Chapter 02 (1927 – 1935) - (Pages 18 - 28) - ‘Bonnie Dundee’
The first job Jimmy got after the strike was navvying on a waterworks scheme near Pittenweem, shoveling puddle-clay to build a banking round the reservoir. Hard work, but glad to get it, for were there not ten – nay twenty at least – labourers for every unskilled job?
Difficult to believe that the hands and fingers which so delicately could, from air and reeds coax The Auld Hoose as wistfully as to glisten the eye of the toughest miner with sentimental admiration must spend the day so coarsely engaged with spade handle, pick shaft.
Short periods of hard work alternating with longer, usually much longer spells of unemployment. Three months work a year was good!
Brother Dod had fixed himself up with something better.
He had managed to get himself a little contract to make concrete blocks for Michael Colliery and Denbeath and Jim went into the mini-business with him. The work was no easier than navvying since they unloaded all their own chips and cement ; and since it was piece-work they took little time off to catch their breath.
Breathing in fact was liable to become difficult at times.
This was because they worked in a shed with no ventilation and in which, for the benefit of the cement, they kept a coal fire burning, not opening the door until forced by near-asphyxiation.
Jim believes his long history of stomach trouble began there.
He had escaped the bondage to coal underground perhaps, but it would put its mark on him in some other way…..
When work at the Michael petered out he went on his own to do the same thing at Stirling, then at High Valleyfield. Evenings he took such playing jobs as he could get at Miners’ Institute Dances, wedding sprees. The motor-bike with piece-tin or ‘box’ alternating on the pillion took him to work or playing engagements. When it was out of action there was the push-bike, sometimes pedaled up to sixteen miles there and sixteen miles back to work alone every day.
These weavings along the twisting, switch-backing Fife roads of that time called for restraint, foresight, and at times hair-trigger reactions. Rival bus companies sought to beat each other to the stops – in one district two bus companies and a tram company competed hair-raisingly. Only the sketchiest timetable was followed ; Pick Up The Passenger First was the only motto, which though enjoyably flattering to the user of public transport was apt to present problems to other users of the meandering , narrow roads. The wise motorist or cyclist approached every bend reminding himself that there night suddenly bear straight at him not just one bus but possibly two, rattling terrifyingly neck-and-neck in a giant swirl of dust like baleful genii.
We visited an old schoolmate of Jim in East Wemyss, Doug Warrender, whose wife Lizzie was a clippie then (a Buckhaven lass ; Bucjhine the natives call it) –
“Aye, we’d tae work for oor money, they days. Three buses I’d tae conduct then, dashing fae ane tae the ither when they drew up. The drivers werena keen at a’ on drawin’ up – get on, get on, wis their idea. It wis nothing for them tae leave the route a’ thegither tae flee doon a side road for a shoart cut tae beat the ither buses.
“An’ the last buses! I’ve had them sittin’ on the mudgairds!
“Wages? Thirty shillings a week – aye, an’ let ye miss twa fares an’ ye were liable tae get twa days suspension!”
While Lizzie was thus careering around the county of Fife in a uniform which more appropriately might have been that of the Keystone Cops, husband-to-be Doug was laying bricks with the same frantic haste, often as many as 240-250 an hour….Bonus? Pause while old-timers wipe tears of merriment from their eyes –
“Lucky tae be workin’ at a’, lauddie!”
In winter, when icy roads further complicated the hazards, Jim moved into digs, and he remembers landladies Mrs Hoff of Fallin, Stirlingshire ; Mrs Nicoll, High Valleyfield ; Mrs Lamont at Cairneyhill, who was a niece of Johnny McDill.
There was another landlady he remembers well, for her soup –
“Jist lumps o’ half-raw vegetables floatin’ in hot water. Every nicht the stuff wis set doon in a big plate, aye gie’n a different name but aye the same – tae me anyway – unpalatable slap.
“Plenty mair, noo” she would say ; “My, ye’re slow compared tae my man – he’d hae hae’n at least three plate fu’s by noo!”
