Herb MacDougall

Herb MacDougall runs the Bingo Country Ceilidh (the rarely used official name of the event: Ceilidh Kitchen Party at Bingo Country). He also played fiddle and mandolin regularly for over twenty years on Bill's Country Jamboree, a local talent show run by Bill Acorn that ran for twenty-five years on Cable 10 Community Television. The selections featured here were recorded at the Ceilidh, where he was accompanied by that evening's house band.

MacDougall grew up in a musical family. As a young child, when his family held house parties he would stand on the woodbox next to the kitchen stove: this raised him up just enough so he could look over the warming oven and watch his neighbors dancing. One day when he was 9 or 10 he found an old fiddle in pieces in the attic; his sustained efforts to put it back into working condition – and to figure out how to re-hair the bow – make for a terrific story.

MacDougall left Bangor at age 17 to go to business college in Charlottetown and remained there after college. He got away from the fiddle for quite a while, but took it up again in the mid-1970s.

Note to folklorists: All Bills Country Jamboree shows were video-taped, and there is probably a considerable amount of material on those hundreds of hours of recordings that should be preserved.