20th-century British male musicians

Sir Francesco Paolo Tosti KCVO (9 April 1846, Ortona, Abruzzo – 2 December 1916, Rome) was an Italian composer and music teacher.

Robert Kemsley (Robin) Orr (2 June 1909 – 9 April 2006) was a Scottish organist and composer.

George Chisholm OBE (29 March 1915 – 6 December 1997) was a Scottish jazz trombonist and vocalist.
In the late 1930s he moved to London, where he played in dance bands led by Bert Ambrose and Teddy Joyce. He later recorded with jazz musicians such as Coleman Hawkins, Fats Waller and Benny Carter during their visits to the UK.In 1940, during the Second World War, Chisholm signed on with the Royal Air Force and joined the RAF Dance Orchestra (known popularly as the Squadronaires), remaining in the band long after he was demobbed. He followed this with freelance work and a five-year stint with the BBC Showband (a forerunner of the BBC Radio Orchestra) and as a core member of Wally Stott's orchestra on BBC Radio's The Goon Show, for which he made several minor acting appearances, for example as 'Chisholm MacChisholm the Steaming Celt' in the 1956 episode 'The Macreekie Rising of '74'.
Chisholm had roles in the films The Mouse on the Moon (1963), The Knack ...and How to Get It (1965) and Superman III (1983). He was also part of the house band for the children's programmes Play School and Play Away. He also sang and was a storyteller on Play School occasionally.
During the 1980s Chisholm continued to play, despite undergoing heart surgery; working with his own band the Gentlemen of Jazz and Keith Smith's Hefty Jazz among others, and playing live with touring artists. He was appointed an OBE in 1984.In the mid-1990s, Chisholm retired from public life suffering from Alzheimer's disease. He died in December 1997, aged 82.

Ian Carr (21 April 1933 – 25 February 2009) was a Scottish jazz musician, composer, writer, and educator. Carr performed and recorded with the Rendell-Carr quintet and jazz-fusion band Nucleus, and was an associate professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. He also wrote biographies of musicians Keith Jarrett and Miles Davis.

Alastair Fairweather (12 June 1927 – 21 June 1993) was a British jazz trumpeter, born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Educated at the city's Royal High School and Edinburgh College of Art, Fairweather served his National Service in Egypt.
In 1949 Fairweather started a band with his school friend Sandy Brown. In 1953 the pair went south to London with Stan Greig recorded several sides for Esquire Records as the Sandy Brown and the Fairweather-Brown All-Stars. They performed at the Royal Festival Hall.
When Brown went back to Scotland to finish his architecture studies, Fairweather joined the Cy Laurie Jazz Band. From 1966 to 1968, he worked for clarinetist Acker Bilk. Following a second career as a teacher in Harrow, London, Fairweather returned to Edinburgh in 1987, where he remained and played until his death in 1993 at the age of 66.

George Elrick (29 December 1903 – 15 December 1999), 'The Smiling Voice of Radio', was a British musician, impresario and radio presenter, probably best known for presenting the popular record request show Housewives' Choice during the 1950s and 1960s as well as his recording of the song "I Like Bananas Because They Have No Bones".George Elrick was born in Aberdeen in 1903. His first ambition was to be a doctor but financial constraints prevented this. Still in his teens, he began playing drums for local dance bands and by 1928 had formed his own band, the Embassy Band, which swept the prizes in the All-Scottish Dance Band Championship that year. Elrick turned professional and moved to London where he became friends with the crooner Al Bowlly, and began singing himself. He joined the Henry Hall Orchestra as a vocalist and drummer and their 1936 recording of The Music goes Round and Round made Elrick a star. In 1937, he left Hall to form his own band, and in 1939 began a solo career, which was moderately successful through the years of World War II.

In 1948, he took a touring revue round Britain, and was asked by the BBC to stand in for two weeks as disc-jockey on the morning record request show Housewives' Choice. The 'temporary' job lasted almost twenty years, as Elrick's Scottish accent and liberal use of catchphrases became highly popular. Memorably, he would sign off each show by singing the words 'I'll be with you all again tomorrow morning' to the (wordless) theme tune, and noting 'This is Mrs Elrick's wee son George saying thanks for your company - and cheerio!'.In later years, he became something of an impresario and acted as an agent for numerous musicians such as Mantovani. He was a member of the Grand Order of Water Rats, and was also a life member of the Variety Club of Great Britain.He was married and had a son. He published an autobiography, Housewives' Choice - The George Elrick Story.

James Deuchar (26 June 1930 – 9 September 1993) was a Scottish jazz trumpeter and big band arranger, born in Dundee, Scotland. He found fame as a performer and arranger in the 1950s and 1960s. Deuchar was taught trumpet by John Lynch, who learned bugle playing as a boy soldier in the First World War, and who later was Director of Brass Music for Dundee.

Graeme Hunter Kelling (4 April 1957 – 10 June 2004) was a Scottish musician and the original guitarist with the Scottish pop band Deacon Blue.
Born in Paisley, Scotland, Kelling was brought up in Mount Vernon in the East End of Glasgow and educated at the High School of Glasgow. Born into the Plymouth Brethren sect, he turned away from it in order to travel and to follow music. In the early 1980s he worked in the Glasgow rock music scene as both bandmember (Tune Cookies, On a Clear Day, Precious, and The Painted Word) and session guitarist. Having joined Deacon Blue in 1984 (while the band was still called "Dr Love"), Kelling went on to co-write their 1987 single "Loaded" and the B-side "Ronnie Spector" (the latter from the second single release of "Dignity"). He played on the first four Deacon Blue albums – Raintown, When the World Knows Your Name, Fellow Hoodlums and Whatever You Say, Say Nothing – before the band's first split in 1994.Following the end of his first stint with Deacon Blue, Kelling ran a recording studio and wrote soundtrack and incidental music for film and television. He also took on work as a prose writer, contributing restaurant reviews to The List and travel writing to Peter Irvine's guide book Scotland the Best. Kelling rejoined Deacon Blue in May 1999, and despite being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer early in 2000, continued working with the band for the next five years (contributing to the albums Walking Back Home and Homesick).Kelling died in 2004 in Glasgow at the age of 47. He was survived by his wife (television producer Julie Smith) and two children, Alexander and Grace.

Hamish MacCunn, né James MacCunn (22 March 1868 – 2 August 1916) was a Scottish composer, conductor and teacher.
He was one of the first students of the newly founded Royal College of Music in London, and quickly made a mark. As a composer he achieved early success with his orchestral piece The Land of the Mountain and the Flood (1887), and, later, his first opera, Jeanie Deans (1894). His subsequent compositions did not match those two successes, and although he continued to compose throughout his life, he became best known as a conductor and teacher. He held teaching appointments at the Royal Academy of Music and the Guildhall School of Music.
As a conductor MacCunn served as musical director to the Carl Rosa, Moody-Manners and D'Oyly Carte opera companies, and worked with Thomas Beecham in the latter's London opera seasons in 1910 and 1915 and on tour.