“Up until then I never wis awfy keen on soup, yet, strangely enough, this wife’s cookin’ – or semi-cookin’ – instead o’ pittin me aff it a’ thegither for life gie’d me a taste for it. No’ for hers – but an appreciation o’ my mither’s makin’ when I went hame at the weekends”.
One thing he will always remember from the navvying days – a remark from old Peebles whose smiddy he used to visit of an evening after work on the building of a reservoir at Pittenweem ; “Mmm, aye, lauddie ; they haun’s are never meant for hard work!”
A remark all the more shrewd when it is remembered that Jim had been taking on all the hard labour he could get since he left school, including four far-from-sedentary years in a mine.
Sister Nancy had always stayed home to help the mother with the housekeeping, a house-proud lass who for years fought a losing battle to get four miner-brothers to take off their heavy boots at the very threshold. Not only keeping the house clean, but the ablutions of the men themselves, meant a great deal of drudging, filling the big black kettles and pots to be heated on the range – those black-leading was another not inconsiderable chore.
Mrs Mary Shand died in 1929.
That night twenty-one-year-old Jim went down to wander by the shore, a popular song of the time pathetically appropriate running through his mind, Lay My Head Beneath A Rose……..
Soon, other, earlier tunes came to displace it…………
He was a school-lad again, away out with the melodeon for a tune…..
“Dinna be gaun’ faur noo, Jim ; tea’s near ready.”
“Jist haein’ a seat on the stair, mither.”
The spiraling, stone inside-stair of the tenement was a favourite pitch, its echoing amplification a sounding box always calling forth the best of his playing ability. His mother’s voice drifted out to him from the kitchen, lifted in her favourite song ; and up between the curving walls of the stair crept the sure reedy notes of his accompaniment to The Auld Quarry Knowe.
Sometimes he would play to her and Mrs Adamson and other neighbours on a fine summer evening in The Den, while they sat on a fallen tree beside a little burn. His repertoire was not large then ; a few of the evergreen reels and strathspeys to draw a gay hooch from them and set their feet tapping in time with his own ; The Bonnie Lass o’ Bon Accord, that remarkable air and variations by fiddler Scott Skinner ; the more poignant Nameless Lassie, or Silver Threads – with the women softly taking up the chorus –
“Darling I am growing o-old,
Silver threads among the gold…”
She was only 52 when she died, a life devoted to bringing up and looking after a family of nine, and despite the hard times, always a cup of tea for any vagrant at the door.
Only once was she ever let down, he recalled, sitting on the dyke on this sad but bonny night of high full moon and brilliant reflection. This was when one of the wandering down-and-outs who were allowed to sleep over the boiler at the mine where his father Erskine then worked, had greeted him one morning with “Whar’s yer braw cords the day, Mr Shand?” referring to a new pair he had worn for the first time the day before.
“Oh, they got weet yesterday ; left them aff tae get richt dry.”
So the tramp went down to the house. “Mrs Shand, yer man sent me doon for his new corduroys, he’s decided tae wear then efter a’.”
In fact, of course, he was never to wear them again!
Despite this no-one was ever turned away from the door afterwards (and Jimmy has continued the tradition as many a wayfarer could testify).
After the mother’s death, sister Nancy continued to look after the house until she got married to John Brand, moulder in Balfour’s Foundry, and went to live in Leven. Pit-head worker Aunt Rachel took over then. A good friend to all the family, in later years she was to prove particularly good to Jimmy.
Employment came in short irregular bursts which had to be pursued all over the county. There was a spell with Robert Terras, a building contractor, where a hod became available. Hod-carrying meant more money. It required strength, which Jimmy had, and a knack which he strove to acquire. This was not easy. The ponderous loaded hod required a delicate finesse in balancing, and until this became instinctive, keeping the weight of what came to feel like the inverted roof of a small hut on the shoulder required a frustrating, not to say exhausting tug-of-war between muscles.
