreciated in his old age, so it’s important that he’s able to produce these things and put them on the market again because they’re great songs.”
Gaughan hopes the campaign will help other artists of his generation, who have "felt their own legacies to have been affected by a record label's claimed ownership of their works".
Tickell told The National: “Dick Gaughan is one of the absolute greats of the folk music world. I grew up listening to his music and it’s impossible to overstate just how influential and inspirational he is.
“This crowdfunder is for legal fees to enable him to fight to retrieve several iconic recordings.
“We hope that the end result will bring some much-needed income, since Dick is no longer able to perform due to disability, as well as making these recordings more accessible for people to enjoy.”
Organisers say any extra funds left over from the campaign will be donated to charity Help Musicians, which aims to help artists at all levels during "times of crisis, but also at times of opportunity".
The GoFundMe for Gaughan's legal fees is still active and those wishing to do so can donate here.
Neil Sharpley was approached for comment.
