Jimmy Edwards
Shand Morino No 1
By Charlie Todd
The beautiful border town of Moffat, nestling below the Lowther Hills, is home to elder statesmen of Scottish Dance music, a veteran in every sense of the word, namely 82 year old Jimmy Edwards, Jimmy’s abiding interests in life are evident in and around his home – forestry, his lifetime’s work is never far from his mind with his sawmill located just behind the house, and music is even closer at hand with two framed photographs reminding his of playing days gone by and a dark red button box sitting ready to be lifted and played at any time the notion takes him.
Jimmy was born in the village of Dalswinton, half way between Thornhill and Dumfries, on 26th April 1909. The eldest of four children, brothers William and David being born in 1911 and 1917 respectively, and sister Jean in 1926, his father was a timber feller working at the time for the Aberdeenshire firm of A & J Paterson. It was forestry that would take Jimmy and the rest of the family all over Scotland before he finally returned to settle a score of miles away at Moffat at the end of the Second World War.
Moving to where the forests needed clearing took the Edwards family firstly to Newmilns in Ayrshire in 1912, Inchinnan in Renfrewshire in 1915 and finally to Invergloy in Inverness-shire, five miles from Spean Bridge, in 1920. It was in the hutted encampment where his father and other fellers, sawmillers and horsemen lived during the week that young Jimmy first became aware of “Bothy” music. The dozen or so huts, each sleeping fur men, came alive at night after the men returned, fed and washed themselves, and settled down for an evening of self entertainment. Jimmy recalls that the camp was filled with Skyemen and Irishmen and that all of them were musical, so that evenings were filled with the sound of fiddles, melodeons, penny whistles and pipes.
Young Jimmy soon arrived at a mutually beneficial arrangement with one of the foresters. School finished at four o’clock, so on his way back home he called in at one of the huts to kindle the fire and put the kettle on to boil. His reward was then to be allowed to sit and practice on one of the occupiers 19 key “International” melodeon. Good business sense for an 11 year old because, as Jimmy put it with a smile, “Oh aye, the fire would never have been lit had it not been for the melodeon.” Back at home Dad, who was a piper incidentally, kept a 10 key melodeon. Too small to have much scope but better than nothing, so every Saturday when his parents went to Fort William on the motorbike and sidecar, Jimmy retrieved it from the top of the wardrobe and started to practice.
Jimmy left school in March 1923, a month before his fourteenth birthday. His first job was as a ‘peeler’ – to peel the bark from the pine trees which were then hand sawn into lengths to use as pit props. Next he was responsible for stoking the boiler of the steam engine which powered the circular saw.
By the age of 17, Jimmy was regularly attending dances in Spean Bridge and Roybridge. It was an eight mile walk to Roybridge with the dancing starting at 8 o’clock and finishing in the wee sma’ hours – exactly when depended on how well it was going. “Why walk?” I asked. “Well” Jimmy explained, “not all six of our group had pushbikes, and anyway your forgetting that there were no tarred roads in that area in those days.” On the way back from a dance Jimmy stopped in at the mill to stoke the boiler, then home for a wash, change into working clothes, breakfast and out to work. Sometimes I thought I “burned the candle at both ends” but not after speaking to Jimmy.
In 1926, the year of the General Strike, Jimmy bought his first melodeon - a second hand “Empress” 19 key model, made in Antwerp. It was on display in the window of a Fort William Shop run by a Mr McIntrye. By now Jimmy and his father were working for another timber merchant , James Kennedy and Co of 69 Buchanan St, Glasgow. It was with this firm that he moved to Torthorwold, near Dumfries in 1929, and it was here that Jimmy’s band career got under way. Prior to that he had learned a great deal from two excellent melodeon players at Acnacarry, brothers Jock and Davy Hutchison. Both had 19 key “Peter Wyper International” models, but Jock decided to invest £10 in one of the 21 key extended scale models. Jimmy bought Jock’s old box for £5, his “first decent box” and the one which accompanied him south.
