Malcolm Ross – Guest of Honour
by Pia Walker
B&F June 2020
Malcolm ross was born into a musical family in 1960 in the village of Friockheim, Angus. He is the son of the late Lindsay Ross, a well-known bandleader. There were four children in the family, but Malcolm is the only one who has shown interest in music. Lindsay Ross had a couple of music shops in Brechin and Forfar and 3-year-old Malcolm was given unwanted singles to play on a record player. In fact 45rpm singles with Brian Bennett and The Shadows and Earl Palmer on Fats Domino records was the first drumming Malcolm heard. As he says, “They were an eclectic mix.”
In 1965 local Arbroath drummer Jimmy Bruce visited the Ross family and brought with him a new Premier mother-of-pearl drum kit. He set it up in the living room and that evening, before he went to bed, 5-year-old Malcolm’s fate was sealed. This was the start of a lifelong obsession, still as strong in 2020 as it was then. Malcolm’s mother, Mary, apparently took this in her stride as just another day in the life of a bandleader’s wife.
Malcolm’s next birthday added a snare drum to the kit and soon Malcolm, at the age of 6, was playing at friends’ weddings. A couple of years later, when Malcolm was playing at the wedding of fiddle player Jim and Elizabeth Sturrock, the bandleader Jimmy Fairweather from Alyth thought the drumming was decent enough, and soon Malcolm was playing in glenshee, Kinloch Rannoch, Glenisla, etc, for The Lancers, Quadrilles etc., all pretty heavy stuff for a 10 year old.
Malcolm played with his dad’s 6-piece band from early on and remembers playing for the opening of the British Legion in Kirkwall, Orkney in 1975. Eventually his father thought he was okay enough to do a BBC audition. He passed and at the age of 11 started broadcasting. This resulted in his being hired to do radio shows and theatre gigs. For this first broadcast Malcolm had to get permission to get off P7 as it was arranged for ’12 noon on a Friday.’ A trip to a recording studio was always a highlight. Malcolm remembers one he did as a youngster with Albany in 1981. Bandleader Billy Anderson had session experts Peggy O’Keefe, George McIlwham and others to back Margaret MacLeod singing Gaelic and country songs. Malcolm has always felt grateful for the help and kindness given by those experienced players on that two-day session.
Lindsay Ross, himself a pro bandleader, was definitely a big influence in Malcolm’s life. As well as playing in this father’s busy band, Malcolm was encouraged to play other styles of music and his father often drove him to rock gigs.
When Malcolm was 12 he was asked to replace drummer Charlie Fleming in the most successful amateur theatre show in the UK, The angus Minstrels, which ran from 1960 till 2019 in the Webster Theatre in Arbroath. Malcolm tells me, “It was a big responsibility playing to 7,000 patrons, although playing with musical directors such as Perth’s John Scrimgeour was a great experience.”
Malcolm did, of course, have drumming lessons. His father was playing in a show with the Scots trombone legend George Chisholm. The show’s drummer alan Johnston lived in Broughty Ferry, having moved there from Glasgow to teach in the local schools, and Malcolm started private lessons with him. Alan Johnston had quite a professional reputation as he had taught the world-class Average White Band drummer, Robbie McIntosh, whilst at Harris Academy and also played for the Moscow State Circus.
After Lindsay Ross passed away in 1980, Malcolm decided to work as a freelance musician. He remembers playing with the New Cavendish Band from Edinburgh in the 80s as being interesting, as most of the work was in castles and stately homes. By that time he was married with two young boys and his then wife was not too impressed with music as Malcolm’s chosen profession. Susan, whom he met at a Keith Festival gig in the Railway Club in 2001 and later married, at that time played Chilean music on accordion. She no longer plays the accordion, but is now proficient in the ukulele, although they still share an interest in Latin music. She incidentally despairs of his 5 drum kits, the 2 electronic kits, a variety of African djembes, timbales, a Dominican Republic tumbora, 15 snare drums and of course his collection of 70 cymbals, which are all dotted around the house! As Malcolm says, “Doing a wide variety of music has its downside for drummers, as Jesus Christ Superstar needs a huge rock kit while a small Accordion Club requires a ‘Sooty’s kit!’
