LONG GONE LONESOME BLUES - THE THOMAS FRASER STORY (Page 2)
At age 16, Thomas joined the fishing. It is thought that the Fifie 'Orcades' was the first boat he worked on with John Fraser. Ashore from the fishing, Thomas began singing at concerts locally as well as weddings. Thomas was very shy about playing in public. At Setter aged 18, he was coaxed into playing at his sister Betsy's wedding but on the condition that he was hidden from view. As Thomas played fiddle in the closet, folk danced in da butt-end of the Setter house. Given Thomas's general vocal delivery, really 'living the song', I was surprised but friend Arthur Pottinger recalls Thomas as being "desperately shy".
It must have been with some trepidation then that Thomas lined up with Ruby Inkster's band at Hamnavoe in 1948 for what was among the first of his public appearances. He would join Ruby's band for Up Helly Aa at the Central School the following year. Around this time Thomas would often play fiddle at the Hamnavoe Hall, either solo or as part of 'The Hamnavoe Band'.
Meanwhile, Thomas could still be seen cycling around Burra but there was now another travelling companion - 12 Worthingtons! Thomas's soon began performing all around Shetland in dance halls. It is said that when he took the stage, the 'roof came off'. The way Thomas sung and played became spoken about. Indeed, if Thomas happened to be anywhere in a particular vicinity playing & singing, word would spread from house to house until there was a big crowd gathered around to listen.
It became clear to me through my conversations what an impact Thomas had had on people and how he was still fondly remembered all these years later. In my mind, the thought of leaving the precious collection of tapes to rot became obscene - something had to be done. Consequently, a lot of thought went into how I would tackle what I began to call a project - I really wanted to do Granda's memory justice. A CD release was obvious but not just any CD, I wanted the best sound possible and for it to be packaged appropriately.
The project began in a practical sense during September 2001. I was between jobs and decided to take 2 weeks off to get things kick-started. For the first time in over 20 years, the reel-to-reels left the safe-haven of Bobby's house.
Considering the reels were almost half a century old, they had kept well but it was necessary to re-record the collection in its entirety on to CD as quickly as possible. This was a lengthy process which involved many a long day and night. Over 1000 minutes of material was transferred in those 2 weeks. However, I soon learned that I had been naïve. I was using Bobby's old Truvox 4-track tape recorder which had seen better days. This machine was directly linked to a CD-writer that I had bought before arriving in Shetland. Firstly, the old tape heads on the Truvox meant that I had spent 2 weeks solid obliviously recording a duller, 'wooly' sound onto CD. Secondly, the fact that most of the tapes were 2 track, meant that playback on a 4-track machine also reduced slightly what precious sound quality was on the reels. In hindsight, the only useful thing the 2 weeks achieved was to catalogue the entire collection: some 500 songs along with many parties, conversations of the fishing and of general day-to-day things, radio reports and the arrival of my mother, a baby crying in the sitting room while the clock ticked in the background.