FROM Dark Lochnagar to The Dark Island, from Ackergill Shore to The Dounie Hills, they are songs that travel the length and breadth of Scotland.

Now a series of historic videos made to accompany these tunes, that take listeners on a tour of the country’s scenery as well as its musical legacy, have been made available to audiences worldwide.

An extensive back catalogue of music videos from the stable of North-east record producer Gibson Ross, who worked in the business for more than 40 years, have been put online for the first time.

With his company, Ross Records, he released more than 300 albums, as well as more than 30 videos of Scots music over the years, and while the songs continue to be available on streaming services such as Spotify, iTunes and Amazon, the videos ceased to be available for purchase, which he felt was a shame.

Determined to preserve them, he decided the time was right to share the clips for free on the internet and began to upload them one-by-one. Now the collection, featuring performances from the likes of Fochabers Fiddlers and Turriff & District Pipe Band, is garnering thousands of views.

Ross, 76, who hails from Wick in Caithness, but has lived in Turriff, Aberdeenshire, since the early 1970s, said: “I decided that as people couldn’t buy the videos now, I would put them on YouTube to make them available as I thought people would be interested in seeing them and accessing them once again.

“There are more than 460 items at the moment and more to go. I’m thrilled with the response so far as I didn’t want them to be lost forever.”
The music in question was once a prime time TV draw in the days of shows such as The White Heather Club in the 1960s, but over the years, these programmes vanished from the airwaves.

But Ross, who studied pharmacy at Heriot Watt University, continued to meet the demand he knew was there for the music as, while running his chemist in Turriff, he began selling LPs, 8-tracks and singles and noted how popular they were. In 1979, he decided to release the first record on his label - a country and western offering from Charley Dey, a performer hailing from Alford, Aberdeenshire.

He said: “We went from there, working with local artists and then we went on to work with Jimmy Shand, who was of course, one of the biggest names in Scottish music. We recorded albums with him at Craighall Studious in Edinburgh and one of them rose up the album charts in the early 1980s.”

That wasn’t Ross Records’ only chart success as they released “The Crags of Tumbledown Mountain” with HM Scots Guards in 1983, a year after the Falklands War and the Battle of Mount Tumbledown.

And Ross was the founder of The Auld Meal Mill, a firm favourite in the North-east for 33 years from the first event in 1982, featuring a host of local artists and performers from across the country, including the likes of the Alexander Brothers and Anne Lorne Gillies.

“The idea behind The Auld Meal Mill was really to make it a shop window for artists,” said Ross, a father-of-three and grandfather-of-seven.

With the bulk of the shows hosted by Robbie Shepherd, clips from some of the concerts over the years also feature on YouTube, as do the odd non-music video, such as Doric poetry from Shepherd while touring The Brig o’Alford or a walkabout in Huntly.

“Making the videos is one of my happiest memories looking back,” he said. “At first, we got companies to do it for us, but then my wife Ann and I realised we wanted to make them ourselves as we knew the best scenery we wanted to feature and what we wanted to do. I personally presented three videos around Caithness and I knew so many of the people and artists and for me it was like being at home.”

Although Ross is now retired, he is hard at work continuing to make the old footage available.

“I’m pleased that it’s getting such a good response,” he said. “It’s vital we didn’t lose all those old clips - it’s part of the musical heritage of Scotland, part of our culture.

“We are happy that it’s there now and that it’s there forevermore. We can look back at the happy days we had and fans of the music can enjoy the sights and the sounds.”

The videos are available to view by searching for Ross Records on YouTube.