At that time he also worked for Briggs Roofing and Cladding as a fireman. “If you have ever visited Dynamic Earth or Deep Sea World you can feel safe as the roofing was overseen by this foreman,” he tells me, and continues, “As gigs became more frequent, my 25 years with Briggs came to an end when I realized I had started turning away gigs to be on a roof.” So in 2002 Malcolm became a full-time musician and so was able to travel without the constraints of a daytime job. A mixed bag of gigs soon came Malcolm’s way, and backing cabaret acts in clubs kept the music reading alive until the first offer to do a musical came along with the Tayside theatre group Midas, with Paul Clancy as the MD. They thankfully got the scores 3 months early which allowed Malcolm to really study the drum part for…..Chess!
He has never looked back, having done between 230 and 270 gigs per year since the early 70s whilst working in many different genres. He has worked on more than 90 musicals in different theatres both in Scotland and in Ireland. The most recent ones include Crazy for You, whistle Down the Wind and Avenue Q. And with 30 pantomimes on the East Coast, 27 in Dundee’s Whitehall Theatre over the years, he is definitely busy in the winter. He has toured with Johnny Bettie, and recently in the Pride of Scotland show with Alan Stewart. He was in the pit at the Waterford Festival of Light Opera and has played 450 performances in the Webster Theatre in Arbroath, one of the theatres he particularly enjoys working in. Other favourites he has worked in recently include Eden Court in Inverness, Whitley Bay Playhouse, The Maltings in Berwick, The Alley Theatre Strabane in Northern Ireland, the Palace in Kilmarnock and Scotland’s oldest, the Theatre Royal, Dumfries.
He likes jazz and has played with the likes of Harry Hussey, Angus Kerr, Alison Burns, the Jauncey Brothers, the Dundee University Big Band, Ron Stewart Big Band, John Huband, Davie Stewart and Robert Black. He has been involved in cabaret and talent contests, and in STV and BBC shows as well as commercial radio programmes. John Carmichael’s band did 22 shows aired on prime time STV (just before Emmerdale) and in these Malcolm shared the drumming duties with the late Jim Milroy (Jack’s son), backing such luminaries as Alasdair Fraser, Gordon Pattullo and Tom and Jack Alexander.
He can turn his sticks to anything. He has played country music with Tony Hardacre and the pedal steel supremo Gerry Hogan. Rock and blues is not a problem either and highlights have been playing with Steve Gibbons at The Milnes, Isle of Man, and with the Nikki Richardson Band at BB King’s Blues Club, 42nd St, New York.
He is still picking up new techniques and is still learning. Despite more than 250 radio programmes and 150 albums recorded, he would like to get into more of the Cuban and New Orleans styles of drumming and has been to both places to take in the culture and to study the rhythms up close. This has allowed Malcolm to record Samba, Merengue, Songo, Mozambique and Cha Cha Batucada styles, On a visit to New Orlens in 2015, he realized the similarities between drumming in Scottish dance music and in early jazz when he discovered that Baby Dodds, one of the first early jazz drummers, was playing Schottisches, quadrilles etc. to a mainly European clientele. You can sense his excitement when he tells you, “Imagine him and Louis Armstrong playing Scottish dance music in 1910 on the riverboats out of New Orleans!”
Throughout his autobiography, Dodds talks about listening to the different band members and using his role as drummer to help the band come together, “It was my job to study each musician and give a different background for each instrument. When a man is playing it is up to the drummer to give him something to make him feel the music and make him work. That’s the drummer job.” It seems that Malcolm’s success stems from the same philosophy.
Traditional Scottish dance music has always been a huge part of Malcolm’s life and he remembers that one year with Bobby Crowe he did 9 RSCDS-type recordings. He appears at clubs with many of the guest bands and appears frequently in concert with Leonard Brown, looking suave wearing a dinner jacket but with the sleeves rolled up. Sleeves can be an issue if the drummer plays different ‘grips’ as he does.
Some of his favourite bands from the past are those of Jimmy Blue with the brilliant Arthur Easson on drums (Arthur used to tune Malcolm’s snare drum), Stan Hamilton, Alistair Downie and Andrew Rankine.
Away from the music – if he ever is – Malcolm enjoys going to see his team Arbroath FC whom he has been following for 52 years. If you are there, you may just see a brick placed in the wall with Malcolm’s name on it. Another passion is motorcycles and motorcycle road racing which has always been his main hobby. He has visited the Isle of Man 45 times! He currently owns four bikes: a Kawasaki, a Laverda Jota (named after a Spanish dance in ¾ time and the most powerful motorcycle made in its day), a Yamaha XT and a German MZ.
