[Deathwatch] John Allan Cameron, musician, 67

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Celtic musician John Allan Cameron, 67, dies after battle with cancer

STEVE MACLEOD
Wed Nov 22

HALIFAX (CP) - Long before Natalie MacMaster and Riverdance, there was
John Allan Cameron, his kilt, a guitar and a smile.

Cameron, who tirelessly took the gospel of Celtic music from his
beloved Cape Breton to the rest of Canada and beyond, died Wednesday
after a lengthy battle with bone marrow cancer and leukemia. He was 67.
ameron's son, Stuart, was with his father when he died in a Toronto
hospital.

"It was his time and he was a fighter and he never wanted to give up,"
the son said later. "He lived life to the fullest in every regard."

A devout Roman Catholic who ditched the seminary for the stage, Cameron
was known as the "ministering minstrel" for taking the music he loved
from the kitchen parties of his native Mabou, N.S., to the stages of
Nashville and Las Vegas.

"I was in on the ground floor, performing this stuff before it became
sociologically acceptable," Cameron said in 1993.

A charismatic performer, Cameron made a name for himself by playing
reels and jigs on his twelve-string guitar instead of a fiddle or
bagpipe.

He began his career in the 1960s on the Don Messer Show and Singalong
Jubilee, recorded the first of several albums in 1968, and performed
the following year at the influential Newport Folk Festival.

In the 1970s, he opened for Anne Murray on several tours and had his
own half-hour show on CTV from '75 to '81.

John Donald Cameron remembers driving his brother to a concert at St.
Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S., and fretting over how
his brand of down-home music and folksy humour would go over in a
roomful of tipsy students.

"Most of them weren't familiar with that type of music, but boy oh boy,
he had them eating out of the palm of his hand," the brother recalled
Wednesday.

"They were laughing and clapping. It's not everyone who could do that."


Murray, during a tribute in Halifax last year to the then-ailing
Cameron, said she remembers how people looked at him as a curiosity at
first, especially in places like Vegas.

"He puts on a great show and he makes people laugh," she said. "You
can't help but clap your hands and stomp your feet."

In 1970, Cameron got a standing ovation at the Grand Ole Opry, with
fellow Nova Scotian Hank Snow telling him, "Whatever you're doing, boy,
keep it up because it works."

Nova Scotia Premier Rodney MacDonald, who grew up in Mabou and often
played the fiddle with Cameron, called him "the godfather of Celtic
music and a true ambassador for our province.

"The province and our country have lost a special friend."

Cameron grew up in a home filled with music and a love for hockey, and
in a time and place when priests and fiddlers "were the Bobby Orrs of
Cape Breton," as he once said.

He studied for the priesthood and took vows of chastity and poverty
before leaving six months before he was to be ordained.

His Catholic upbringing often came out on stage in the many jokes he
told about religion. Or when he would brandish a hand mike like a papal
aspergillum and sprinkle pretend holy water on the crowd.

"John Allan had that infectious way about him that could take a party
and turn it on his ear," said Terry Mercer, a Nova Scotia senator.

Mercer, a former board member of the Kidney Foundation of Canada, said
Cameron often gave free concerts for the foundation and would show up
at board meetings with his guitar to perform afterwards.

"He helped set the bar. He and Anne Murray were the leaders of
establishing Nova Scotia as the home of some tremendous singers and
guitar players."

Stewart MacNeil of the Barra MacNeils agreed, calling Cameron a
profound influence on a generation of Cape Breton performers.

"For people like the Barra MacNeils and the Rankins and the Ashley
MacIsaacs and Natalie MacMasters, I think he paved the way and let us
know that our culture is something that has universal appeal," MacNeil
said during a tour stop in British Columbia.

"He helped make us realize the value of our culture and where we sit in
the world today."

Cameron, a resident of Pickering, Ont., when he died, was named to the
Order of Canada in 2003.

He is survived by his wife, Angela, and his son.

Many thanks to Deathwatch Central for posting this obituary