(b Aberdeen, 1908). Scottish traditional singer. Both sides of Jeannie Robertson's family were travellers, who earned their living in the north-east of Scotland. Her father Donald Robertson (sometimes known as Stewart) died nine months after his daughter's birth. She learnt about half of her vast repertory of songs from her mother, who was regarded within her own community as a great singer, and many songs came from her travelling kin who sang as part of family life around the camp-fire at night. Her three brothers and her daughter, Lizzie Higgins, became singers, while her husband, David Higgins and his younger brother Isaac were both pipers. In 1913, when her family first crossed the Grampians for the berry-picking season in Blairgowrie, Perthshire, she encountered different singing styles and repertories. Her own style became influenced by the singing of that area as well as the bothy and traveller repertory of Deeside and Donside in Aberdeenshire.
In 1953, Hamish Henderson arranged for Jeannie Robertson to be recorded extensively for the School of Scottish Studies and by the BBC. She subsequently appeared on the Scottish Home Service radio, at concerts, in folk clubs, at festivals, and in 1954, at the Royal Festival Hall, London. Attracting a cult following outside of her own community, she dramatized her performance style to conform with the image created for her as the world's greatest ballad singer. This did not detract from the fact that she was a fine, charismatic traditional singer.
and other resources
Jeannie Robertson, rec. H. Henderson, Prestige International 13075
J. Porter and H. Gower: Jeannie Robertson (Tenessee, 1995)
R. Hall: ‘Jeannie Robertson’, The Voice of the People, ed. R. Hall, i: Come Let us Buy the Licence: Songs of Courtship and Marriage, various pfmrs, Topic TSCD 651 (London, 1999).
REG HALL