The Alexander Brothers - 40 Years in Showbiz
by Charlie Todd
B&F February 1998
1998 marks a milestone in the careers of two of Scotland’s most successful stage performers – Tom and Jack, the Alexander Brothers because it is now 40 years since the duos first appearance as professional entertainers.
I took the opportunity to speak to Tom when he visited Biggar Club, as guest artiste, and ask him where it all began. Tom was born in 1934 in the Cambusnethan area of Wishaw. Dad, Jimmy Alexander, was a steel worker with Clyde Alloy in Motherwell and mum, Helen, was a housewife who could sing and play the piano.
At the age of nine Tom started to learn the accordion with a succession of local teachers, half a dozen in all he reckons, and had reached such a level of proficiency that word spready locally and he was asked by perhaps the best known local accordion teacher, Bill Brown of the Brown School of Accordionists, to join him for tuition, which he did for 14 months. Indeed in 1952 Tom was entered for the Classical section of the NAO Championship at the Christian Institute in Glasgow. He was confident enough about playing the test pieces, ‘Bats at Sunset’ by Frosini and Eugene Ettore’s ‘Spanish Holiday’ but the trouble was his accordion, an old 140 bass Hohner, which he knew wouldn’t stand comparison with the rest of the competitors. The solution was to talk Bill Brown into lending him his Fratelli Crosio with which Tom took the title.
On leaving school both Tom and brother Jack had started as apprentice painter and decorators with ‘Torrance’ the painters in Motherwell. Meanwhile from the age of about fourteen into their early twenties the brothers gained valuable experience in front of live audiences by regularly attending ‘Go-As-You-Please’ talent contests which were held in those days in every Miners Welfare. Tom changed from the Hohner to a Galanti Super Dominator, a box which suited the programme for these competitions which was light classics, ‘The Poet and Peasant Overture’, ‘The Carnival of Venice’ etc – Scottish music came much later. Prize money initially was only £3, £2, or £1 at the time but gradually it improved and mounted up until the great day when the family could afford to buy their first car, a 1939 Flying Standard. This enabled dad, who did the driving initially, and the boys to travel further afield and attend larger contests.
It was when Jack completed his National Service in 1958 that the brothers decided to give up their trade and try entertaining professionally. Their first season was in the Webster Theatre in Arbroath. The stage dress was tuxedo and blue suede shoes and the programme was light classics. It didn’t work at all with the audience of holidaymakers who sat stony faced every night with the disinterest being broken occasionally by a cry of, ‘Geeze the High Level son’. Obviously something would have to be done. An old comedian on the same bill suggested they try ‘The Road and the Miles tae Dundee’. They did and it worked. Rapidly the programme changed to Scottish (Tom made enquiries about what the High Level actually was) and dress changed firstly to tartan jackets, then later to kilts. They had found the recipe for success and they had learned a lot by doing it the hard way. In future they would mould their act to what the audience wanted to hear. Ross Bowie was to become their manager in 1959 and would stay with them for the next 35 years guiding them through many future successes.
More shows and summer seasons followed, then in 1962 came a major break. Songwriter Tony Hatch heard them and took them down to London to record ‘Nobody’s Child’. They weren’t the first incidentally. Hank Snow had recorded it in the U.S.A., as had the Beatles over here but both without success. For the Alexander Brothers however, it would be different. Their interpretation captured the mood of the moment and it took off, outselling even the current Beatles hits of the time. To date Tom reckons some 1.5 million copies have sold and let’s face it, even today, no slow foxtrot selection is complete without it. Tony also produced their first album ‘Highland Fling’ in 1962 which retailed at about 21/- in those days. It would be joined by a new LP recording in each of the next twelve years.
From 1967 till 1972 they hosted their new show on STV and it was also in 1967 that they made their first trip to Canada and the Unites States with Andy Stewart and the White Heather club. They have been back every year since and now working themselves make a spring and a fall tour of two to four weeks duration taking in venues in Toronto, Hamilton, Montreal, Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary, Vancouver Island, Boston, New York and Baltimore. They also continue to make regular visits to Australia and New Zealand. One of Tom’s enduring memories is of the time Jimmy Shand returned to the Southern Hemisphere, scene of many of his own successful trips in earlier years, as their special guest in the early 1980’s. “It’s the only occasion I can recall of anyone getting a standing ovation as soon as they appeared on stage, before they performed”. Such was the magic associated with the name Jimmy Shand.
To celebrate their 40th professional year Tom and Jack are planning tours covering as many as possible of the venues in which they have appeared over the last 40 years. Details of dates and events are eagerly awaited by, amongst others, their official Fan Club. I hadn’t even been aware that one existed but it’s very much alive and in the capable hands of Springburn (Glasgow) born Flora Smyth.
Flora now runs the Club from her home in Drogheda in the Irish Republic. Membership is around the 400 mark and while the majority are Scots, England, Canada and the USA are well represented. Members are kept up to date by a regular newsletter while Flora journeys to hear the Brothers when they appear in Ireland or when she’s home on holiday in Scotland.
And what of the future? Well Tom says they have no immediate plans to retire from show business. Indeed since at the time of writing he was packing in preparation for a flight to South America with Jack and Peter Morrison to entertain for two weeks aboard a luxury cruise liner I ask myself ‘in his position would I?’ – and the answer as I look out at the January gales in an emphatic NO.
