Willie Kemp, ''King of the Cornkisters'' (born 1888 in

Oldmeldrum Oldmeldrum (commonly known as Meldrum) is a village and parish in the Formartine area of Aberdeenshire, not far from Inverurie in North East Scotland. With a population of around 2,187, Oldmeldrum falls within Scotland's top 300 centres of popu ...

– 1965) is best known as a singer and writer of

Doric Doric may refer to: * Doric, of or relating to the Dorians of ancient Greece ** Doric Greek, the dialects of the Dorians * Doric order, a style of ancient Greek architecture * Doric mode, a synonym of Dorian mode * Doric dialect (Scotland) * Doric ...

comic songs. His family owned a hotel in Oldmeldrum, formerly Kemp's hotel, now Morris's and at an early age Kemp started performing at the hotel. During the early 1920s, Kemp went to Art school in Aberdeen and while there, he joined a concert party. By 1923 he was invited to broadcast for the BBC in Aberdeen. An employee of the Beltona record label heard his broadcasts and he was invited to Beltona's London studios to make recordings. He continued to record with them throughout the 1930s. The material that he recorded for Beltona was a mixture of

bothy ballad Bothy ballads are songs sung by farm labourers in the northeast region of Scotland. Bothies are farm outbuildings, where unmarried labourers used to sleep, often in harsh conditions. In the evening, to entertain themselves, these bothy bands s ...

s, and

cornkister A cornkister is a Doric song, generally a comic song, written during the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries, in the tradition of the bothy ballads. The name refers to the (corn chest) used to measure oats sufficient to feed a plough h ...

s, some written by others, some written by himself. His musical composition skills were good, his lyric composition less so, and as a result his best work was done in collaboration with others, particularly the lyricist G Bruce Thomson with whom he wrote ''McFarlane o the Sprotts o Burnieboosie'', ''The Weddin o McGinnis tae his Cross-eyed Pet'' and ''McGinty’s Meal and Ale''.

Sources

A Salute to Doric Heroes
1888 births 1965 deaths Scottish entertainers People from Oldmeldrum {{Scotland-musician-stub