Chapter 09 (1953 – 1956) – (Pgs 85 – 94) - Canadian Barn Dance
The pace of the Irish Tour was to prove to be hardly out of the ordinary. Within the next three years the bus had three engines worn out.
And for some time alarming symptoms of wear and tear had been making themselves felt on the maestro himself.
A digestive system, easily upset from way back from days as a miner, was not helped by speeding all over the country in all weathers, often playing half the night and travelling the other half.
For a long time a personal appearance at a particular theatre had been agreed upon, but no definite booking had been made. Suddenly when he was talking to his journalist friend Alan Dunsmore at home one day it seemed the time had come.
Alan drove him to Dundee Royal Infirmary to clinch the tentative date with the operating theatre, where a substantial part of the unruly stomach would be removed.
But it was decided after all that Jimmy was not yet ready for this, although he was not let off scot-free – they took out his appendix. That was in 1953. The postponement held through the following year and the Irish tour and a heavy schedule of other engagements from the Channel Isles to the Shetlands.
By 1955 the wee brown bus was notching up over 30,000 miles annually. All performers agree that one night stands are the most exhausting form of show business. More than a few of Jimmy’s friends were expressing concern. Archie McCulloch, compere and journalist, often wondered “if he takes too much out of himself chasing up and down the country?
“His boys may be in Inverness one night and Carlisle the next, and so on. Practically every week they make at least one trip to England.
“Take it from me, there is no bigger box-office attraction in Scotland. Whether he is scheduled to appear at a small hall in the Highlands of the Usher Hall in Edinburgh, the hall is booked out hours after the first announcement.” (And Parlophone listed his records as their No. 1 seller).
Archie goes on to point out that from the purely commercial angle it was nonsensical to bother with the little out-of-the-way places, the more modest gigs when he could be packing them into the biggest halls in the country………
“Wouldn’t it be much easier and more profitable to him if he confined his work to playing for a week at a time in the big theatres?.....But Jimmy doesn’t look at it that way…..it was the organizers of the small dances who popularized his band and he doesn’t want to go high-hat and let then down now……and when Jimmy knows a small organization cannot afford to pay him a big fee, he charges according to their pockets.
“Whatever way we look at it we must salute a man who sacrifices a lot of money – and energy – in order to give a helping hand to the small promoter who was good to him in the days gone by.
“We could do with many more Jimmy Shand’s……….”
And, to underline Archie McCulloch’s comments, Jimmy and the band did take a week’s engagement, and right in Dundee, at the Palace Theatre in the Spring of 1955, during which more than 17,000 attended – more than any other show had drawn in the same number of performances in the 80 years of the theatre’s history.” (“It was the biggest sell-out we ever had” said Eric Page the Manager. “And all week we were trying to persuade him to play solo. We never managed it. Jimmy never wants any personal credit.”)
It was a flying start to what was to be a momentous year.
In June the other theatre claimed him. He was rushed to hospital with a perforated ulcer.
He went to a private nursing home, Fernbrae. Certainly, this did not seem in keeping with the self-effacing image, and indeed it embarrassed him. He made it clear to his friends –
“Dinna get the idea I think I’m any better than other folk – the ordinary hospital would’ve done me same as onybody else. But there’s the band tae consider. It’s quicker this way, an’ we can get this thing ower an’ done wi’ afore oor busy season starts.”
The get-well cards showered in from all over.
For one critical week he needed all the well-wishing he could get, and only his wife Anne was allowed in to see him. His chances were estimated to be little more than fifty-fifty. But, later, to quote Alan Dunsmore –
…..and the rush began. Among the first to call were the leaders of the countless other Scots music groups in and around Dundee. They came like courtiers paying homage to the king.
A long-distance lorry driver parked his great 10 wheeled vehicle outside the nursing home one day. He was on his way north from Wark, Northumberland.
He broke his journey to say hello to the man who’d played at the best hop his village had ever had….
When Jimmy entered the nursing home his weight was 13 stone 10 pounds. Two weeks after the operation he was down to 10 stone. Shand’s self-made jests are so rare that his comment on this occasion must be recorded –
“I must have had a bloomin’ heavy belly.” He said.
It was late in July when Shand stepped into the bus again. He was due in London to record ten radio programmes.
Union restrictions made it impossible for his to take the band along on his first overseas tour, September 1955. It had taken Neil Kirk, Dundee-born New York impresario quite a while to bring the thing off.