Until, after a while, the knack was there, the punishing wavering was over ; the hod could be borne almost lightly up and down ladders, evenly over the broken ground of the site to a cheerfully whistled march. And then he was paid off, and the skill was wasted.
But if a relationship with work was the most unpredictable, casual on-and-off affair, play was on a much steadier basis. Fine, of course, if you could get paid or earn your supper for playing, but that was a bonus occasionally added to the real reward – occasionally feeling that you had interpreted this hornpipe, that schottische not too badly.
In fact there was a rough-and-ready way of having your talent gauged readily available in those days. Go-As-You-Please contests were held in cinemas, theatres, halls, schools all over Fife. Prizes, which usually didn’t exceed ten shillings, went to the contestants who got the most applause. Jimmy admits to a fair amount of success at such affairs. His most vivid memory of such, however, is about an old busker who shuffled round towns and villages dragging the most agonizing yelps from a bettered concertina, and who once appeared on the same ‘bill’ at Green’s Playhouse, Leven.
The concertina’s wavering screeches brought a great and sustained volume of ribald cheers, hand-clapping, foot-stamping from the audience, inciting the player to even more disastrous flourishes, thus seeing himself ahead of the field. On the basis of audience reaction in theory he should have been an easy winner…..He took some dragging off.
Buskers were to be heard everywhere. Vocalists attempted with varying success everything from The Old Rugged Cross, When You Played The Organ And I Sang The Rosary, to The Night I took Big Aggie To The Ball ; instrumentalists, old before their time through years of war and want puffed out hollow jaws in desperately cheerful airs on tin whistles ; ancient fiddles were scraped, mouth organs sucked and blown until they yielded only discords ; from plectrumed banjo and mandolin wavered versions ofMarching Through Georgia, ‘Way Down Upon the Swanee River and Camptown Races, of which sometimes only the final Doo-da doo-da day, Plonk! Was delivered with any certainty.
As for melodeons, their variety was infinite, their numbers legion. Decrepit survivors from grandfather’s bothy days, simple as county life itself, through many combinations of keys and bass to the occasional scintillating piano-key Italian import taken on credit in palmier days and trying to keep itself out of pawn with florid vamping renderings of such as Valencia and Lady of Spain.
Jimmy’s own street busking had been confined to raising money for soup kitchens during the Strike in Fife and a brief appearance in Dundee ; enough for him to have some understanding of life from the busker’s stance. Sympathy is evident in his telling of a comic incident featuring a wandering piper –
“This piper was what ye would cry an economical busker – aimed tae play only where he wis pretty sure o’ getting’ somethin’. Well, I was up in the hoose o’ a pal in New Gilston, Sandy Laing, haein’ a cup o’ tea wi’ them when the piper obliged wi’ a tune outside and was invited in. Then he spots Mrs Laing’s merried dochter on a visir fae her hoose at the foot o’ the road – a lass as guid-herted as her mither.
“Oh, so this is whar ye are!” cried the piper in what could’ve been mock indignation, “An me blawing’ ma guts oot doonby at yer door!”
“He was surprised when I said ‘sit doon, Arthur, an’ gie’s yer crack;’ I’d kent him as a pony driver doon the mine.”
One of the collieries where he helped brother Dod in the concrete-block making enterprise was Denbeath, where they had brought in another ex-miner lad to help, Geordie Denham.
One lunch-time – “Mither, they twa lauds have tae sit there wi’ jist a dry piece”
“Bring them hame efter this, then ; anither plate o’ soup’s neither here nor there.”
Later, when the Denhams moved to Dundee, he visited them at weekends.
Geordie Denham was now working at the Café Royale in Edinburgh (a job he had made sure of getting by wearing a borrowed sophisticated hat at the interview to appear older, more experienced!) and Jimmy used to go for walks round the town with uncle Jim Denham.
Always they would stop for a long look in the windows of J.T. Forbes music shop in King Street with their glittering display of accordions.
One afternoon, after repeated urging that it would cost him nothing to try one, the reluctant virtuoso allowed himself to be ushered onto the premises and be introduced to Charles S. Forbes.