Dad and the rest of the family followed him in due course to Dumfriesshire. Contracts were still scarce during these years of the “Great Depression” and by 1933 Kennedy was forced to pay them off. After a year of taking felling work wherever they could find it they were taken on by an English timber merchant, Thubron Son and Kirkhope. With things now settling down a bit, Jimmy former his first melodeon dance band, the first in Dumfriesshire he reckons, with brother Davy on drums and Charlie Ray from Dalmakether Farm on fiddle. Most of the work was 50/50 dancing at the time, but the group rapidly became popular and two bus loads followed them everywhere, so dance organisers had no trouble selling tickets. The trio themselves travelled in a car that Jimmy hired from a friend for £1 a night which left the band with 15/- each.
Wedding bells were ringing in January, 1939 when Jimmy married Mary Muir, a local lass from Lockerbie.
The declaration of war on Germany and the introduction of strict petrol rationing posed immediate problems for the band, but in the event things worked out fairly well.
The following year Jimmy was put in charge of three sawmills at Laurieston (near Castle Douglas), Orchardton and Shawhead and his two brothers joined him. Bill was also a melodeon player, therefore, with Davy still on drums, a new trio was born. There were plenty of engagements available since most musicians were, of course, away in the Forces for the duration. A taxi hirer from Laurieston solved the transport problem even allowing Jimmy to borrow the car when he himself wasn’t available to drive.
“Any amplification in those days?” I asked. “Aye” Jimmy replied, a combo I bought from “Chippy Jock” in Lockerbie, who had a chip van and used it to amplify the music like ice cream vans do nowadays. It worked fine, but as the night wore on and it heated up there was always a strong smell of ships from it.” At the end of the war, Jimmy and lots of his cronies celebrated by lighting a bonfire on the main street at Brydekirk, old rubber tyres, the lot, and succeeded in burning a big hole in the middle of the road. The less said about that the better!
That same year, Jimmy uprooted himself and Mary one last time and moved to Craigieburn Estate at Moffat to work. The following year he took the plunge and started his own business with his sawmill located just south of Moffat. It’s still in operation, although it is now run by his son-in-law, and Jimmy has cut down his involvement to working 3 or 4 hours on weekday afternoons! !It keeps me fit” he explained “and I eat like a horse and sleep like a log.” Long may that continue.
Jimmy’s playing career took a new twist one cold winter’s evening in November, 1948. Pianist Andy Stevenson, received a phone call from his friend Jimmy Shand, who explained that due to the atrocious weather conditions, the police would not allow the band bus beyond Auchterarder and he was booked to play at the Highland Ball in Lockerbie. Andy explained that they had never played for Country Dancing, but Jimmy exhorted, “Och, go and get Jimmy and you’ll manage fine.” At such short notice they could only musr a quartet, but manage they did, although Jimmy admits that he’s never played “The Laird o’ Drumblair” so many times before or since. One of the dancers, Tom Moffat, gave up his evening to join the band on stage and keep them right.
Like most musicians, if Jimmy has no job on himself he likes to go to local dances. By this time Jimmy Shand was playing regularly in the area and it was during the interval in a dance at Langholm in 1950 that Jimmy, who was playing a 3 row Frontilini by this time, asked him where he could get a really good accordion – something like the great man himself was playing. Jimmy Shand explained that Hohner’s manufacturing facilities had still not recovered from Allied bombing during the war, but that they had opened premises in London and he had ordered 4 accordions made to his own specifications. Since this was one of the first enquiries he had received, he would let Jimmy have one when they arrived.
The four new “Shand Morino’s” arrived in Dundee in due course. By coincidence, Jimmy Shand was booked to play in Moffat Town Hall the following Wednesday anyway, so it was while he was down with the band that he left word that he would bring the boxes down personally the following weekend.
And so it was that on Sunday, 8th October, 1950 that they met at Andy Stevenson’s house and Jimmy got his pick of the four. How did he decide? “Well” says Jimmy “I just took the nearest one.” It was years later before Jimmy learned that Hohner number all their accordions internally on the reed bars, and that by co-incidence he had picked No 1 – the first Shand Morino ever made. “The cost was £200” Jimmy recalls “but got a fiver back which I spent on records at 2/6 a time to learn new tunes.”
