Buddy MacMaster

• Name — Buddy MacMaster • Birth Name — Hugh Alan MacMaster • Alias — King of the Jigs • Born — 18 October 1924 • Birthplace — Timmins, Ontario, Canada • Died — 20 August 2014 • Place of death — Judique, Nova Scotia, Canada • Genre — Cape Breton fiddle music • Occupation — Musician • Instrument — Fiddle • Past Member Of — Natalie MacMaster

MacMaster was born in 1924 into a Gaelic-speaking home in Timmins, Ontario to John Duncan MacMaster and Sarah Agnes MacDonald MacMaster. The family was originally from Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, and in 1928 they returned to Cape Breton to settle in the town of Judique. MacMaster's father played the fiddle, but his mother sang to him from birth, lilting with a Gaelic inflection peculiar to the area. At an early age, MacMaster began to play the fiddle. At age 12, he had his first public performance at an amateur hour in Port Hood, Nova Scotia, and at age 14 he played his first professional gig at a square dance in the nearby town of Troy.

MacMaster continued to play nights at square dances across Nova Scotia, while taking on a career as a station agent and telegrapher for the Canadian National Railway to support himself and his family. In 1943, he made his first radio broadcast from the town of Antigonish, Nova Scotia in 1948. In the 1970s, he played regularly on CBC Television's Ceilidh show. After his retirement from the railroad in 1988, he went on to play full-time as a professional musician, often accompanied by piano. He continued to play music of mainly Scottish origin, supplemented with traditional Cape Breton and Nova Scotia tunes, and gained an international reputation, touring in Europe and the United States. He was one of the first Cape Breton fiddlers to be asked to teach in Scotland. In 2005 he recorded an album with his niece, fiddler Natalie MacMaster.

MacMaster married Marie Beaton in 1968. They had two children, Mary Elizabeth MacMaster MacInnis (also a musician) and Allan Gerard MacMaster. MacMaster's youngest sister, Betty Lou Beaton, is one of Cape Breton's finest pianists and is married to well-known fiddler and composer Kinnon Beaton. He is also the uncle of Natalie MacMaster, another Cape Breton fiddler who has toured extensively and gained an international following and a distant cousin of American musician and record producer Jack White whose paternal grandparents were from Antigonish and Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia. His son, Allan, was elected to the Nova Scotia House of Assembly in October 2009, representing the electoral district of Inverness as a Progressive Conservative.

MacMaster died at his home in Judique, Nova Scotia on August 20, 2014. He was 89.