All that remains, therefore, is to thank Tom for his assistance in preparing this article and to wish both him and Jack continuing success in the future.
Box and Fiddle
February 1998
I took the opportunity to speak to Tom when he visited Biggar Club, as guest artiste, and ask him where it all began. Tom was born in 1934 in the Cambusnethan area of Wishaw. Dad, Jimmy Alexander, was a steel worker with Clyde Alloy in Motherwell and mum, Helen, was a housewife who could sing and play the piano.
At the age of nine Tom started to learn the accordion with a succession of local teachers, half a dozen in all he reckons, and had reached such a level of proficiency that word spready locally and he was asked by perhaps the best known local accordion teacher, Bill Brown of the Brown School of Accordionists, to join him for tuition, which he did for 14 months. Indeed in 1952 Tom was entered for the Classical section of the NAO Championship at the Christian Institute in Glasgow. He was confident enough about playing the test pieces, ‘Bats at Sunset’ by Frosini and Eugene Ettore’s ‘Spanish Holiday’ but the trouble was his accordion, an old 140 bass Hohner, which he knew wouldn’t stand comparison with the rest of the competitors. The solution was to talk Bill Brown into lending him his Fratelli Crosio with which Tom took the title.
On leaving school both Tom and brother Jack had started as apprentice painter and decorators with ‘Torrance’ the painters in Motherwell. Meanwhile from the age of about fourteen into their early twenties the brothers gained valuable experience in front of live audiences by regularly attending ‘Go-As-You-Please’ talent contests which were held in those days in every Miners Welfare. Tom changed from the Hohner to a Galanti Super Dominator, a box which suited the programme for these competitions which was light classics, ‘The Poet and Peasant Overture’, ‘The Carnival of Venice’ etc – Scottish music came much later. Prize money initially was only £3, £2, or £1 at the time but gradually it improved and mounted up until the great day when the family could afford to buy their first car, a 1939 Flying Standard. This enabled dad, who did the driving initially, and the boys to travel further afield and attend larger contests.
It was when Jack completed his National Service in 1958 that the brothers decided to give up their trade and try entertaining professionally. Their first season was in the Webster Theatre in Arbroath. The stage dress was tuxedo and blue suede shoes and the programme was light classics. It didn’t work at all with the audience of holidaymakers who sat stony faced every night with the disinterest being broken occasionally by a cry of, ‘Geeze the High Level son’. Obviously something would have to be done. An old comedian on the same bill suggested they try ‘The Road and the Miles tae Dundee’. They did and it worked. Rapidly the programme changed to Scottish (Tom made enquiries about what the High Level actually was) and dress changed firstly to tartan jackets, then later to kilts. They had found the recipe for success and they had learned a lot by doing it the hard way. In future they would mould their act to what the audience wanted to hear. Ross Bowie was to become their manager in 1959 and would stay with them for the next 35 years guiding them through many future successes.
More shows and summer seasons followed, then in 1962 came a major break. Songwriter Tony Hatch heard them and took them down to London to record ‘Nobody’s Child’. They weren’t the first incidentally. Hank Snow had recorded it in the U.S.A., as had the Beatles over here but both without success. For the Alexander Brothers however, it would be different. Their interpretation captured the mood of the moment and it took off, outselling even the current Beatles hits of the time. To date Tom reckons some 1.5 million copies have sold and let’s face it, even today, no slow foxtrot selection is complete without it. Tony also produced their first album ‘Highland Fling’ in 1962 which retailed at about 21/- in those days. It would be joined by a new LP recording in each of the next twelve years.
From 1967 till 1972 they hosted their new show on STV and it was also in 1967 that they made their first trip to Canada and the Unites States with Andy Stewart and the White Heather club. They have been back every year since and now working themselves make a spring and a fall tour of two to four weeks duration taking in venues in Toronto, Hamilton, Montreal, Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary, Vancouver Island, Boston, New York and Baltimore. They also continue to make regular visits to Australia and New Zealand. One of Tom’s enduring memories is of the time Jimmy Shand returned to the Southern Hemisphere, scene of many of his own successful trips in earlier years, as their special guest in the early 1980’s. “It’s the only occasion I can recall of anyone getting a standing ovation as soon as they appeared on stage, before they performed”. Such was the magic associated with the name Jimmy Shand.
To celebrate their 40th professional year Tom and Jack are planning tours covering as many as possible of the venues in which they have appeared over the last 40 years. Details of dates and events are eagerly awaited by, amongst others, their official Fan Club. I hadn’t even been aware that one existed but it’s very much alive and in the capable hands of Springburn (Glasgow) born Flora Smyth.
Flora now runs the Club from her home in Drogheda in the Irish Republic. Membership is around the 400 mark and while the majority are Scots, England, Canada and the USA are well represented. Members are kept up to date by a regular newsletter while Flora journeys to hear the Brothers when they appear in Ireland or when she’s home on holiday in Scotland.
And what of the future? Well Tom says they have no immediate plans to retire from show business. Indeed since at the time of writing he was packing in preparation for a flight to South America with Jack and Peter Morrison to entertain for two weeks aboard a luxury cruise liner I ask myself ‘in his position would I?’ – and the answer as I look out at the January gales in an emphatic NO.
All that remains, therefore, is to thank Tom for his assistance in preparing this article and to wish both him and Jack continuing success in the future.
Box and Fiddle
February 1998