To emphasise the point that this was a box made in an era of hand craftsmanship, Jimmy strapped it on and gave me a few tunes. Even after a lifetime’s service, the tone and power still shine through. Over the years, it’s the Shands, father and son, who have maintained the box.
Meanwhile, the band went from strength to strength. From 1947 to 1958, many of the engagements were with a five piece. The line-up was Jimmy on lead accordion, Willie McRobert on fiddle, Davy Edwards on drums, Andy Stevenson on piano and Bert Stevenson (no relation) on second box. Bert incidentally, had bought his curved keyboard Organetta III from George McKelvey of the Sand band.
By 1958, Bert, who worked for the G.P.O. had taken a job in Tanzania and two other extremely talented accordionists had appeared on the local scene whom Jimmy felt were better qualified to play for Country Dancing than he was – Messrs Holmes and Houliston, of course.
His playing career was by no means over however, because for the next 15 or so years, he teamed up with a local 5 row accordionist, Willie Draeger with Willie’s son on drums. Willie, interestingly, had come to Moffat as a German P.O.W. during the war. After hostilities ceased, he married a local girl and settled down in the town. “At work or in music” Jimmy remembers “he was good at everything he tried.”
This partnership lasted until the early seventies when Jimmy decided to retire from paid engagements altogether. Thereafter, the odd charity function and increasingly Accordion and Fiddle Clubs provided outlets for his musical talents.
Jimmy’s hands bear testimony to a lifetime of hard physical work and progressively failing hearing has dogged him for the last few years, yet it is impossible to speak to him without realising the enthusiasm that he still retains for dance music.
He regularly attends Accordion Clubs all over the area, frequently travelling with friends Tom and Margaret Porteous from Moffat, and still enjoys learning a new tune or having a dance at the Annan Club.
He takes evident delight in seeing young players receiving young players receiving proper tuition and learning to read music. By coincidence, my visit to Moffat was the morning after a surprise birthday party arranged in the Town Hall to celebrate the 60th Birthday of local lady Mrs Margaret Moffat. Present as guests for the evening were none other than Jimmy, Anne and David Shand. “What a grand blether we had about the old days” says Jimmy. Memories indeed, but long may the health and playing continue.
Box and Fiddle
September 1991
Jimmy developed Alzheimer’s and spent his last years in a home. He died in November 2005 aged 96.
He sold his accordion some years previously to collector Ken Hopkins from Comber, Belfast.
Jimmy was born in the village of Dalswinton, half way between Thornhill and Dumfries, on 26th April 1909. The eldest of four children, brothers William and David being born in 1911 and 1917 respectively, and sister Jean in 1926, his father was a timber feller working at the time for the Aberdeenshire firm of A & J Paterson. It was forestry that would take Jimmy and the rest of the family all over Scotland before he finally returned to settle a score of miles away at Moffat at the end of the Second World War.
Moving to where the forests needed clearing took the Edwards family firstly to Newmilns in Ayrshire in 1912, Inchinnan in Renfrewshire in 1915 and finally to Invergloy in Inverness-shire, five miles from Spean Bridge, in 1920. It was in the hutted encampment where his father and other fellers, sawmillers and horsemen lived during the week that young Jimmy first became aware of “Bothy” music. The dozen or so huts, each sleeping fur men, came alive at night after the men returned, fed and washed themselves, and settled down for an evening of self entertainment. Jimmy recalls that the camp was filled with Skyemen and Irishmen and that all of them were musical, so that evenings were filled with the sound of fiddles, melodeons, penny whistles and pipes.
Young Jimmy soon arrived at a mutually beneficial arrangement with one of the foresters. School finished at four o’clock, so on his way back home he called in at one of the huts to kindle the fire and put the kettle on to boil. His reward was then to be allowed to sit and practice on one of the occupiers 19 key “International” melodeon. Good business sense for an 11 year old because, as Jimmy put it with a smile, “Oh aye, the fire would never have been lit had it not been for the melodeon.” Back at home Dad, who was a piper incidentally, kept a 10 key melodeon. Too small to have much scope but better than nothing, so every Saturday when his parents went to Fort William on the motorbike and sidecar, Jimmy retrieved it from the top of the wardrobe and started to practice.
