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Neil MacLean was born in Glasgow on 21 April 1895, the 3rd of 4 sons. His father was from Coll and his mother from Tiree and, when Neil was very young, the family moved to Barnacarry Farm, Kilmore, 4 miles south of Oban. He was educated at Kilmore Primary School and Oban High School. In 1915 he joined the RNVR and rose to the rank of Lieutenant, in charge of a small minesweeper, serving in Norway at the end of the war. He then attended Glasgow University and graduated MA BSc in 1923 and won the Gold Medal at the Glasgow Mod of 1921.
Between 1924 and 1930 he was Station Director at BBC Aberdeen. In 1927 he married Jenny M B Currie from Ford, Argyll. She won her Gold Medal at the Inverness Mod of 1923 and they became well known throughout the Highlands and Islands, especially in the 1930s and 40s, and made many recordings and broadcasts. Several of Neil's recordings feature Jenny's piano accompaniment. In 1929 he had a Royal Command Performance at Balmoral before King George V and Queen Mary - the only Gaelic singer of the 20th century to have this honour.
After he left the BBC In 1930, he moved to mid Argyll, near KIImartin, until 1937. That year he took up a teaching post at Dunoon Grammar School, a position he held until he retired In 1960. He died two years later on 4 May 1962. He left a wonderful legacy of early recordings, all on Parlophone 78s, from 1928 until the early 1950s. Parlophone regarded him as their top Gaelic and Scots recording artiste between 1928 and 1943. Bonnie Strathyre, recorded in 1928, was a great hit and was re-issued in 1932133. His last recording, Cailin Mo RunSa, was also very successful. He is credited by the BBC as being the first person, in 1924, to broadcast in Gaelic on the "wireless" radio.
Apart from the above-mentioned Royal Command Performance, other highlights of his career include singing Hi Ri Ri Tha E Tighinn at Glenfinnan on the 200th anniversary of the Jacobite Rebellion and singing at the Royal Albert Hall at the annual concerts of the Caledonian Society of London. Although he topped the bill at many large concert halls in the cities, he always enjoyed singing to audiences in small Highland villages. With today's modern technology he would have made and sold probably thousands of albums but we are grateful that some of his old records still exist and that the same technology can at least preserve his recordings before all the 78s disappear.
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