He still plays as much as ever, but at the time of writing, owing to the covid19 Lockdown, he plays only every second day and spends his time looking through old drum books for inspiration.
You know you are in for a good night when you see Malcolm behind the drums. His talent and expertise is truly worthy of a Guest of Honour award
In 1965 local Arbroath drummer Jimmy Bruce visited the Ross family and brought with him a new Premier mother-of-pearl drum kit. He set it up in the living room and that evening, before he went to bed, 5-year-old Malcolm’s fate was sealed. This was the start of a lifelong obsession, still as strong in 2020 as it was then. Malcolm’s mother, Mary, apparently took this in her stride as just another day in the life of a bandleader’s wife.
Malcolm’s next birthday added a snare drum to the kit and soon Malcolm, at the age of 6, was playing at friends’ weddings. A couple of years later, when Malcolm was playing at the wedding of fiddle player Jim and Elizabeth Sturrock, the bandleader Jimmy Fairweather from Alyth thought the drumming was decent enough, and soon Malcolm was playing in glenshee, Kinloch Rannoch, Glenisla, etc, for The Lancers, Quadrilles etc., all pretty heavy stuff for a 10 year old.
Malcolm played with his dad’s 6-piece band from early on and remembers playing for the opening of the British Legion in Kirkwall, Orkney in 1975. Eventually his father thought he was okay enough to do a BBC audition. He passed and at the age of 11 started broadcasting. This resulted in his being hired to do radio shows and theatre gigs. For this first broadcast Malcolm had to get permission to get off P7 as it was arranged for ’12 noon on a Friday.’ A trip to a recording studio was always a highlight. Malcolm remembers one he did as a youngster with Albany in 1981. Bandleader Billy Anderson had session experts Peggy O’Keefe, George McIlwham and others to back Margaret MacLeod singing Gaelic and country songs. Malcolm has always felt grateful for the help and kindness given by those experienced players on that two-day session.
Lindsay Ross, himself a pro bandleader, was definitely a big influence in Malcolm’s life. As well as playing in this father’s busy band, Malcolm was encouraged to play other styles of music and his father often drove him to rock gigs.
When Malcolm was 12 he was asked to replace drummer Charlie Fleming in the most successful amateur theatre show in the UK, The angus Minstrels, which ran from 1960 till 2019 in the Webster Theatre in Arbroath. Malcolm tells me, “It was a big responsibility playing to 7,000 patrons, although playing with musical directors such as Perth’s John Scrimgeour was a great experience.”
Malcolm did, of course, have drumming lessons. His father was playing in a show with the Scots trombone legend George Chisholm. The show’s drummer alan Johnston lived in Broughty Ferry, having moved there from Glasgow to teach in the local schools, and Malcolm started private lessons with him. Alan Johnston had quite a professional reputation as he had taught the world-class Average White Band drummer, Robbie McIntosh, whilst at Harris Academy and also played for the Moscow State Circus.
After Lindsay Ross passed away in 1980, Malcolm decided to work as a freelance musician. He remembers playing with the New Cavendish Band from Edinburgh in the 80s as being interesting, as most of the work was in castles and stately homes. By that time he was married with two young boys and his then wife was not too impressed with music as Malcolm’s chosen profession. Susan, whom he met at a Keith Festival gig in the Railway Club in 2001 and later married, at that time played Chilean music on accordion. She no longer plays the accordion, but is now proficient in the ukulele, although they still share an interest in Latin music. She incidentally despairs of his 5 drum kits, the 2 electronic kits, a variety of African djembes, timbales, a Dominican Republic tumbora, 15 snare drums and of course his collection of 70 cymbals, which are all dotted around the house! As Malcolm says, “Doing a wide variety of music has its downside for drummers, as Jesus Christ Superstar needs a huge rock kit while a small Accordion Club requires a ‘Sooty’s kit!’
At that time he also worked for Briggs Roofing and Cladding as a fireman. “If you have ever visited Dynamic Earth or Deep Sea World you can feel safe as the roofing was overseen by this foreman,” he tells me, and continues, “As gigs became more frequent, my 25 years with Briggs came to an end when I realized I had started turning away gigs to be on a roof.” So in 2002 Malcolm became a full-time musician and so was able to travel without the constraints of a daytime job. A mixed bag of gigs soon came Malcolm’s way, and backing cabaret acts in clubs kept the music reading alive until the first offer to do a musical came along with the Tayside theatre group Midas, with Paul Clancy as the MD. They thankfully got the scores 3 months early which allowed Malcolm to really study the drum part for…..Chess!