A couple of tunes later he was offered a job.
Not that he was sure he wanted it. Shop assistant? Sales rep? Jimmy Shand – a pick and shovel man all his working days until then? True, he would be spending his days among accordions of all shapes, sizes and prices, but what really interested him most was learning that he would also be expected to drive Forbes wee yellow van!
Already, Charles was convinced he was good enough to interest a recording company, and he had contacts in London.
Obviously, Jimmy’s virtuosity would have received proper recognition, the acclaim that was its due, before long. He does not entirely go along with the idea, though, seeing his meeting with Charles S. Forbes not so much as an opportunity to demonstrate his ability as illustrating the worldly-wise maxin – “It’s no’ whit ye ken, it’s wha ye ken!”
Actually, Jimmy did not have that much faith at the time that Forbes could do very much for him, respected though his opinion was in the music world. Had he not had only a few months before what had seemed the Big Chance? Nothing less than being granted an audition with the BBC – who turned him down for the unbelievable reason that he keeps time with his foot!
He had gone to that audition thinking how proud his father would have been to know of it. Erskine Shand senior had died earlier in the year, four years after his mother – had died on a Sunday, traditional day of rest, after long hours re-living a lifetime of hard work…..
While the family had watched at the bedside he once more took charge at the pit-head, conversed on the merits of farms horses and grieves, the nature of the work in various seasons, the entertaining nights in the bothies with melodeons and fiddle, recalling in equal details his first job as a farm-lad and his last as a roadman.
As a roadman he had looked well after a four-mile stretch near East Wemyss ; now, once again it seemed to him that damned big hollow approaching Rosie village was flooded, and he must, as so often in the past, wade waist-deep in the muddy ditch to clear the drains.
Worst of all though, was a work calamity to which his mind kept returning. Not many months before a tar boiler had been parked outside the Old Store Buildings for road repairs to start next day. Erskine the roadman was to see that the tar was melted in readiness. Conscientiously intent on making sure this would be so, he stoked the boiler last thing. A strong wind sprang up and the tar caught fire through the night, bringing the fire brigade. Next day, at work, he collapsed to be pronounced dead by a policeman and several others ; nor does it seem he would have survived had not Lou Adamson’s wife kept massaging his heart until it restarted. He was to die after all in bed in the house where he had brought up his family of nine.
Probably nothing would come of the possibility of making a record ; best not to build too much on it. Meantime he was in employment again, back with the Fife Power Co. laying a cable at Abercrombie Farm.
It was autumn 1933, and in the villages round about Dundee, were held diddling competitions (a form of ‘mouth music’), fiddling, and melodeon playing contests.
Charles Forbes persuaded Jimmy to have a go at one to be held in Alyth, about seventeen miles north of the town ; “I’ll run you out and back, of course. Come up to the house for your tea, first – the wife would like to hear you playing.”
As in Fife, there was plenty of local talent in the county of Angus, and such contests were well attended. One player who meant to compete at Alyth was lorry driver Wull Kydd, a consistent prize-winner, and he also would go in Forbes’ car. Confident? Well hadn’t he played his intended competition selection in the shop with “Well, if this Shand ye think sae much o’ can beat that, Mr Forbes…..!”
Jimmy duly had tea in Forbes’ house in Shamrock Street, then he strapped on the box to give Mrs Forbes a tune.
Outside, Wull Kydd was approaching the house with sure step – which suddenly faltered. He stopped, and listened ; listened with the ear of an expert, listened until the last faultless chord sounded. For a moment he hesitated, then went up to the door.
A few minutes later he was saying that he had actually considered turning back, for there was no point in playing against one of Jimmy calibre.
As it turned out, first place went to well-known Dundee footballer-accordionist Davie Raitt, Jimmy coming second with the march, strathspey and reel Inverness Gathering, Braes o’ Tullimet, John Cheap the Chapman. Will Powrie (father of Ian Powrie who was later to make records and broadcast with his own Scottish Country Dance Band) was third.