He knew that the fee alone, no matter how substantial, would not do the trick. Ah, but putting aside such sordid matters – what about all the exiles? Hundreds, nay, thousands – nay, tens of thousands to whom it would mean so much to be able to hear him in the flesh.
And indeed Jimmy began to find this aspect attractive. He had himself known so many who had crossed the Atlantic ; friends and neighbours from the old days ; men who, not blessed with his gift, stubbornly insisted on the right to earn a decent living and be able to give their families a reasonable chance in life, and who were prepared to travel thousands of miles for even the likelihood of an opportunity.
Aye, many folk from East Wemyss, and Buckhaven and round about, like the Hannahs, the Gordons, the Sutherlands……He’d feel at home without a doubt. But what was this about wearing a kilt?
Well, eventually he agreed, kilt and all – and surprising as it may seem, he had never up until now even considered appearing before his public in the national costume.
There is no Shand tartan, so he borrowed his wife’s – the Anderson, and of this and a length of velvet the gaun’-abroad outfit was made up.
The tour party was tenor Robert Wilson and Tammas Fisher his accompanist, Jack Anthony, Bertha Ricardo, Jimmy Neil, Margaret Mitchell.
At Prestwick airport it seemed they were all getting off on the wrong foot – if they were to get off at all in fact…..Bad weather delayed their flight from Saturday to Sunday.
An apologetic official explained that due to some mix-up over reservations all the seats were taken. But not to worry – they could travel in the well-appointed and comfortable cocktail bar if they wished. Furthermore, all their refreshments would be on the house! AND furthermore it just so happened to be Jack Anthony’s birthday!
Jimmy, however, set the aircraft company back a minimal amount – his tipple did not venture beyond orange juice. In fact he slept for the greater part of the journey.
At Montreal the Customs man exclaimed “Not THE Jimmy Shand?” seeing his name on the box’s box, and he was through.
A good omen to begin with, surely…..Yet, had he after all been wise to venture so far from home? It was not long before he got a very definite answer.
Toronto ; and the Massey Hall crammed with 4,000 people as one lonely accordionist far fae hame, and far fae hame in a kilt, walked diffidently out onto the great stage before that vast sea of faces. He need not have worried. Said Robert Wilson “It was like a madhouse ; in all my experience I never saw an artiste receive such a riotous reception.”
“Scottish Variety Shoe Rocks Hall at Opening” headed a review in next morning’s paper – “Top billing goes this time to accordionist Jimmy Shand, tall, bald and dour Scotsman who, all evening long, scarcely cracked a smile. But his crisp, toe-tapping tunes exuded personality at every squeeze of the bellows…..he stole the show last night.”
(Later in the piece there is a description of a Jack Anthony-Bertha Ricardo sketch. Dressed as a Spanish senorita she speak broken English.
“Don’t you know the Queen’s English?” asks Jack.
“No, senor.”
“Well, she is,” which brought deafening applause ; followed by “and her mither is Scottish!” which brought the house down).
This tour has sometimes been referred to as a series of one-night stands, which it certainly wasn’t. They played the Massey Hall three nights, other places three and four nights.
An advert in the Vancouver paper announced –
CALLING ALL SCOTS
Dinna Miss the Grrrand
Opening Nicht of The Famous
White Heather Variety Concert
And later headed a review “Scots troupe wildly applauded for flow of sporranteneous wit.”
He didn’t socialize that much with the rest of the troupe.
Not that he hid himself away ; the very opposite in fact. He it was who was always out and about.
“Where are ye away to now?” Jack Anthony would ask as Jimmy was sloping off.
“Just awa’ tae see an auld skail palI promised tae look up.”
Or, in comic interrogation as he slipped back to the hotel. “And where have you been, Shand?”
“An auld freend I jist had tae visit ; we were lauddies –“
“Jimmy, tell me something. Is East Wemyss a very big place?”
“Na – anything but, Jack, a wee bit place –“
“Well, it must have had a helluva big school wi’ a’ the mates you’ve been getting’ around!”
At the dressing-room doors of every hall and theatre they played, fans queued to shake the Shand hand, get his autograph. And ever and anon would be heard the like of “An’ hoo’s things in Buckhaven nooadays?” and “Mind an’ tell them next time ye’re back in Wemyss” so while discharging the messages he was entrusted with back home he was being loaded up with other to take back.
There was the young man at Edmonton who introduced himself.
“John Davidson?” Jimmy puzzled.