He has never looked back, having done between 230 and 270 gigs per year since the early 70s whilst working in many different genres. He has worked on more than 90 musicals in different theatres both in Scotland and in Ireland. The most recent ones include Crazy for You, whistle Down the Wind and Avenue Q. And with 30 pantomimes on the East Coast, 27 in Dundee’s Whitehall Theatre over the years, he is definitely busy in the winter. He has toured with Johnny Bettie, and recently in the Pride of Scotland show with Alan Stewart. He was in the pit at the Waterford Festival of Light Opera and has played 450 performances in the Webster Theatre in Arbroath, one of the theatres he particularly enjoys working in. Other favourites he has worked in recently include Eden Court in Inverness, Whitley Bay Playhouse, The Maltings in Berwick, The Alley Theatre Strabane in Northern Ireland, the Palace in Kilmarnock and Scotland’s oldest, the Theatre Royal, Dumfries.
He likes jazz and has played with the likes of Harry Hussey, Angus Kerr, Alison Burns, the Jauncey Brothers, the Dundee University Big Band, Ron Stewart Big Band, John Huband, Davie Stewart and Robert Black. He has been involved in cabaret and talent contests, and in STV and BBC shows as well as commercial radio programmes. John Carmichael’s band did 22 shows aired on prime time STV (just before Emmerdale) and in these Malcolm shared the drumming duties with the late Jim Milroy (Jack’s son), backing such luminaries as Alasdair Fraser, Gordon Pattullo and Tom and Jack Alexander.
He can turn his sticks to anything. He has played country music with Tony Hardacre and the pedal steel supremo Gerry Hogan. Rock and blues is not a problem either and highlights have been playing with Steve Gibbons at The Milnes, Isle of Man, and with the Nikki Richardson Band at BB King’s Blues Club, 42nd St, New York.
He is still picking up new techniques and is still learning. Despite more than 250 radio programmes and 150 albums recorded, he would like to get into more of the Cuban and New Orleans styles of drumming and has been to both places to take in the culture and to study the rhythms up close. This has allowed Malcolm to record Samba, Merengue, Songo, Mozambique and Cha Cha Batucada styles, On a visit to New Orlens in 2015, he realized the similarities between drumming in Scottish dance music and in early jazz when he discovered that Baby Dodds, one of the first early jazz drummers, was playing Schottisches, quadrilles etc. to a mainly European clientele. You can sense his excitement when he tells you, “Imagine him and Louis Armstrong playing Scottish dance music in 1910 on the riverboats out of New Orleans!”
Throughout his autobiography, Dodds talks about listening to the different band members and using his role as drummer to help the band come together, “It was my job to study each musician and give a different background for each instrument. When a man is playing it is up to the drummer to give him something to make him feel the music and make him work. That’s the drummer job.” It seems that Malcolm’s success stems from the same philosophy.
Traditional Scottish dance music has always been a huge part of Malcolm’s life and he remembers that one year with Bobby Crowe he did 9 RSCDS-type recordings. He appears at clubs with many of the guest bands and appears frequently in concert with Leonard Brown, looking suave wearing a dinner jacket but with the sleeves rolled up. Sleeves can be an issue if the drummer plays different ‘grips’ as he does.
Some of his favourite bands from the past are those of Jimmy Blue with the brilliant Arthur Easson on drums (Arthur used to tune Malcolm’s snare drum), Stan Hamilton, Alistair Downie and Andrew Rankine.
Away from the music – if he ever is – Malcolm enjoys going to see his team Arbroath FC whom he has been following for 52 years. If you are there, you may just see a brick placed in the wall with Malcolm’s name on it. Another passion is motorcycles and motorcycle road racing which has always been his main hobby. He has visited the Isle of Man 45 times! He currently owns four bikes: a Kawasaki, a Laverda Jota (named after a Spanish dance in ¾ time and the most powerful motorcycle made in its day), a Yamaha XT and a German MZ.
He still plays as much as ever, but at the time of writing, owing to the covid19 Lockdown, he plays only every second day and spends his time looking through old drum books for inspiration.
You know you are in for a good night when you see Malcolm behind the drums. His talent and expertise is truly worthy of a Guest of Honour award