First prize was £3 and a chance to make a record with the Great Scot Company (of Drummond of Megginch). Jimmy’s prize was a chromium-plated cake-stand, and in view of the brilliance of his performance, the chance to record was also extended to him – which he declined!
You see, he had other arrangement in hand – with Regal-Zonophone of London, no less! He had had a letter from Forbes with the news not long before.
The celebrated recording company had accepted Charles Forbes’ word that Jimmy was worth taking a chance on, then?
Well, not completely quite. They had also received a guarantee that if the record was a failure Forbes would foot the bill.
His money was safe, for though the records (three were actually made, but for technical reasons only two were issued) did not top the charts, they did modestly well. Tunes : Drunken Piper, Laird o’ Drumblair, Deil Amang the Tailors, Punchbowl, Fair Maid of Perth, Atholl Gathering, Rakes o’ Kildare, Teviot Bridge, Londonderry and the High Level Hornpipes – the only recording of this last he ever made, incidentally.
This might be a good time to bring in one of his earliest fans, oldest friends and fellow-player ; Sandy Tulloch, an eye specialist of considerable eminence in his profession – and of considerable eminence as an exponent of the box in the eyes (and ears) of Jimmy Shand. Dr Sandy Tulloch –
I suppose I was about nine or ten when I first took a serious interest in Scottish Country Dance Music. The Scout and Guide Movement was vigorous in Montrose in the 1920s and we had regular Country Dances in the Black Watch Drill Hall and Mill Street. Strangely enough, my earliest recollection of a catchy tune was the Morpeth Rant – not really a Scottish tune at all but good to dance to and full of rhythm. At the time I played the ‘moothie’ and was beginning to understand the working of the mandolin. I was able to play some of the commoner traditional tunes and at one of the concerts in St. John’s Church Hall, I was asked to accompany a Rover Scout, Jim McHardie from Usan, who played an International Melodeon. I remember it well. Absolutely rectangular with sharp corners bound in nickel-plated brass work. The palettes were on the outside for all to see. Two stops – I suppose the precursors of treble couplers – were sticking out like organ stops on top and there was four incredible bass clappers which never seemed to harmonise with the treble but acted in a way like bagpipe drones. Also a ‘breather’ which took in great gasps of air or exhaled equally noisily when a difficult passage had to be played. Jim McHardie’s box was a two row and with this arrangement it was possible to play in C or B, or perhaps D, G and A. But the flats were difficult if not impossible. I was greatly taken with this instrument and decided there and then that this was to be it. The mandolin was not exactly forgotten but, from then on, took second place.
My Scout Master, Mr Potter, was good enough to give me a very simple instrument – only a single row treble and two bass notes, but I practiced away until I had managed to master the bellows work to a certain extent. Having played the mouth organ, the principal came fairly naturally to me. Each button is responsible for two notes, a half tone in between, one with a press action of the bellows, one on the draw. The scale of C for instance would be press, draw, press, draw, press draw, draw, press. The bass accompaniment, such as it was, had to synchronise with the bellows action. The simple chords appeared to please everybody at the time but are sheer torture to listen to nowadays. I practiced away at Country Dance tunes and gradually increased my repertoire as far as this very simple instrument would allow.
I collected records of the great Peter Wyper and played them over and over on an ancient gramophone with a huge sounding horn – just like the one with the faithful dog on the old HMV records. I think it was about 1932 or 1933 that I was down at the Fair Ground in Montrose and I heard a melodeon recording on a gramophone at one of the stalls. I had thought Peter Wyper brilliant but this record surpassed anything I had ever heard before. I hung around and asked questions. The record was a Regal-Zonophone and the player was one James Shand. For me this was it – I became a Jimmy Shand fan there and then, and forty years on, have never wavered.
