My husband, Pete MacGregor, who has died aged 81, was a chemistry teacher and a talented folk musician.
He began singing traditional Scots ballads in the early 1960s at Edinburgh University’s Folk Song Society, as well as at local clubs in the city, and by the end of that decade had set up a folk trio, Chanticleer, performing songs from the English tradition with his first wife, Mary (nee Morgan), and a friend, Dave Galloway.
Later he ran the Traditional Folk Club at the Hat and Feather pub in Bath, first with Mary and then, following their divorce in 1975, with me. After it closed in 1980, we started a new folk club, Boafolk, in Bradford-on-Avon, to where we had moved, and when that shut down in 1986 we became involved with the long-running Village Pump folk club and festival in Trowbridge.
In 2004 Pete also recorded a series of his own songs on an album, When Years Were Long, which combined humour with political and social comment. He had a powerful tenor voice with dramatic resonance and natural warmth, and was a sensitive guitar player whose lively wit was a boon to his live performances.
Pete was born in Dorking, Surrey, to Donald, a Gaelic speaker from the Isle of Lewis who worked in the oil industry, and Celia (nee Jackson), a housewife.
The family eventually moved north for his father’s work, to Bo’ness near Grangemouth in West Lothian, and at Bo’ness Academy Pete excelled in music and science. He went on to study chemistry at Edinburgh University and afterwards began work as an industrial chemist for the Avon Rubber Company in Bradford-on-Avon.
Later he moved to MY Sports and Games, also in Bradford-on-Avon, who produced tennis balls and sports equipment, and when they closed their factory to relocate to Pakistan he spent some time in Pakistan helping with the set up, returning in 1989 to take up a post as a chemistry teacher at Trowbridge College. He remained at the college until retirement in 2006.
We got together at Sidmouth folk festival in 1976 and were married in 1978. He is survived by our son, Ruari, by Douglas, his son from his marriage to Mary, two grandchildren, Effie and Lola, and his brother Rob. Another son, Calum, from his first marriage, predeceased him.
