Jimmy McBeath was born in the 'Reid Raw' at the top of Church Street, Portsoy on 30th August 1898.

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His 'home base' for the first half of his life was the lodging house at the Old Harbour, Portsoy,  close to  his birthplace.   A friendly and sociable man, (known familiarly as "Scout") he was a weel kent figure on the Shorehead and could often be seen in conversation with the locals who lived in that part of the town.   After World War II the lodging houses in the area began to close down and Jimmy was forced to move from Portsoy to Banff, then to Elgin and finally to Aberdeen, where he resided in the 'Model' in East North Street until his admission to Tor-na-Dee Hospital in 1972, where he died.

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At the age of 13, Jimmy was hired at Brandons Fair to work at Ardoch Farm, Deskford receiving £4 for his first 'haflin' (half term) and 5 guineas for the second half of the year.  Hamish Henderson, folk song collector and author, recorded that Jimmy learned his first ballad in the playground at Portsoy School from "a laddie cried Mair".  Known as a 'dreg song', the rhyme was made up from the fragments of several other traditional songs.

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Mary Annie, sugar cannie

Bumbee bedlar

Saxteen saidler

A mannie in a hairy caipie

Rowin' at the ferry boatie.

Ferry boatie ow'r dear,

Ten pounds in the year.

Jock Fife had a coo

Black and white aboot the moo.

Hit can jump the Brig o' Dee

Singin' Cock-a-linkie.

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The outbreak of World War 1 gave Jimmy a break from the "hard, slavery work" of the farm, and he saw action with the Gordon Highlanders in the trenches of France and Flanders.  When he was demobilised, Henderson continues * "He was faced with the depressing prospect of re-entering farm service, but fate - in the shape of Geordie Stewart of Huntly, a wealthy travelling scrap dealer, and a brother of Lucy Stewart of Fetterangus - willed otherwise.     Geordie was a connoisseur of ballad singing, and it was he who put the idea into Jimmy's head that he might be better employed using his by-ordinar voice, with its unique gravelly tone, as a street singer than meekly submitting to the necessity of a return to the bothy life.   Geordie not only assured Jimmy that fame, money and a great lyric future lay before him on the road; he also taught him two or three dozen of the songs which he was afterwards to make famous, including the best version collected to date of  ''Come a' ye Tramps and Hawkers'.

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Jimmy's 'theme song' however was the bothy ballad "Bound to be a row", this title engraved in tribute on his headstone in Portsoy Cemetery.

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Jimmy became well known at the various fairs and feeing markets of the north-east, where he would sing for his beer money.  He gained wider acclaim after Hamish Henderson and Alan Lomax recorded his singing in 1951 in the Commercial Hotel, Turriff, and later that summer, writes Henderson, "Jimmy came to Edinburgh to sing at the first People's Festival ceilidh organised by me for the Edinburgh Labour Festival Committee.  This was held in the Oddfellows' Hall, just across the road from Sandy Bell's bar and in both places Jimmy created a sensation.  His first song in the hall was 'Come a' ye Tramps and Hawkers', and Alan Lomax's tape-recordings of the ceilidh communicate the elated atmospheres of that memorable occasion."

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At a post-ceilidh party in St Columba's Church Hall in Johnstone Terrace, Jimmy's singing was heard by the greatest names of Scots folk and literature, including Ewan McColl, Isla Cameron, Flora McNeil, and others.  Hugh MacDiarmid honoured the gathering with his presence; parts of A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle were spoken during the evening, and the singing of  'Goodnight and Joy be wi' ye a' rounded off the celebration.

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In Glasgow too, which produced so many of its own fine folk singers, Jimmy was held in honour.  Ewan McVicar in his book One Singer One Song writes that he was the very first paid guest at the Glasgow Folk Club.  "We paid him eight pounds, more money than he'd ever received for singing in his life.  I was embarrassed at the degree of his gratitude."  The cover of this book displays a group of celebrated Glasgow folk singers, expertly drawn in caricature by John Gahagan, including Matt McGinn, Adam McNaughtan and Alistair McDonald, and in this group Portsoy's Jimmy McBeath takes pride of place.

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