I practiced on my single row box until frustration set in. I just didn’t have the range of notes required. At that time, J.T. Forbes of Dundee advertised an instrument called the Double Ray British Chromatic Accordion. There were two models – The Standard, away beyond my pocket money range, and the De Luxe, far beyond my wildest dreams at £8 10/-! A glimmer of hope arose when an aunt of mine announced that she had a piano she did not want and that if I could do a deal with Forbes, I could have it for the asking. I saved up the 3/4d required for a return ticket to Dundee, found my way up from the Tay Bridge Station to the shop and the deal was completed. They would collect the piano from Montrose and I would go away the proud owner of a Double Ray De Luxe complete with case, and a tutor by Charles S. Forbes and James Shand.
Jimmy’s picture, even in those days, showed a balding top, and in all the days I have known him, he hasn’t changed a bit. Mr Forbes assured me that the reeds in this accordion would ring out loud and clear above the sound of a full orchestra. He would get his demonstrator to give me a tune and sure enough the object of my hero-worship appeared, and with no obvious bellows movement, and fingers that seemed to flow without hand movement, I had my first experience of hearing Jimmy Shand ‘live.’ I suppose this was around 1934-35. I often wonder if Jimmy spotted an enthusiast at the time, but although it was a year or two later before I got to know him well, I think the beginnings of a lifetime friendship started there and then.
Laying cable for the Fife Power Co. was to be his last navvying job. By Christmas that year he had agreed to work for Forbes (the chance to drive the bright yellow Austin 10 van, YJ1136 clinched it!) and had come to lodge with Geordie Denham’s mother at 185 Princes Street in Dundee.
Life would now undoubtedly be more comfortable than when he had had to lope, half-naked, like a half-shut knife, over the widely-spaced sleepers of the hutches tracks in hellishly cramped tunnels ; or grapple in glaur with pick, shovel, barrow, or obstinate rock.
Difficult to believe that the hands and fingers which so delicately could, from air and reeds coax The Auld Hoose as wistfully as to glisten the eye of the toughest miner with sentimental admiration must spend the day so coarsely engaged with spade handle, pick shaft.
Short periods of hard work alternating with longer, usually much longer spells of unemployment. Three months work a year was good!
Brother Dod had fixed himself up with something better.
He had managed to get himself a little contract to make concrete blocks for Michael Colliery and Denbeath and Jim went into the mini-business with him. The work was no easier than navvying since they unloaded all their own chips and cement ; and since it was piece-work they took little time off to catch their breath.
Breathing in fact was liable to become difficult at times.
This was because they worked in a shed with no ventilation and in which, for the benefit of the cement, they kept a coal fire burning, not opening the door until forced by near-asphyxiation.
Jim believes his long history of stomach trouble began there.
He had escaped the bondage to coal underground perhaps, but it would put its mark on him in some other way…..
When work at the Michael petered out he went on his own to do the same thing at Stirling, then at High Valleyfield. Evenings he took such playing jobs as he could get at Miners’ Institute Dances, wedding sprees. The motor-bike with piece-tin or ‘box’ alternating on the pillion took him to work or playing engagements. When it was out of action there was the push-bike, sometimes pedaled up to sixteen miles there and sixteen miles back to work alone every day.
These weavings along the twisting, switch-backing Fife roads of that time called for restraint, foresight, and at times hair-trigger reactions. Rival bus companies sought to beat each other to the stops – in one district two bus companies and a tram company competed hair-raisingly. Only the sketchiest timetable was followed ; Pick Up The Passenger First was the only motto, which though enjoyably flattering to the user of public transport was apt to present problems to other users of the meandering , narrow roads. The wise motorist or cyclist approached every bend reminding himself that there night suddenly bear straight at him not just one bus but possibly two, rattling terrifyingly neck-and-neck in a giant swirl of dust like baleful genii.
We visited an old schoolmate of Jim in East Wemyss, Doug Warrender, whose wife Lizzie was a clippie then (a Buckhaven lass ; Bucjhine the natives call it) –
“Aye, we’d tae work for oor money, they days. Three buses I’d tae conduct then, dashing fae ane tae the ither when they drew up. The drivers werena keen at a’ on drawin’ up – get on, get on, wis their idea. It wis nothing for them tae leave the route a’ thegither tae flee doon a side road for a shoart cut tae beat the ither buses.
