Biography McGregor Milton

   By far the most ubiquitous of the songs written about the coffin affair is Milton McGregor's composition ''The Prospector's Last Letter'', composed within a few years of the 1953-1956 events. McGregor's song is conceived as a country ballad and the text is forged in a common narrative paradigm in early country music, essentially the ''letter to mother'' type of song sent by a wayward or imprisoned son.

   McGregor's artistry-as both performer and songwriter-can be understood in a larger context of patterns typical across the Canadian Maritimes in the mid-20th century. His songwriting and delivery, here and elsewhere, are strongly influenced by early commercial country balladeers like Jimmy Rodgers and Hank Snow. His guitar playing in particular, with its iconic walking bass, is particularly reminiscent of Rodgers' guitar style. In fact, across the collections in the Gaspesian Community Sound Archives, we get a sense that Rodgers, Hank Snow and Hank Williams were predominant influences in this region among both English-and French speakers who grew up in the 1930's and 40's.

   Milton McGregor was born into a family with a tradition of singing ballads as well as 19th-and early 20th-century popular songs. His father, John McGregor, sang this repertoire in the older unaccompagnied style, with a full, projecting voice and melismatic and highly ornamented delivery. This practice of unaccompagnied English-language ballad singing was fairly widespread in the eastern Gaspé until about the mid-20th century.

   from ''The Prospector's last letter''- a Gaspesian Ballad and Other songs of Wilbert Coffin, by Glenn Patterson, Memorial University of Newfoundland.