Thomas Fraser (singer)
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Thomas Fraser was a Country and Western and Rhythm and Blues musician from the Shetland Isles. He was born in 1927 on the isle of Burra and died in 1978. Remarkably he never released any material while he was alive, instead choosing to play his cover versions of American folk, country and western and rhythm and blues songs to close friends and family. He rarely even played live before paying audiences. Luckily before he died he made a number of recordings on a reel to reel tape recorder, and family members circulated these as a keepsake of him after his death. After a few years, these tapes began to circulate to a wider audience (Shetland, whilst isolated, has numerous folk and blues festivals, and is well connected in terms of international musicians). In the 1990s some of these tapes were eventually transferred to CD, originally, again, simply as a more permanent record of his songs, but the greatly increased number of CDs pressed meant that Fraser's audience again increased. Finally in 2002, Nel Records put out a small pressing of "Long Gone Lonesome Blues" a selection of some of the original tapes. To their great surprise this turned out to be a commercial success, and by 2004, Fraser had fans in Japan, Europe, and, not least, the United States, who responded to Fraser as a 'genuine' country and western singer, as opposed to what some see as the over-sophisticated sound of contemporary Nashville. Two more CDs followed (My Old Guitar (2003) and Treasure Untold (2005)), and a yearly Thomas Fraser festival was begun in Shetland in 2003. Fraser's work is attracting increasing international attention, and there are plans for an American release of his best work.
