He also has a Christmas album with wonderful songs he wrote himself.
I remember his song on the radio in the 70s
What great times
Many years ago I was bar-hopping in Maryland. And in one bar, up on the stage was Roger Whittaker. I spent the rest of the evening there.
Whittaker took requests. You had to write your song on a piece of paper, and include $5. No problem there. He’s got bills to pay, too.
I requested “Kilgary Mountain”. Well worth the $5.
Here’s the song, by the way:
https://youtu.be/V_lESZaEr7M?si=tUfwyG4boxNMKxqJ
I forget about him...always under the radar when talking about great pipes.
Thanx...
My wife jokes that the 70s were about falsettos. Not this dude. Great song. My 20 year old daughter knows it by heart and sings it to her younger siblings.
“I heard there’s a wicked war a-blazing
And the taste of war I know so very well
Even now I see the foreign flag a-raising
Their guns on fire as we sail into Hell
I have no fear of death, it brings no sorrow
But how bitter will be this last farewell.”
They don’t write like that anymore.
I love the original release. He re-recorded it later, and it’s okay, but that version became the only version readily available and it is inferior.
Beautiful song, thanks.
A fun history...
“”The Last Farewell” is a song by the British folk singer Roger Whittaker (music and vocals on the original recording) and Ron A. Webster (poem and lyrics). Whittaker hosted a radio programme in the United Kingdom, backed by an orchestra with arrangements by Zack Lawrence. Roger Whittaker said, “One of the ideas I had was to invite listeners to send their poems or lyrics to me and I would make songs out of them. We got a million replies, and I did one each week for 26 weeks.”[1]
Ron Arthur Webster (1944-1994), a silversmith from Solihull Birmingham, England, sent Roger Whittaker his poem entitled “The Last Farewell”, and this song became one of the selections to appear on the radio program. Webster was working for a company called “Lancaster Engraving” in Hockley. [2] He was travelling home on the upper deck of a Midland bus on a cold and rainy night and wished he were somewhere warm instead. That’s when the inspiration fo the song came to him. Webster told the Coventry Evening Telegraph, according to an article published on the 10th September 1975, that he had been writing songs in his spare time for about 15 years. He had written The Last Farewell with Roger Whittaker in mind. But this was already before the singer had invited listeners to his radio programme to submit poems.”
I remeber this song. It always reminded me of the Edmond Fitzgerald song. Same somber tone to my ears.
Oh my goodness. Thank you for this.
My dad has his LP vinyl, I wonder how much it’s worth now. Great music/singing.
My mom (now almost 91) also loves it. I had forgotten about it in the last decades. :)
(Sorry…erroneously posted to myself earlier. Crikey. Would love to attribute to age except it’s about my 91-yo mother…who is actually sharper than I!)
The ones I remember…
The Last Farewell
If…
Durham Town
…and a couple other songs I don’t remember the titles to.
An amazing baritone and he never needed a “band” in the traditional sense.
Born in Kenya and fought the Mau-Mau during his National Service.
One of the few to live the sort of life he sang songs about.
We had the LP album and a couple of others by Roger Whitaker.
Our son has them now.
We left Hawaii in the early 1970s.
While we lived there we visited the British sailing ship that was anchored in Honolulu, “The Falls of Clyde”.
Listening to this song always makes me lapse into extreme nostalgia.
Sadly, it appears that the Falls of Clyde is about to be scrapped.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falls_of_Clyde_(ship)
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