“My father was a Lochee scaffie” (street sweeper) “and he used to do your street.”
“Oh aye, I mind o’ him noo. Wait noo – didn’t his lauddie deliver oor milk?”
“That’s me.” And he told Jimmy that he was preparing to sit his final exams to become a minister.
There was Alf Lawson who called on him at the Laurentian Hotel in Montreal. A miner from Dunbeathhe had continued a friendship when he also moved to Dundee, to stay in Hepburn Street.
He reminded Jimmy of the day fifteen years back when he had played for his daughter’s birthday party in North Street Hall. Would he have time to come and see the missus? She hadn’t been well enough to come along.
The schedule was tight, but “I’ll be oot the morn, tell her.”
“An’ I’ll look in an’ see ye again on oor way back,” he promised Alf’s wife after the private recital next day.
Alf was there to meet him when the troupe returned to Montreal getting on for a couple of months later. And how was Mrs Lawson?
“She’s dead, Jim. Near the end she made me promise that I’d be sure to see you again to thank you for cheerin’ her up that day.”
There was the Scots chamber maid at one hotel who approached Jack Anthony one night to see if Jimmy would play a tune for her and a group of the staff in one of the corridors. She had a lot of his records, her husband had collected them ; he had died in the war.
It was late, but Jimmy not only played for her, he composed as well. Jack had recently completed a lyric, which ended It’s grand among ye rain folk far, far from home, and now within five minutes Jimmy set it to music. Margaret Mitchell sang the words over the phone to Robert Wilson in his bedroom, and he was enthusiastic. And the little chambermaid was smiling, and crying a bit at the same time.
Ottowa, Port Arthur, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary, and smaller places between to Vancouver. Then inland to Chilliwack and Kamloops 300 miles down the Fraser River. Over to Vancouver Island to play the main towns before coming back to the mainland and an 11-hour flight to Toronto – “Like crossing the Atlantic again” as Jimmy put it.
Four shows in Toronto and on to London, Ontario and Windsor ; then over the border to Philadelphia, New York and New Jersey.
He had to leave the company and fly home after that in order to honour commitments. Anne and Erskine and David were at Prestwick to meet him.
And what did he think of it all?
“It was almost as if we’d never left Scotland. Everywhere ye heard the tongue o’ Fife, Aiberdeen, Glesgie, Dundee an’ the Boarders. We got a terrific reception wherever we went, an’ the hospitality was wonderful. Scots an’ Canadians alike gave us a great time. An’ there were folk that gaun oot o’er forty years ago still had their accents as if they’d just left Scotland.”
Still, it was guid tae be hame – for one day! Then he was off with the band to London, Eastbourne, London again, and on to Market Harborough, Manchester, Ayr, all one night stands. They got home again a week later, to set off again the same day to Whitley Bay where the Scottish Country Dance Club there presented Jimmy with a portrait painted by Treasurer and Secretary Wallace Lee. Away then to Kirkintilloch……and so on, and so on.
It was, in a way, ‘back to auld claes an’ parritch,’ as far as Jimmy was concerned after the lavish hospitality and glamour of the New World. The kilt went into mothballs. And the name on the wee broon band bus (“Ach, it was just provin’ a nuisance”) was painted out.
His stomach was fine, what was left of it that is, after the gastrectonomy in June.
Booking for 1956 were already very heavy. There was talk of approaches from TV.
While Jimmy was touring Canada and U.S. the band carried on without him, which had been arranged in advance of course.
Suddenly, they had to play without him without warning when he collapsed at Perth City Hall just before they were to play at a dance which was also to be broadcast.
It was not his stomach, and until this day Jimmy cannot say exactly what the nature of the sudden ailment was other than a general and profound fatigue, or nervous exhaustion.
But he felt rested enough to play in 1956 on the radio for the BBC a couple of weeks later.
‘On with the dance!’ was the never-ending cry from his vast public that it seemed he was powerless to deny.
There were the shows he was doing with Robert Wilson, Kathie Kay, Jimmy Neil, all over the country, which were broadcast a ‘Personal Appearance.’
Records continued to be made in record time (more than 200 by now) and resulted in record sales – Bluebell Polka had passed the 100,000 mark.
In April he broadcast on the Light Programme from the Accordion Day Festival in London with Toralf Tollefson ; there were regular half-hour broadcasts in the Scottish Dance Music series on the Home Service.
