BBC lifetime achievement award for former music lecturer

Bill Leader

A former lecturer at the University of Salford who was among the first to champion the teaching of a popular music degree is to receive a BBC lifetime achievement award for his services to folk music.

Bill Leader, of Rhodes, Middleton, will be presented with his honour at the Radio 2 Folk Awards broadcast from The Lowry, Salford, this evening (Wednesday 8 February), in recognition of his passion for and dedication to the folk scene during 60 years in the music and recording business.

Eighty-two-year-old Bill has been producing folk records since the mid-1950s and is closely linked with recordings by artists including Billy Connelly, Bert Jansch, The Dubliners and Christy Moore. He also enjoys a worldwide reputation for his down-to-earth, field recordings of traditional roots musicians.

Bill was a member of the team that introduced the Popular Music and Recording course at the University in the 1980s, the first of its kind in the UK, and lectured there for over 20 years before retiring in 1995. “Some people were quite sniffy when the idea of a popular music degree was first mooted,” he said. “But Salford’s concept of teaching the arts both of extemporising music, and using technology as a creative tool, proved a winner.”

In recent years he has been working with Manchester musician and former University of Salford instrumental teacher John Ellis, recording talent at Ellis’s Limefield Studio in Middleton, including a session by musicians who play at Middleton’s Oddfellow’s Arms which featured on the Christmas 2011 edition of Radio 2’s Mike Harding Show. Bill will receive his lifetime achievement award from Christy Moore live on air tonight.

Dr Robin Dewhurst, Programme Leader of the Doctor of Musical Arts at the University of Salford and long-time colleague of Bill, said: “We’re absolutely delighted that Bill has been honoured in this way. He was one of the founders of the music department at Salford and played an important role in the development of our recording and production studies which have become such an important part of our work today.”