“An’ the last buses! I’ve had them sittin’ on the mudgairds!
“Wages? Thirty shillings a week – aye, an’ let ye miss twa fares an’ ye were liable tae get twa days suspension!”
While Lizzie was thus careering around the county of Fife in a uniform which more appropriately might have been that of the Keystone Cops, husband-to-be Doug was laying bricks with the same frantic haste, often as many as 240-250 an hour….Bonus? Pause while old-timers wipe tears of merriment from their eyes –
“Lucky tae be workin’ at a’, lauddie!”
In winter, when icy roads further complicated the hazards, Jim moved into digs, and he remembers landladies Mrs Hoff of Fallin, Stirlingshire ; Mrs Nicoll, High Valleyfield ; Mrs Lamont at Cairneyhill, who was a niece of Johnny McDill.
There was another landlady he remembers well, for her soup –
“Jist lumps o’ half-raw vegetables floatin’ in hot water. Every nicht the stuff wis set doon in a big plate, aye gie’n a different name but aye the same – tae me anyway – unpalatable slap.
“Plenty mair, noo” she would say ; “My, ye’re slow compared tae my man – he’d hae hae’n at least three plate fu’s by noo!”
“Up until then I never wis awfy keen on soup, yet, strangely enough, this wife’s cookin’ – or semi-cookin’ – instead o’ pittin me aff it a’ thegither for life gie’d me a taste for it. No’ for hers – but an appreciation o’ my mither’s makin’ when I went hame at the weekends”.
One thing he will always remember from the navvying days – a remark from old Peebles whose smiddy he used to visit of an evening after work on the building of a reservoir at Pittenweem ; “Mmm, aye, lauddie ; they haun’s are never meant for hard work!”
A remark all the more shrewd when it is remembered that Jim had been taking on all the hard labour he could get since he left school, including four far-from-sedentary years in a mine.
Sister Nancy had always stayed home to help the mother with the housekeeping, a house-proud lass who for years fought a losing battle to get four miner-brothers to take off their heavy boots at the very threshold. Not only keeping the house clean, but the ablutions of the men themselves, meant a great deal of drudging, filling the big black kettles and pots to be heated on the range – those black-leading was another not inconsiderable chore.
Mrs Mary Shand died in 1929.
That night twenty-one-year-old Jim went down to wander by the shore, a popular song of the time pathetically appropriate running through his mind, Lay My Head Beneath A Rose……..
Soon, other, earlier tunes came to displace it…………
He was a school-lad again, away out with the melodeon for a tune…..
“Dinna be gaun’ faur noo, Jim ; tea’s near ready.”
“Jist haein’ a seat on the stair, mither.”
The spiraling, stone inside-stair of the tenement was a favourite pitch, its echoing amplification a sounding box always calling forth the best of his playing ability. His mother’s voice drifted out to him from the kitchen, lifted in her favourite song ; and up between the curving walls of the stair crept the sure reedy notes of his accompaniment to The Auld Quarry Knowe.
Sometimes he would play to her and Mrs Adamson and other neighbours on a fine summer evening in The Den, while they sat on a fallen tree beside a little burn. His repertoire was not large then ; a few of the evergreen reels and strathspeys to draw a gay hooch from them and set their feet tapping in time with his own ; The Bonnie Lass o’ Bon Accord, that remarkable air and variations by fiddler Scott Skinner ; the more poignant Nameless Lassie, or Silver Threads – with the women softly taking up the chorus –
“Darling I am growing o-old,
Silver threads among the gold…”
She was only 52 when she died, a life devoted to bringing up and looking after a family of nine, and despite the hard times, always a cup of tea for any vagrant at the door.
Only once was she ever let down, he recalled, sitting on the dyke on this sad but bonny night of high full moon and brilliant reflection. This was when one of the wandering down-and-outs who were allowed to sleep over the boiler at the mine where his father Erskine then worked, had greeted him one morning with “Whar’s yer braw cords the day, Mr Shand?” referring to a new pair he had worn for the first time the day before.