On Saturday, May 12th, 1956, he and his band were to be heard in one of these programmes at 6.55, and the same evening at 10.30 were to be reard and seen on a television show compered by actor-singer Ian Wallace, ‘The Kilt is my Delight.’
An evening paper remarked on having difficulty in believing that until then they had never appeared on television, and that it was indeed time that such a whale of an omission was remedied.
Would Jimmy wear a kilt? Another paper asked – and didn’t think so, knowing how he hated being conspicuous ; he surely would never agree to dress differently from the band.
The writer was both wrong and right. For it was look, everybody, there’s Jimmy in a kilt! And the rest of the band as well! All, kilted, sporraned, in tartan hose ; and all with frothy, lacey ruff fronts – but here Jimmy seems to have drawn the line and had not departed from sober collar and tie.
Jimmy Urquhart, the Fife tenor, who often appeared in television shows with them later on, told me what a harrowing experience for artistes the medium could be in those days.
Performances were live, which was a big enough strain. Throw in a few technical hitches, which were not uncommon, and it only needed some last-minute alteration in the programme after everything seemed to have been ironed out and you had all the makings of a state of rigid terror instead of conditions conducive to relaxed performance.
But if Jimmy’s attitude to show-business was that of the most reluctant amateur, his performance – and that of the band – was professional to an impressive degree.
“There were no idiot cards then” (visual prompting system) Urquhart recalled “so if a vocalist dried up, well, that was just that.”
The band never had needed any musical prompting of course, never having had a scrap of music in front of them during any performance anywhere, even at the most lavish Highland Ball where they would be called upon to play for scores of dances.
“Nor were there zoom lenses ; which meant that the entire camera crept in on you for a close-up ; at times I felt it was going to try and get right down my throat! It wasn’t easy trying to warble away unconcernedly as the baleful glassy eye got nearer and nearer…..”
But the Shand band took the new experience at their usual perfect tempo. It was even claimed by one or two fans that they had actually glimpsed the wee smile that one journalist had got Jimmy to promise.
“Take it a bit easier” the doctor had advised him…….
By 1956 he had become almost a national hero.
He played in the open air at Aberdeen and gathered a throng estimates at 15,000 which brought traffic to a standstill.
About the same time the Daily Record asked readers to vote for whom they thought to be Scotland’s Number 1 Scottish Dance Band Leader.
The result brought the headline ‘SHAND’S THE MAN ; You made him an easy first.’
Nearly half of the votes went to him. Bobby MacLeod, hotelier and later Provost of Tobermory, who came second, said –
“The result? Jimmy Shand deserves it because he has been so consistent. I’m pleased to have finished so close.”
Bobby, whose band had been formed only six years previously, polled a little over half Jimmy’s total ; third came Jim Cameron who got about a third of Bobby’s.
The next nine were all well behind, close together.
The ‘Record’s’ Top Ten
Jimmy was quoted as saying he was very pleased with the honour, but would have been equally happy had he not won, because he liked and appreciated all Scottish dance bands ; “I ken maist o’ the leaders, an’ I like them a’, an’ their styles.”
To him and the band came the choicest plum in the teuchter players’ calendar, providing the music for the Gillies’ Ball at Balmoral. Later in the year he went down south to appear with Robert Wilson at the Albert Hall to be practically mobbed by an audience of 7,000 ; going on from there to play ay Windsor Castle – driving straight home immediately afterwards of course.
Throughout the year “Take it a bit easier” he reminded himself at intervals.
He had never been busier.
As they had done for more than ten years, the band brought in the New Year for the BBC.
Back at 16 Sutherland Street an even larger number of guests than previous Hogmanays managed to squeeze into the little living-room – friends and relatives, producers and radio and TV technicians, sopranos and fiddlers, baritones and bass players, box-players in great variety, folk from far overseas and folk from next door.
There was as much to eat and drink as anyone could desire – and enough in reserve to satisfy as many more.
The two ladies, Erskine and David, asleep upstairs, were fine. Anne was coping marvelously with the company. The toasts were “Here’s rae a prosperous New Year” and “Here’s tae Jimmy Shand.”
He was 48 and at the very peak of his fame. It would have been impossible for him to walk very far in any direction without hearing from behind some lighted window the eerie ghostliness of his own virtuosity. On this, the Scots night of all nights, he was host at home ; but in a myriad other homes by electronic proxy he was revered guest of honour.
How many happy New Years Anne and he had brought in at the little semi in Sutherland Street.
They were not to bring in any more there.
