The Early Years

In the fall of 1943, in the Dorset village of Broadstone, just north of Poole and about 120 miles from London, Neil Alexander Murray was born. His mother was Violet Doreen Whitaker who, three years previously, met and became fascinated with Myles P. Murray, a Newfoundlander serving in the 59th regiment during the Second World War. They married in 1941, and when the war was over, Doreen and her children immigrated to Newfoundland, where Myles worked with the Department of Justice until elected to the Newfoundland House of Assembly in 1951.

Neil studied at St. Bonaventure's College in St. John's, as well as at Beaumont, a Jesuit boarding school in England. In 1962, at the age of 19, he graduated from Memorial University with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree. One year later he received his Master of Arts; his thesis was entitled "The Prosodic Theory and Practice of Patmore, Hopkins and Bridges." That same year he was named Newfoundland's Rhodes Scholar and went off to Oriel College at Oxford University.

During his Oxford years, Neil was a member of the team that became All-England champions in the BBC quiz program "University Challenge." He became an expert on Anglo-Saxon prosody, and in his spare time, translated Serbo-Croat poetry. In 1967 he was awarded the Rothermere Fellowship and graduated with a Bachelor of Literature.


Back to Newfoundland

Although his father was a member of Joey Smallwood's cabinet, Neil was a passionate Newfoundland nationalist, numbering among his friends a quantity of noted anti-confederates. On his visits back home, and later when he returned to Newfoundland for good, there were always dinner parties lasting far into the night, carried along by intense discussions about the consequences of Confederation and the evils of the Resettlement program, then fully underway around the coast of Newfoundland. The times were interesting-feelings of pride and frustration about the idea of being a Newfoundlander were breeding a revived nationalism not noticeable in Newfoundland since pre-Confederation days. Newfoundland art, writing, history, music and folklore became the only topics of conversation. People were reading everything they could get their hands on to inform themselves about this place. With his prodigious appetite for reading and his photographic memory, Neil was an authority people turned to.

One of Neil's particular interests was Newfoundland songs and tunes. A thorough intellectual and student of George Story, he was familiar with the work of English antiquarians Cecil Sharpe and his assistant Maud Karpeles, who collected songs in Newfoundland, as well as the work done by Vassar scholars Elizabeth Bristol Greenleaf and Grace Yarrow Mansfield. He was also conversant with Kenneth Peacock's three-volume Songs of the Newfoundland Outports, published in 1965. A good singer, he learned many of the songs he found in those collections, and introduced his friend Laverne Squires to some of the more lyrical pieces in them. Laverne sang these songs at house parties and in recitals, and later as a member of the bands Land of Mordor and Lukey's Boat. Her magnificent contralto voice was so remarkable that the noisiest bar would fall quiet when she began to sing.

While he was in England, Neil became acquainted with members of the English Folk Song and Dance Society, and was a frequent visitor to Cecil Sharpe House. He met Maud Karpeles and talked with her about Newfoundland songs, and made the acquaintance of Margot Davies, host of the BBC radio program "Calling Newfoundland." Swept up in the English Folk revival, he came to know the work of performers such as Dolly and Shirley Collins, Ashley Hutchings, Martin Carthy, Richard Thompson, The Watersons and Dick Gaughan.

Neil brought back to Newfoundland LPs of these English and Irish performers, and of the groups Fairport Convention and Planxty. A generation of young rock-music aficionados, tired of the old time sound of Harry Hibbs and Sagebrush Sam, made the connection: Newfoundland music could jump into the psychedelic era with the addition of a few electric guitars, a drum kit and a Hammond organ! Neil's close friend Noel Dinn, who had been playing drums in rock bands since he was fifteen, formed with his contemporaries a succession of rock bands-The Philadelphia Cream Cheese Band, The Land of Mordor, Lukey's Boat, and eventually Figgy Duff. Neil became an advisor and financial backer for these enterprises, rounding up Newfoundland songs and tunes, finding singers and accordion players, and even purchasing instruments and sound equipment for the bands.


