Alex Glasgow
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Alex Glasgow (14 October 1935 – 14 May 2001) was an English singer-songwriter from
Biography
The son of a coal miner, Glasgow was born in Gateshead.[2] His parents had previously emigrated during the depression in the 1930s to New Zealand and then Sydney in Australia, where his sister Isabelle was born. They later returned to the UK and Alex was born in 1935.[citation needed]
He was educated at Gateshead Grammar School, where he was a founding member of the Caprians Choir in 1953.[3] He graduated in Languages from University of Leeds and taught in Germany.[1]
Glasgow met Patricia Wallace, known as "Paddy", at Leeds University in 1955. They married in
Career
Upon his return from teaching in Germany, Glasgow joined the BBC.[1]
Glasgow was a traditional working class singer-songwriter. His style would be regarded as solidly within the British (and wider)
He is well-remembered for the song cycle "The Tyne Slides By" written in the 1970s for the BBC series The Camera and the Song. The cycle covers the life of a working person in Newcastle when there was still work to be had in the shipyards, from childhood and schooling, early experience of work, the exuberance of free Saturday afternoons and going to see Newcastle United play, musing on a working life as the ship goes down the slipway, grandparenthood and death.
Glasgow was also a writer and radio and television broadcaster; he presented the
His songs include several which explore the contradictions of socialism, both inside and outside the Labour Party such as "The Socialist ABC", "My Daddy Is A Left-Wing Intellectual", "Little Cloth Cap" and "As Soon As This Pub Closes".
See also
- Geordie dialect words
References
- ^ a b c "'Geordie' anthem singer honoured". BBC News. 27 February 2006. Retrieved 26 December 2008.
- ^ a b c d Plater, Alan (17 May 2001). "Alex Glasgow". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 March 2021.
- ^ Bratton, Joe (2003). "History of the Caprians Choir formed 1953". Gateshead Grammar School. Retrieved 27 March 2022.
- ^ a b "Folk legend Glasgow dies". The Northern Echo. 17 May 2001. Retrieved 4 March 2021.
- ISBN 0-646-11917-6.