And for some time alarming symptoms of wear and tear had been making themselves felt on the maestro himself.
A digestive system, easily upset from way back from days as a miner, was not helped by speeding all over the country in all weathers, often playing half the night and travelling the other half.
For a long time a personal appearance at a particular theatre had been agreed upon, but no definite booking had been made. Suddenly when he was talking to his journalist friend Alan Dunsmore at home one day it seemed the time had come.
Alan drove him to Dundee Royal Infirmary to clinch the tentative date with the operating theatre, where a substantial part of the unruly stomach would be removed.
But it was decided after all that Jimmy was not yet ready for this, although he was not let off scot-free – they took out his appendix. That was in 1953. The postponement held through the following year and the Irish tour and a heavy schedule of other engagements from the Channel Isles to the Shetlands.
By 1955 the wee brown bus was notching up over 30,000 miles annually. All performers agree that one night stands are the most exhausting form of show business. More than a few of Jimmy’s friends were expressing concern. Archie McCulloch, compere and journalist, often wondered “if he takes too much out of himself chasing up and down the country?
“His boys may be in Inverness one night and Carlisle the next, and so on. Practically every week they make at least one trip to England.
“Take it from me, there is no bigger box-office attraction in Scotland. Whether he is scheduled to appear at a small hall in the Highlands of the Usher Hall in Edinburgh, the hall is booked out hours after the first announcement.” (And Parlophone listed his records as their No. 1 seller).
Archie goes on to point out that from the purely commercial angle it was nonsensical to bother with the little out-of-the-way places, the more modest gigs when he could be packing them into the biggest halls in the country………
“Wouldn’t it be much easier and more profitable to him if he confined his work to playing for a week at a time in the big theatres?.....But Jimmy doesn’t look at it that way…..it was the organizers of the small dances who popularized his band and he doesn’t want to go high-hat and let then down now……and when Jimmy knows a small organization cannot afford to pay him a big fee, he charges according to their pockets.
“Whatever way we look at it we must salute a man who sacrifices a lot of money – and energy – in order to give a helping hand to the small promoter who was good to him in the days gone by.
“We could do with many more Jimmy Shand’s……….”
And, to underline Archie McCulloch’s comments, Jimmy and the band did take a week’s engagement, and right in Dundee, at the Palace Theatre in the Spring of 1955, during which more than 17,000 attended – more than any other show had drawn in the same number of performances in the 80 years of the theatre’s history.” (“It was the biggest sell-out we ever had” said Eric Page the Manager. “And all week we were trying to persuade him to play solo. We never managed it. Jimmy never wants any personal credit.”)
It was a flying start to what was to be a momentous year.
In June the other theatre claimed him. He was rushed to hospital with a perforated ulcer.
He went to a private nursing home, Fernbrae. Certainly, this did not seem in keeping with the self-effacing image, and indeed it embarrassed him. He made it clear to his friends –
“Dinna get the idea I think I’m any better than other folk – the ordinary hospital would’ve done me same as onybody else. But there’s the band tae consider. It’s quicker this way, an’ we can get this thing ower an’ done wi’ afore oor busy season starts.”
The get-well cards showered in from all over.
For one critical week he needed all the well-wishing he could get, and only his wife Anne was allowed in to see him. His chances were estimated to be little more than fifty-fifty. But, later, to quote Alan Dunsmore –
…..and the rush began. Among the first to call were the leaders of the countless other Scots music groups in and around Dundee. They came like courtiers paying homage to the king.
A long-distance lorry driver parked his great 10 wheeled vehicle outside the nursing home one day. He was on his way north from Wark, Northumberland.
He broke his journey to say hello to the man who’d played at the best hop his village had ever had….
When Jimmy entered the nursing home his weight was 13 stone 10 pounds. Two weeks after the operation he was down to 10 stone. Shand’s self-made jests are so rare that his comment on this occasion must be recorded –
“I must have had a bloomin’ heavy belly.” He said.
It was late in July when Shand stepped into the bus again. He was due in London to record ten radio programmes.
Union restrictions made it impossible for his to take the band along on his first overseas tour, September 1955. It had taken Neil Kirk, Dundee-born New York impresario quite a while to bring the thing off.
He knew that the fee alone, no matter how substantial, would not do the trick. Ah, but putting aside such sordid matters – what about all the exiles? Hundreds, nay, thousands – nay, tens of thousands to whom it would mean so much to be able to hear him in the flesh.
