William Wylie MacPherson[1] MBE (9 November 1938[2] – 26 March 2020), known professionally as Bill Martin, was a Scottish songwriter, music publisher and impresario.
[2][4] On their return, he determined to make songwriting his primary focus, and began using the name Bill Martin as he thought that Wylie MacPherson was "too Scottish".
They had records with such (mostly UK) acts as comedian and baritone Ken Dodd, American R&B artist Geno Washington, Los Bravos, Dave Dee & Co, The Troggs, Mireille Mathieu, Dick Emery, Tony Blackburn, Billy Connolly, Cilla Black, The Foundations, Cliff Richard, Sandie Shaw, and Elvis Presley.
[3] There were also numerous Top 10 hits including the Bay City Rollers' "Shang-A-Lang",[5] "Fancy Pants" by the glam rock band Kenny,[6] "Requiem" by the Scottish pop group Slik,[7] and "Surround Yourself with Sorrow" by Cilla Black.
1 hits in the US for the songwriters, the other two (which were chart-toppers on the Billboard Hot Country Songs and the Adult Contemporary listings respectively) being "Thanks", performed by Bill Anderson, and "My Boy", sung by Elvis Presley.
[4][9] In the early 1970s, Martin bought the former home of John Lennon – Kenwood, St. George's Hill – although he later sold it and lived in Belgravia, London and Southampton, Hampshire.
Having triumphed in the 1967 Eurovision Song Contest with "Puppet on a String", the first UK entry to win the competition, they finished second the following year in 1968 with "Congratulations" from Cliff Richard.
[2][10] In April 1968, the British music magazine NME reported that Martin and Coulter were being sued by the Irish songwriters Shay O'Donoghue and Aiden Magennis, claiming that "Congratulations" had the same chord sequence as their song "Far Away From You", recorded eighteen months earlier by Doc Carroll & the Royal Blues.
[citation needed] Apart from being writers-producers of their own songs, they started a publishing company called Martin-Coulter Music, and signed such other songwriters as Van Morrison, Billy Connolly, Christy Moore, Dónal Lunny, Eric Bogle, Sky, Midge Ure and B.
[citation needed] In 1983 he produced the musical Jukebox, which had a six-month run in London's West End and was featured in the Royal Variety Performance of that year.