There are some musicians who have no rock-and-roll stories to tell or a string of broken relationships to fuel broken-hearted melodies. They don’t dance, they don’t have airs. These are musicians who are devoted to one thing only — singing and songwriting. Roger Whittaker, who passed away a few weeks ago near Toulouse, France, was about using a soothing baritone to deliver lyric-heavy music. And from time to time he entertained with his whistling.

“It took me five years to learn how to entertain people but definitely it’s a hard lesson to learn and once you realise that the world is your family, then it’s fine. About five years after I started singing, I started to perform concerts, which is a big step up,” he said decades ago in an off-the-cuff interview.

Uncomplicated love, longing for childhood, sailing on an adventure or simply singing about being rich, Roger Whittaker sang about all this and more effortlessly. Born to British parents in Nairobi, Kenya, he grew up in a rhythmic atmosphere. He knew Swahili before he could speak English. He put his rich baritone to good use in school choirs and at age 18, he was drafted into the British colonial Kenya Regiment, after which he studied medicine in South Africa and science in Wales, hoping to become a teacher.

As a boarder at Nairobi School, (back then known as Prince of Wales), he sang in the choir and during the Mau Mau uprising, he patrolled the grounds at night armed with a rifle. Army life changed him. “Before I did National Service in the Kenya Regiment I was stupid, selfish and angry,” he said. “The Army made a man out of me.”

Of course, life had other plans once he released the song Steel Man, a cover of a Jimmy Dean song, in 1962.

Staffordshire to Nairobi

Music was an integral part of his growing-up years. His father was born in 1905 in the town of Basford, Staffordshire, to a family widely respected in the grocery and bakery trades. His family was both musically artistic and adventurous. When not working, the three sons all played musical instruments (his father played the violin) and developed their band, whilst Whittaker’s Aunt Doris became an accomplished ballet dancer.

“My grandfather obviously influenced this musical environment as I have in my possession a card printed in 1895 advertising the Glee Club with which he sang. These were ‘barber shop’ groups that went from house to house entertaining on festive occasions, taking requests from a list printed on a card,” Whittaker co-wrote (with his wife) in So Far, So Good: The Autobiography of a Wandering Minstrel.

His mother, Viola, was born in Woolstanton in 1906. Hers was a family of educationalists and administrators in the school system. Seemingly worlds apart, Whittaker’s father asked his mother to join him after choir practice, and that was the start of their romance. A life-threatening motorcycle accident made him undertake some difficult decisions, one being moving to Kenya because of its warm climate. The year was 1929.

Early years in the music world

When he was in the British colonial Kenya Regiment, he came across a better understanding of his homeland. “I think a lot of us could see something of their point of view. We realised that wasn’t the way to go about it, you can’t go around cutting people’s throats and behaving as the terrorists behaved but there was some mitigating circumstance for that, to be quite honest, and we just did what was our duty and we were called up into the army and we did our duty and we chased people up and down the mountains. It changed my whole life, I became a different person,” the singer told Terry Marshall in an interview.

Besides his family, his life in Kenya influenced him musically. “I think all modern music is very African if you get down to the basics. Modern pop music is basically bass and drums and that’s what Africans do… they sing the bass parts and they play the drums and they have their little African harps.”

At first, he chose medicine as his career. There were two reasons for this choice. “This was what my parents saw as my proper future; for another, my army experiences in medicine had actually aroused my interest in such a career,” Whittaker wrote in his autobiography.

But his mind wasn’t ready for a life in academics because of the level of concentration medicine needed. At that point, he was “under the influence of the living day-by-day attitude”.

Soon he developed an interest in photography, thanks to his friend Hal Oliver. Just when things were going fine, a road accident caught both of them. Luckily, both of them survived.

Life changed. In 1959, he boarded a flight to England. His Uncle George and Aunt Enid Camacho took good care of him. His uncle was the head of the BBC Light Programme. It was a hint of the life that awaited him.

Next stop was Bangor where he met a fellow Kenyan named Purchace. He had chosen botany, zoology, physics and chemistry. When the first summer vacation arrived, he visited Kenya. “That summer of 1960 saw the true beginning of my professional career as an entertainer,” Whittaker wrote.