And indeed Jimmy began to find this aspect attractive. He had himself known so many who had crossed the Atlantic ; friends and neighbours from the old days ; men who, not blessed with his gift, stubbornly insisted on the right to earn a decent living and be able to give their families a reasonable chance in life, and who were prepared to travel thousands of miles for even the likelihood of an opportunity.
Aye, many folk from East Wemyss, and Buckhaven and round about, like the Hannahs, the Gordons, the Sutherlands……He’d feel at home without a doubt. But what was this about wearing a kilt?
Well, eventually he agreed, kilt and all – and surprising as it may seem, he had never up until now even considered appearing before his public in the national costume.
There is no Shand tartan, so he borrowed his wife’s – the Anderson, and of this and a length of velvet the gaun’-abroad outfit was made up.
The tour party was tenor Robert Wilson and Tammas Fisher his accompanist, Jack Anthony, Bertha Ricardo, Jimmy Neil, Margaret Mitchell.
At Prestwick airport it seemed they were all getting off on the wrong foot – if they were to get off at all in fact…..Bad weather delayed their flight from Saturday to Sunday.
An apologetic official explained that due to some mix-up over reservations all the seats were taken. But not to worry – they could travel in the well-appointed and comfortable cocktail bar if they wished. Furthermore, all their refreshments would be on the house! AND furthermore it just so happened to be Jack Anthony’s birthday!
Jimmy, however, set the aircraft company back a minimal amount – his tipple did not venture beyond orange juice. In fact he slept for the greater part of the journey.
At Montreal the Customs man exclaimed “Not THE Jimmy Shand?” seeing his name on the box’s box, and he was through.
A good omen to begin with, surely…..Yet, had he after all been wise to venture so far from home? It was not long before he got a very definite answer.
Toronto ; and the Massey Hall crammed with 4,000 people as one lonely accordionist far fae hame, and far fae hame in a kilt, walked diffidently out onto the great stage before that vast sea of faces. He need not have worried. Said Robert Wilson “It was like a madhouse ; in all my experience I never saw an artiste receive such a riotous reception.”
“Scottish Variety Shoe Rocks Hall at Opening” headed a review in next morning’s paper – “Top billing goes this time to accordionist Jimmy Shand, tall, bald and dour Scotsman who, all evening long, scarcely cracked a smile. But his crisp, toe-tapping tunes exuded personality at every squeeze of the bellows…..he stole the show last night.”
(Later in the piece there is a description of a Jack Anthony-Bertha Ricardo sketch. Dressed as a Spanish senorita she speak broken English.
“Don’t you know the Queen’s English?” asks Jack.
“No, senor.”
“Well, she is,” which brought deafening applause ; followed by “and her mither is Scottish!” which brought the house down).
This tour has sometimes been referred to as a series of one-night stands, which it certainly wasn’t. They played the Massey Hall three nights, other places three and four nights.
An advert in the Vancouver paper announced –
CALLING ALL SCOTS
Dinna Miss the Grrrand
Opening Nicht of The Famous
White Heather Variety Concert
And later headed a review “Scots troupe wildly applauded for flow of sporranteneous wit.”
He didn’t socialize that much with the rest of the troupe.
Not that he hid himself away ; the very opposite in fact. He it was who was always out and about.
“Where are ye away to now?” Jack Anthony would ask as Jimmy was sloping off.
“Just awa’ tae see an auld skail palI promised tae look up.”
Or, in comic interrogation as he slipped back to the hotel. “And where have you been, Shand?”
“An auld freend I jist had tae visit ; we were lauddies –“
“Jimmy, tell me something. Is East Wemyss a very big place?”
“Na – anything but, Jack, a wee bit place –“
“Well, it must have had a helluva big school wi’ a’ the mates you’ve been getting’ around!”
At the dressing-room doors of every hall and theatre they played, fans queued to shake the Shand hand, get his autograph. And ever and anon would be heard the like of “An’ hoo’s things in Buckhaven nooadays?” and “Mind an’ tell them next time ye’re back in Wemyss” so while discharging the messages he was entrusted with back home he was being loaded up with other to take back.
There was the young man at Edmonton who introduced himself.
“John Davidson?” Jimmy puzzled.
“My father was a Lochee scaffie” (street sweeper) “and he used to do your street.”
“Oh aye, I mind o’ him noo. Wait noo – didn’t his lauddie deliver oor milk?”
“That’s me.” And he told Jimmy that he was preparing to sit his final exams to become a minister.
