I learned from a flurry of Facebook tributes of the death yesterday of Tam White. He was a great blues shouter, and I first heard him as the (ovedubbed) voice of Big Jazza in Tutti Frutti. A few years ago I put the traditional song The Water Is Wide on my CD Romantic Fiction 2. Here’s Tam White, in a quiet and reflective mood, doing a beautiful version of the song in Princes St Gardens.
That is a nice clip of Tam, and a lovely song. I first heard Tam playing at Platform One at the Caledonian Hotel, sometime around 1986-7, my friend Chris kept talking about this great band who played there. I went along, and Tam White and The Dexters impressed me very much. A very able and charismatic frontman, who was a great singer, with a rockin jazz/blues band. He did a great version of Tom Waits’ “new Coat of Paint”, I remember.