Upon returning to Bangor, a call came from London to record The Charge of the Light Brigade. “I wanted to forget that one almost as soon as I’d made it. Even my best friends, upon hearing it, could not fake any enthusiasm for it.”

His second attempt was Steel Men or the story of the collapse of the bridge at Second Narrows in Vancouver. The subject of the song was tragic but the feel was folksy. It was this second song that helped him begin performing alongside professional entertainers.

The big break

Soon, he was in the big league. Tours took him to Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. He gave classic songs a touch that was his own and at the same he wrote his own music.

In the fall of 1969, his British record company issued a new single; another of his own compositions with the unusual title of The Leavin’ (Durham Town). “I just didn’t have any faith in that song at all. Far from promoting the single in Britain, I went off to Finland for a cabaret season and television appearances,” the singer once said via his website.

He came up with the number at a studio dressing-room while waiting to appear on a television show with Michael Aspel. He later recalled that it was “the first decent song I had written”. The song was a massive success even though his lyrics described Durham as a town rather than a city and mistakenly located it on “the banks of the River Tyne” rather than the River Wear.

In 1971, he cut the album, The Last Farewell and Other Hits. It became a sensation later, reaching top of the pop charts in 11 countries and eventually selling 11 million copies. The album contains classics like New World In The Morning, The Last Farewell and Morning Please Don’t Come.

A few words need to be written about how he mastered the art of whistling, which he showcased very well in 1967 with his wordless single Mexican Whistler. This magic can also be seen on his hit single New World in the Morning.

His songs had the touch of a minstrel. He also looked the part, with his well-trimmed beard and wire-rimmed glass. Some called his music bland but most critics praised him.

Though he did well on the charts but he was not as prolific as, say Abba, on the charts. His TV and live appearances made him a household name in many countries. It wouldn’t be out of place to mention that in the mid-1980s, he was acknowledged as one of Germany’s most successful recording artiste and he made several recordings in German, singing the lyrics phonetically. In India, All India Radio’s Lunch Time Variety show continuously played him.

Though the 1970s was kind to him, it was also a time for rock to dominate the radio. He was dropped by his label, RCA, though he had sold several million discs. He marketed his 1977 album, All My Best, on TV, and it sold nearly one million copies.

Always on tour

In 1982, he made a movie in his native Kenya. It was an ambitious project, and for six weeks the film cameras followed him throughout the East African country as Whittaker related the story of Kenya’s history — the British colonial development and the rediscovery of his homeland — through his own unique words and music. Ultimately, Roger Whittaker in Kenya was screened in Britain by BBC Television in the autumn of 1983, followed by a worldwide transmission.

The year 1989 was traumatic for him. His elderly parents were attacked in Kenya by a gang of four burglars, who murdered his father and tortured his mother for hours, and left her for dead. Yet, he tried to look at life differently. “It will affect me for the rest of my life but I believe we should all live without hate if we can,” the singer later said.

The man didn’t stop performing in the 1990s. In the summer of 1991, he was invited by Bob Hope to appear in a prestigious Gala Charity show at the London Palladium. In 1993, he recorded Celebration, a self-penned album offering a wide array of his vocal and song-writing talents. And in 1997 came A Perfect Day, His Greatest Hits and More. The title track had him singing a duet with his daughter Jessica. Whittaker with his wife Natalie turned to retirement in 2012 and settled down in France.

His music was somewhere between folk and easy listening but he had to deal with rude criticism from time to time, like being “a cheesy crooner with a penchant for whistling”. Ultimately, he managed to make music on his terms without diluting his roots. Whittaker went on to sell close to 50 million records and receive 250 platinum, gold and silver awards during his career.

One thing that kept him going was his eye for antiques and his collection of paintings, furniture and works of art was auctioned by Sotheby’s in 1999 for more than £1m.

“One of the reasons I’m so interested in English history and antiques is that I came from a country that was absolutely brand new. When you are deprived of something, you value it more,” he said in an interview.

Roger Whittaker is survived by Natalie and by their five children, Emily, Lauren, Jessica, Guy and Alexander, 12 grandchildren, two great-grandchildren and his sister, Betty.