Jim McLean

Jim got involved in the Scottish folk scene around 1959 and wrote some songs printed in the Scottish Rebel Ceilidh Song Books. Jim travelled a lot and once served in the Swedish Merchant Navy for a spell before he got married in London in 1966 and formed his own record company, Nevis Records, in 1972. Previous to that he had written and produced LPs for different companies including a collection of Scottish Republican Songs, sleeve notes by Hugh MacDiarmid whom he'd also recorded and edited him reciting his own and Burns's poems. Jim produced a booklet "25 Scottish Rebel Songs" in 1968, all his own songs, and all have been recorded sometime or another. He was The Dubliners first road manager in 1966/7 and in 1962 he gave Bob Dylan his first chance to sing in a London folk club. Afterwards Dylan asked him to discuss Scottish folk song and concluded by asking if he was Hamish Henderson! Jim obtained a B.Eng. in electronic engineering when he was 50 and an M.Sc. in Scottish Ethnology from the University of Edinburgh when he was 70, in 2008, and also taught Information technology for about 10 years in a London School previous to retiring age 60.