Thomas James Fraser (March 20, 1927 – January 6, 1978) was a Scottish fisherman and

Country and Western A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. It may be a sovereign state or make up one part of a larger state. For example, the country of Japan is an independent, sovereign state, while the ...

and

rhythm and blues Rhythm and blues, frequently abbreviated as R&B or R'n'B, is a genre of popular music that originated in African-American communities in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly ...

musician from

Shetland Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands and formerly Zetland, is a subarctic archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands and Norway. It is the northernmost region of the United Kingdom. The islands lie about to the no ...

. Fraser was born in on the isle of Burra. He never released any recordings during his lifetime and rarely played live before paying audiences. He made a number of recordings on a

reel to reel Reel-to-reel audio tape recording, also called open-reel recording, is magnetic tape audio recording in which the recording tape is spooled between reels. To prepare for use, the ''supply reel'' (or ''feed reel'') containing the tape is plac ...

tape recorder, which family members circulated after his death. In the late 1990s some of these tapes were transferred to CD. In 2002 Nel Records put out a small pressing of ''Long Gone Lonesome Blues'' a selection of some of the original tapes. Two more CDs followed (''You & My Old Guitar'' (2003) and ''Treasure Untold'' (2005)), and a yearly Thomas Fraser memorial festival was begun in Shetland in 2002. A fourth CD of previously unreleased material, ''That Far Away Land'', was released in November 2008. The following month, BBC Scotland aired a 30-minute documentary on the life of Thomas Fraser entitled ''Shetland Lone Star''. A DVD featuring this programme and highlights of the annual Thomas Fraser Festival was released in October 2009. The

National Theatre of Scotland The National Theatre of Scotland, established in 2006, is the national theatre company of Scotland. The company has no theatre building of its own; instead it tours work to theatres, village halls, schools and site-specific locations, both at h ...

also toured Scotland during October with a full theatrical production on the life of Thomas Fraser, entitled ''Long Gone Lonesome''. The production was revived for a 2012 tour of the United States of America. A fifth CD of unreleased material is due out in November 2010.

Death

He died from complications of a sailing incident on 6 January 1978.

References

External links

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Article on Fraser
1927 births 1978 deaths People from Shetland Shetland music Scottish country musicians British rhythm and blues musicians 20th-century Scottish musicians {{Scotland-musician-stub