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This collection of photographs, along with a number of music collections and a set of bagpipes, was donated to The National Piping Centre in 2022 by the family of Robert U. Brown.

From the Piping Times July 1972

Bob Brown was born in 1906 in Aberdeenshire, of a family which had long shown a keen interest in all the music of Scotland. He received his first instruction on the bagpipe from William Fraser, a pupil of G. S. MacLennan, who although suffering from a physical handicap acquired during the first world war, was still considered a fine player. Next the young Brown passed on to Johnathan Ewen. an Inverness Medallist, who began for him his life-long study of ceol mor. Ewen was a pupil of Sandy Cameron, so it was not surprising that his young pupil began to win a number of competitions in his local county. This brought him to the attention of G. S. Allan, who took him under his wing, and in particular accompanied him to the Argyllshire Gathering in 1925. where he won the junior piobaireachd. The following year he was unplaced but highly commended in the gold medal event.

Although he was a keen competitor and loved the excitement of the boards. Bob Brown did not always find it easy to get time ofT from his work which is surprising in view of the fact that his employers have always been enthusiasts for piping. It was in fact 1931 before he was able to return to Oban, and this time he won the medal. By then, however, he was the holder of the Inverness medal, which lie gained in 1928. 

This was also the year when, according to Bob, there occurred the most important event in his piping life he began to take lessons from John MacDonald. “I owe my knowledge”, said Bob Brown once, “to John MacDonald who made me the piobaireachd enthusiast that I am”. Certainly it is partly through his long and close association with John MacDonald that he came to be looked on as a great authority, but this was also due to his own clear and reasoned expositions on his subject, and his unfailing ability to produce great music whenever he played. 

His fame and his standing increased as time went on. In the last decade he became better known than ever before, partly because pipers began beating a path to the door of his cottage at Balmoral and partly because he began taking his knowledge to different parts of the world. For several years he was the instructor at Inverrmark summer school in New York state, he visited South Africa, and it 18was while he was in Australia that the first signs came of the ailment which was to prove so quickly fatal.