There was Alf Lawson who called on him at the Laurentian Hotel in Montreal. A miner from Dunbeathhe had continued a friendship when he also moved to Dundee, to stay in Hepburn Street.
He reminded Jimmy of the day fifteen years back when he had played for his daughter’s birthday party in North Street Hall. Would he have time to come and see the missus? She hadn’t been well enough to come along.
The schedule was tight, but “I’ll be oot the morn, tell her.”
“An’ I’ll look in an’ see ye again on oor way back,” he promised Alf’s wife after the private recital next day.
Alf was there to meet him when the troupe returned to Montreal getting on for a couple of months later. And how was Mrs Lawson?
“She’s dead, Jim. Near the end she made me promise that I’d be sure to see you again to thank you for cheerin’ her up that day.”
There was the Scots chamber maid at one hotel who approached Jack Anthony one night to see if Jimmy would play a tune for her and a group of the staff in one of the corridors. She had a lot of his records, her husband had collected them ; he had died in the war.
It was late, but Jimmy not only played for her, he composed as well. Jack had recently completed a lyric, which ended It’s grand among ye rain folk far, far from home, and now within five minutes Jimmy set it to music. Margaret Mitchell sang the words over the phone to Robert Wilson in his bedroom, and he was enthusiastic. And the little chambermaid was smiling, and crying a bit at the same time.
Ottowa, Port Arthur, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary, and smaller places between to Vancouver. Then inland to Chilliwack and Kamloops 300 miles down the Fraser River. Over to Vancouver Island to play the main towns before coming back to the mainland and an 11-hour flight to Toronto – “Like crossing the Atlantic again” as Jimmy put it.
Four shows in Toronto and on to London, Ontario and Windsor ; then over the border to Philadelphia, New York and New Jersey.
He had to leave the company and fly home after that in order to honour commitments. Anne and Erskine and David were at Prestwick to meet him.
And what did he think of it all?
“It was almost as if we’d never left Scotland. Everywhere ye heard the tongue o’ Fife, Aiberdeen, Glesgie, Dundee an’ the Boarders. We got a terrific reception wherever we went, an’ the hospitality was wonderful. Scots an’ Canadians alike gave us a great time. An’ there were folk that gaun oot o’er forty years ago still had their accents as if they’d just left Scotland.”
Still, it was guid tae be hame – for one day! Then he was off with the band to London, Eastbourne, London again, and on to Market Harborough, Manchester, Ayr, all one night stands. They got home again a week later, to set off again the same day to Whitley Bay where the Scottish Country Dance Club there presented Jimmy with a portrait painted by Treasurer and Secretary Wallace Lee. Away then to Kirkintilloch……and so on, and so on.
It was, in a way, ‘back to auld claes an’ parritch,’ as far as Jimmy was concerned after the lavish hospitality and glamour of the New World. The kilt went into mothballs. And the name on the wee broon band bus (“Ach, it was just provin’ a nuisance”) was painted out.
His stomach was fine, what was left of it that is, after the gastrectonomy in June.
Booking for 1956 were already very heavy. There was talk of approaches from TV.
While Jimmy was touring Canada and U.S. the band carried on without him, which had been arranged in advance of course.
Suddenly, they had to play without him without warning when he collapsed at Perth City Hall just before they were to play at a dance which was also to be broadcast.
It was not his stomach, and until this day Jimmy cannot say exactly what the nature of the sudden ailment was other than a general and profound fatigue, or nervous exhaustion.
But he felt rested enough to play in 1956 on the radio for the BBC a couple of weeks later.
‘On with the dance!’ was the never-ending cry from his vast public that it seemed he was powerless to deny.
There were the shows he was doing with Robert Wilson, Kathie Kay, Jimmy Neil, all over the country, which were broadcast a ‘Personal Appearance.’
Records continued to be made in record time (more than 200 by now) and resulted in record sales – Bluebell Polka had passed the 100,000 mark.
In April he broadcast on the Light Programme from the Accordion Day Festival in London with Toralf Tollefson ; there were regular half-hour broadcasts in the Scottish Dance Music series on the Home Service.
On Saturday, May 12th, 1956, he and his band were to be heard in one of these programmes at 6.55, and the same evening at 10.30 were to be reard and seen on a television show compered by actor-singer Ian Wallace, ‘The Kilt is my Delight.’
An evening paper remarked on having difficulty in believing that until then they had never appeared on television, and that it was indeed time that such a whale of an omission was remedied.
