October’s Tune
This month Neil Pearlman is teaching us the Cape Breton reel John Morris Rankin by Dougie MacDonald. John Morris played keyboard and fiddle in his family’s band The Rankins, the hugely popular Celtic-folk-pop band who led pop music’s “Celtic wave” of the 1990s. Another fiddler in the band was Dougie’s first cousin, Howie MacDonald. Dougie made his living as a miner in the diamond mines of The Northwest Territories. The singers from The Rankins - Heather, Cookie, Genevieve & Raylene - purchased the Red Shoe Pub in Mabou in 2004. Visit it at https://www.redshoepub.com/
Dougie MacDonald composed this month’s tune, John Morris Rankin, for his friend in 1989 and included it in his book of fiddle tunes.
Jerry Holland became Dougie’s fiddle mentor and has a slightly different setting of it on page 43 in his Second Collection.
Coming from two musical families, they lived only an hour apart in Inverness county.
The Rankins in Mabou, and the MacDonalds in Queensville.
Flowers of the Forest*
Tragically, John Morris and Dougie both lost their lives, too young, in winter-time motor vehicle accidents.
*Listen to the pipe setting of Flowers of the Forest in this video:
John Morris Rankin
1959 - 2000
Dougie MacDonald
1968 - (between Chistmas and New Year) 2009
