One of the founder members of Middle of the Road, the Scottish pop group which found fame in the 1970s with numbers like Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep and Soley Soley, has died.
Eric McCredie, 62, died in his sleep in Glasgow last weekend. In recent years he had been travelling regularly to concerts in Germany and helping younger musicians to develop their careers.
His own musical career began in the 1960s when he and his brother Ian played guitar in various line-ups in Glasgow dance halls before taking up an offer to join Sally Carr and Ken Andrew in a group known variously as Part Four and Los Caracas, performing in Hugh Green's Opportunity Knocks under the latter name and then setting off to find fame and fortune abroad.
Instead of their intended destination, South America, they ended up in Italy, abandoned by their managers, where in the best showbiz fairy-tale tradition they were spotted by an A&R man from RCA. When they heard the original version of their breakthrough song, Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep, the three guys in the band fell about laughing, but they stormed the charts with it.
In fact they were a sensation in Europe well before they took off in their native UK, but, joined by a fifth member, Neil Henderson, they enjoyed continuous success throughout the early 1970s. They split up but Middle of the Road has continued in two incarnations, each able to use the name because it had original members in it. Eric was no longer part of that scene - he had all but retired from music and, divorced for years was living quietly in Glasgow.
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