Bill Leader, a renowned folk music record producer who helped shape the careers of artists such as Billy Connolly, Gerry Rafferty, Mike Harding, Christy Moore, and Luke Kelly, has died at the age of 96.
Leader began his career making field recordings of Irish music in London pubs, capturing the sounds of the Irish diaspora. He worked with Topic Records, Transatlantic Records, and his own labels, Leader and Trailer, supervising more than 400 albums over the years. His collaborations included Ewan MacColl, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Pentangle, the Dubliners, and Planxty.
Later in life, Leader became a lecturer in recording techniques at Salford Advanced College of Technology, now Salford University, where he remained for 30 years, retiring as a visiting professor.
Born in Newark, New Jersey, to William Leader, a tool maker, and Lou Leader, who were first cousins once-removed, Bill moved to the UK with his British parents during the Great Depression when he was two years old. They settled in London.
During the Second World War, at age 10, he was evacuated to the West Riding of Yorkshire, where he attended Shipley Selective Central school. At 16, he began an apprenticeship as an electrical fitter at Airedale Electrical and Manufacturing Company in Bradford. In his early twenties, he returned to London, working initially in a film library before joining Topic Records in 1956 as a production manager.
Topic Records, still thriving today, was founded in 1939 by the Workers' Music Association to promote and preserve grassroots music. Leader began by making field recordings of folk musicians in his flat in Camden Town and in local pubs frequented by Irish musicians.
He became a key figure in the folk revival of the 1950s and over the next two decades produced albums for many genre greats. In the mid-1960s, he moved to freelance production for Topic, allowing him to work for Transatlantic Records as well. In 1970, he and his second wife, Helen (née Heron), launched the Leader and Trailer record labels, with Billy Connolly as their best man. The Leader label focused on traditional musicians, while Trailer featured emerging performers from Irish, Scottish, and English scenes. Both labels were successful until economic pressures forced their closure at the end of the 1970s.
At age 53, Leader joined Salford College of Advanced Technology to teach recording and microphone techniques on its BTec audiology course. When the college became Salford University in 1967, he lectured on band musicianship and popular music and recording, and set up a recording studio to support the programs.
He retired in 1995 but remained a visiting professor at Salford until 2011. In 2012, he received the Good Tradition Award from the BBC Radio 2 Folk Show and the Gold Badge Award from the English Folk Dance and Song Society.
Leader is survived by his third wife, Lynne (née Porter), a music librarian at Salford University, whom he married in 1998; their daughter, Annie; a son, Tom, from his first marriage to Gloria Whittington; and a daughter, Amy, from his second marriage. Both previous marriages ended in divorce.