Would Jimmy wear a kilt? Another paper asked – and didn’t think so, knowing how he hated being conspicuous ; he surely would never agree to dress differently from the band.
The writer was both wrong and right. For it was look, everybody, there’s Jimmy in a kilt! And the rest of the band as well! All, kilted, sporraned, in tartan hose ; and all with frothy, lacey ruff fronts – but here Jimmy seems to have drawn the line and had not departed from sober collar and tie.
Jimmy Urquhart, the Fife tenor, who often appeared in television shows with them later on, told me what a harrowing experience for artistes the medium could be in those days.
Performances were live, which was a big enough strain. Throw in a few technical hitches, which were not uncommon, and it only needed some last-minute alteration in the programme after everything seemed to have been ironed out and you had all the makings of a state of rigid terror instead of conditions conducive to relaxed performance.
But if Jimmy’s attitude to show-business was that of the most reluctant amateur, his performance – and that of the band – was professional to an impressive degree.
“There were no idiot cards then” (visual prompting system) Urquhart recalled “so if a vocalist dried up, well, that was just that.”
The band never had needed any musical prompting of course, never having had a scrap of music in front of them during any performance anywhere, even at the most lavish Highland Ball where they would be called upon to play for scores of dances.
“Nor were there zoom lenses ; which meant that the entire camera crept in on you for a close-up ; at times I felt it was going to try and get right down my throat! It wasn’t easy trying to warble away unconcernedly as the baleful glassy eye got nearer and nearer…..”
But the Shand band took the new experience at their usual perfect tempo. It was even claimed by one or two fans that they had actually glimpsed the wee smile that one journalist had got Jimmy to promise.
“Take it a bit easier” the doctor had advised him…….
By 1956 he had become almost a national hero.
He played in the open air at Aberdeen and gathered a throng estimates at 15,000 which brought traffic to a standstill.
About the same time the Daily Record asked readers to vote for whom they thought to be Scotland’s Number 1 Scottish Dance Band Leader.
The result brought the headline ‘SHAND’S THE MAN ; You made him an easy first.’
Nearly half of the votes went to him. Bobby MacLeod, hotelier and later Provost of Tobermory, who came second, said –
“The result? Jimmy Shand deserves it because he has been so consistent. I’m pleased to have finished so close.”
Bobby, whose band had been formed only six years previously, polled a little over half Jimmy’s total ; third came Jim Cameron who got about a third of Bobby’s.
The next nine were all well behind, close together.
The ‘Record’s’ Top Ten
- Jimmy Shand
- Bobby MacLeod
- Jim Cameron
- Ian Powrie
- Alasdair Downie
- Jimmy Blair
- Wick Scottish Dance Band
- William Hannah
- George McAlpine
- Adam Rennie
Jimmy was quoted as saying he was very pleased with the honour, but would have been equally happy had he not won, because he liked and appreciated all Scottish dance bands ; “I ken maist o’ the leaders, an’ I like them a’, an’ their styles.”
To him and the band came the choicest plum in the teuchter players’ calendar, providing the music for the Gillies’ Ball at Balmoral. Later in the year he went down south to appear with Robert Wilson at the Albert Hall to be practically mobbed by an audience of 7,000 ; going on from there to play ay Windsor Castle – driving straight home immediately afterwards of course.
Throughout the year “Take it a bit easier” he reminded himself at intervals.
He had never been busier.
As they had done for more than ten years, the band brought in the New Year for the BBC.
Back at 16 Sutherland Street an even larger number of guests than previous Hogmanays managed to squeeze into the little living-room – friends and relatives, producers and radio and TV technicians, sopranos and fiddlers, baritones and bass players, box-players in great variety, folk from far overseas and folk from next door.
There was as much to eat and drink as anyone could desire – and enough in reserve to satisfy as many more.
The two ladies, Erskine and David, asleep upstairs, were fine. Anne was coping marvelously with the company. The toasts were “Here’s rae a prosperous New Year” and “Here’s tae Jimmy Shand.”
He was 48 and at the very peak of his fame. It would have been impossible for him to walk very far in any direction without hearing from behind some lighted window the eerie ghostliness of his own virtuosity. On this, the Scots night of all nights, he was host at home ; but in a myriad other homes by electronic proxy he was revered guest of honour.
How many happy New Years Anne and he had brought in at the little semi in Sutherland Street.
They were not to bring in any more there.