Jimmy left school in March 1923, a month before his fourteenth birthday. His first job was as a ‘peeler’ – to peel the bark from the pine trees which were then hand sawn into lengths to use as pit props. Next he was responsible for stoking the boiler of the steam engine which powered the circular saw.
By the age of 17, Jimmy was regularly attending dances in Spean Bridge and Roybridge. It was an eight mile walk to Roybridge with the dancing starting at 8 o’clock and finishing in the wee sma’ hours – exactly when depended on how well it was going. “Why walk?” I asked. “Well” Jimmy explained, “not all six of our group had pushbikes, and anyway your forgetting that there were no tarred roads in that area in those days.” On the way back from a dance Jimmy stopped in at the mill to stoke the boiler, then home for a wash, change into working clothes, breakfast and out to work. Sometimes I thought I “burned the candle at both ends” but not after speaking to Jimmy.
In 1926, the year of the General Strike, Jimmy bought his first melodeon - a second hand “Empress” 19 key model, made in Antwerp. It was on display in the window of a Fort William Shop run by a Mr McIntrye. By now Jimmy and his father were working for another timber merchant , James Kennedy and Co of 69 Buchanan St, Glasgow. It was with this firm that he moved to Torthorwold, near Dumfries in 1929, and it was here that Jimmy’s band career got under way. Prior to that he had learned a great deal from two excellent melodeon players at Acnacarry, brothers Jock and Davy Hutchison. Both had 19 key “Peter Wyper International” models, but Jock decided to invest £10 in one of the 21 key extended scale models. Jimmy bought Jock’s old box for £5, his “first decent box” and the one which accompanied him south.
Dad and the rest of the family followed him in due course to Dumfriesshire. Contracts were still scarce during these years of the “Great Depression” and by 1933 Kennedy was forced to pay them off. After a year of taking felling work wherever they could find it they were taken on by an English timber merchant, Thubron Son and Kirkhope. With things now settling down a bit, Jimmy former his first melodeon dance band, the first in Dumfriesshire he reckons, with brother Davy on drums and Charlie Ray from Dalmakether Farm on fiddle. Most of the work was 50/50 dancing at the time, but the group rapidly became popular and two bus loads followed them everywhere, so dance organisers had no trouble selling tickets. The trio themselves travelled in a car that Jimmy hired from a friend for £1 a night which left the band with 15/- each.
Wedding bells were ringing in January, 1939 when Jimmy married Mary Muir, a local lass from Lockerbie.
The declaration of war on Germany and the introduction of strict petrol rationing posed immediate problems for the band, but in the event things worked out fairly well.
The following year Jimmy was put in charge of three sawmills at Laurieston (near Castle Douglas), Orchardton and Shawhead and his two brothers joined him. Bill was also a melodeon player, therefore, with Davy still on drums, a new trio was born. There were plenty of engagements available since most musicians were, of course, away in the Forces for the duration. A taxi hirer from Laurieston solved the transport problem even allowing Jimmy to borrow the car when he himself wasn’t available to drive.
“Any amplification in those days?” I asked. “Aye” Jimmy replied, a combo I bought from “Chippy Jock” in Lockerbie, who had a chip van and used it to amplify the music like ice cream vans do nowadays. It worked fine, but as the night wore on and it heated up there was always a strong smell of ships from it.” At the end of the war, Jimmy and lots of his cronies celebrated by lighting a bonfire on the main street at Brydekirk, old rubber tyres, the lot, and succeeded in burning a big hole in the middle of the road. The less said about that the better!
That same year, Jimmy uprooted himself and Mary one last time and moved to Craigieburn Estate at Moffat to work. The following year he took the plunge and started his own business with his sawmill located just south of Moffat. It’s still in operation, although it is now run by his son-in-law, and Jimmy has cut down his involvement to working 3 or 4 hours on weekday afternoons! !It keeps me fit” he explained “and I eat like a horse and sleep like a log.” Long may that continue.