Bon Vivant

Neil was a man who enjoyed a good dinner and a good bottle of wine. Most of my memories of him are connected with feasting at The Continental or the Newfoundland Hotel, and drinking at The Ship or the old Tudor Inn. He could always be relied on to go out for a scoff, or to host one at his place on Elm Street. He often cooked a meal, reading aloud from the recipes of Georges-Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935), "The Emperor of Chefs and The Chef of Emperors." I remember a particular meal of turrs and all the trimmings-gravy, figgy duff, pease pudding and salt beef-that he presided over just after I got married. My mother Elsie was the chief cook, but Neil was the founder of the feast and took a keen interest in every detail of the meal. There were a couple of dozen guests and a couple of cases of wine, with brandy and tobacco and birch logs on the fire. And after all hands had eaten and drunk their fill, there were songs and music and dancing until the moon set behind us, and the sun was coming up through the Narrows.


Poet and Writer

Although he worked briefly in the Newfoundland Section of the St. John's Public Library, Neil spent most of his life writing. This provided both a means of making a living and the pure joy of crafting essays and poems, some of which have never been published. His poems appeared in Fiddlehead, Contemporary Verse, East of Canada and Thirty-One Newfoundland Poets. In Thirty-One Newfoundland Poets, his work stands out for its pristine structure and striking imagery:

In 1974 he became editor of the Newfoundland Herald, a weekly publication first started in 1945. During the five or so years that Neil spent there, the Herald changed from its tabloid format to the glossy-covered entertainment publication it is today. Neil played a major role in this change. He wrote about the local arts community, did theatre, movie and record reviews, provided production updates, and initiated a weekly column highlighting members of the arts community, particularly those involved in music and theatre.

Neil also wrote for The Weekend Magazine, a national weekly publication, as a freelance Newfoundland representative. His profiles of local artists and fishermen were among the first glimpses of the richness of our culture that made their way upalong to the Canadian mainland.

In 1981, Neil left the Herald to edit The Union Forum, the bi-monthly publication of the Newfoundland Fishermen, Food and Allied Workers Union. He held that position until 1985 when he joined NORDCO as a fisheries consultant, researching and writing articles and reports on the fishery as well as other resource matters.


Neil Murray's Jigg's Dinner Gig (with apologies to Emile Benoit)

Most Newfoundlanders will remember Neil for Jigg's Dinner, his two-hour weekly radio show which ran Sunday mornings for five or six years. Neil not only played Newfoundland music, from commercial and archival recordings, but also interviewed local singers and players on the air. As well, he featured traditional music from Ireland, the British Isles, Brittany and Normandy back to back with the Newfoundland material. With his succinct and knowledgeable commentary, he was reacquainting us with our traditional music, and introducing us to its origins.

Jigg's Dinner was an unqualified hit with Newfoundlanders both in Town and around the Bay. People who had lost interest in Newfoundland music were coming back to it again, fascinated by Neil's placement of it in an international context. Neil played new recordings, as they became available, and interviewed the musicians. New traditional music groups proliferated: Rakish Paddy, Twice-Turned Tune, Barking Kettle, Lukey's Boat, Figgy Duff, Red Island. The bars downtown were alive with music and exciting talk.


Community Volunteer

Neil was a soft-spoken man, even when his passion for poetry and history got the better of him and he had to argue a point. You would not have considered him a political man or a shore-skipper. He was an observer of people's behaviour rather than a director of their activities. But, for all that, he served on numerous boards and committees set up to make decisions in the arts community.

One of the most solid encouragements for those people in Newfoundland who had begun to call themselves "artists"-musicians, writers, painters, sculptors, dancers-was the formation of the Arts Council in 1974. Neil was one of the founding members and served on its Board for years. He was also a founding editor of TickleAce and a member of the Canada Council Advisory Board.

While a member of the St. John's Folk Arts Council Board, he was instrumental in bringing to our attention traditional performers such as Francis Colbert, John Joe English, Mary (Min) Caul, Caroline Brennan and Patsy Judge. The Folk Festival in Bannerman Park, which followed his untimely death in the fall of 1988, was dedicated to him in celebration of his commitment to, belief in and promotion of the traditional music of this place.

Neil Murray died, victim of the asthma that tormented him for years, in his home on Elm Street. His funeral was at a church in Portugal Cove. The church couldn't hold all the people who came to see him buried; the Cove itself couldn't hold all the sorrow we felt, realizing that he had left us so quickly and so soon, before he finished telling us all we wanted to know.