Jimmy’s playing career took a new twist one cold winter’s evening in November, 1948. Pianist Andy Stevenson, received a phone call from his friend Jimmy Shand, who explained that due to the atrocious weather conditions, the police would not allow the band bus beyond Auchterarder and he was booked to play at the Highland Ball in Lockerbie. Andy explained that they had never played for Country Dancing, but Jimmy exhorted, “Och, go and get Jimmy and you’ll manage fine.” At such short notice they could only musr a quartet, but manage they did, although Jimmy admits that he’s never played “The Laird o’ Drumblair” so many times before or since. One of the dancers, Tom Moffat, gave up his evening to join the band on stage and keep them right.
Like most musicians, if Jimmy has no job on himself he likes to go to local dances. By this time Jimmy Shand was playing regularly in the area and it was during the interval in a dance at Langholm in 1950 that Jimmy, who was playing a 3 row Frontilini by this time, asked him where he could get a really good accordion – something like the great man himself was playing. Jimmy Shand explained that Hohner’s manufacturing facilities had still not recovered from Allied bombing during the war, but that they had opened premises in London and he had ordered 4 accordions made to his own specifications. Since this was one of the first enquiries he had received, he would let Jimmy have one when they arrived.
The four new “Shand Morino’s” arrived in Dundee in due course. By coincidence, Jimmy Shand was booked to play in Moffat Town Hall the following Wednesday anyway, so it was while he was down with the band that he left word that he would bring the boxes down personally the following weekend.
And so it was that on Sunday, 8th October, 1950 that they met at Andy Stevenson’s house and Jimmy got his pick of the four. How did he decide? “Well” says Jimmy “I just took the nearest one.” It was years later before Jimmy learned that Hohner number all their accordions internally on the reed bars, and that by co-incidence he had picked No 1 – the first Shand Morino ever made. “The cost was £200” Jimmy recalls “but got a fiver back which I spent on records at 2/6 a time to learn new tunes.”
To emphasise the point that this was a box made in an era of hand craftsmanship, Jimmy strapped it on and gave me a few tunes. Even after a lifetime’s service, the tone and power still shine through. Over the years, it’s the Shands, father and son, who have maintained the box.
Meanwhile, the band went from strength to strength. From 1947 to 1958, many of the engagements were with a five piece. The line-up was Jimmy on lead accordion, Willie McRobert on fiddle, Davy Edwards on drums, Andy Stevenson on piano and Bert Stevenson (no relation) on second box. Bert incidentally, had bought his curved keyboard Organetta III from George McKelvey of the Sand band.
By 1958, Bert, who worked for the G.P.O. had taken a job in Tanzania and two other extremely talented accordionists had appeared on the local scene whom Jimmy felt were better qualified to play for Country Dancing than he was – Messrs Holmes and Houliston, of course.
His playing career was by no means over however, because for the next 15 or so years, he teamed up with a local 5 row accordionist, Willie Draeger with Willie’s son on drums. Willie, interestingly, had come to Moffat as a German P.O.W. during the war. After hostilities ceased, he married a local girl and settled down in the town. “At work or in music” Jimmy remembers “he was good at everything he tried.”
This partnership lasted until the early seventies when Jimmy decided to retire from paid engagements altogether. Thereafter, the odd charity function and increasingly Accordion and Fiddle Clubs provided outlets for his musical talents.
Jimmy’s hands bear testimony to a lifetime of hard physical work and progressively failing hearing has dogged him for the last few years, yet it is impossible to speak to him without realising the enthusiasm that he still retains for dance music.
He regularly attends Accordion Clubs all over the area, frequently travelling with friends Tom and Margaret Porteous from Moffat, and still enjoys learning a new tune or having a dance at the Annan Club.
He takes evident delight in seeing young players receiving young players receiving proper tuition and learning to read music. By coincidence, my visit to Moffat was the morning after a surprise birthday party arranged in the Town Hall to celebrate the 60th Birthday of local lady Mrs Margaret Moffat. Present as guests for the evening were none other than Jimmy, Anne and David Shand. “What a grand blether we had about the old days” says Jimmy. Memories indeed, but long may the health and playing continue.
Box and Fiddle
September 1991
Jimmy developed Alzheimer’s and spent his last years in a home. He died in November 2005 aged 96.
He sold his accordion some years previously to collector Ken Hopkins from Comber, Belfast.