“Oh, they got weet yesterday ; left them aff tae get richt dry.”
So the tramp went down to the house. “Mrs Shand, yer man sent me doon for his new corduroys, he’s decided tae wear then efter a’.”
In fact, of course, he was never to wear them again!
Despite this no-one was ever turned away from the door afterwards (and Jimmy has continued the tradition as many a wayfarer could testify).
After the mother’s death, sister Nancy continued to look after the house until she got married to John Brand, moulder in Balfour’s Foundry, and went to live in Leven. Pit-head worker Aunt Rachel took over then. A good friend to all the family, in later years she was to prove particularly good to Jimmy.
Employment came in short irregular bursts which had to be pursued all over the county. There was a spell with Robert Terras, a building contractor, where a hod became available. Hod-carrying meant more money. It required strength, which Jimmy had, and a knack which he strove to acquire. This was not easy. The ponderous loaded hod required a delicate finesse in balancing, and until this became instinctive, keeping the weight of what came to feel like the inverted roof of a small hut on the shoulder required a frustrating, not to say exhausting tug-of-war between muscles.
Until, after a while, the knack was there, the punishing wavering was over ; the hod could be borne almost lightly up and down ladders, evenly over the broken ground of the site to a cheerfully whistled march. And then he was paid off, and the skill was wasted.
But if a relationship with work was the most unpredictable, casual on-and-off affair, play was on a much steadier basis. Fine, of course, if you could get paid or earn your supper for playing, but that was a bonus occasionally added to the real reward – occasionally feeling that you had interpreted this hornpipe, that schottische not too badly.
In fact there was a rough-and-ready way of having your talent gauged readily available in those days. Go-As-You-Please contests were held in cinemas, theatres, halls, schools all over Fife. Prizes, which usually didn’t exceed ten shillings, went to the contestants who got the most applause. Jimmy admits to a fair amount of success at such affairs. His most vivid memory of such, however, is about an old busker who shuffled round towns and villages dragging the most agonizing yelps from a bettered concertina, and who once appeared on the same ‘bill’ at Green’s Playhouse, Leven.
The concertina’s wavering screeches brought a great and sustained volume of ribald cheers, hand-clapping, foot-stamping from the audience, inciting the player to even more disastrous flourishes, thus seeing himself ahead of the field. On the basis of audience reaction in theory he should have been an easy winner…..He took some dragging off.
Buskers were to be heard everywhere. Vocalists attempted with varying success everything from The Old Rugged Cross, When You Played The Organ And I Sang The Rosary, to The Night I took Big Aggie To The Ball ; instrumentalists, old before their time through years of war and want puffed out hollow jaws in desperately cheerful airs on tin whistles ; ancient fiddles were scraped, mouth organs sucked and blown until they yielded only discords ; from plectrumed banjo and mandolin wavered versions ofMarching Through Georgia, ‘Way Down Upon the Swanee River and Camptown Races, of which sometimes only the final Doo-da doo-da day, Plonk! Was delivered with any certainty.
As for melodeons, their variety was infinite, their numbers legion. Decrepit survivors from grandfather’s bothy days, simple as county life itself, through many combinations of keys and bass to the occasional scintillating piano-key Italian import taken on credit in palmier days and trying to keep itself out of pawn with florid vamping renderings of such as Valencia and Lady of Spain.
Jimmy’s own street busking had been confined to raising money for soup kitchens during the Strike in Fife and a brief appearance in Dundee ; enough for him to have some understanding of life from the busker’s stance. Sympathy is evident in his telling of a comic incident featuring a wandering piper –
“This piper was what ye would cry an economical busker – aimed tae play only where he wis pretty sure o’ getting’ somethin’. Well, I was up in the hoose o’ a pal in New Gilston, Sandy Laing, haein’ a cup o’ tea wi’ them when the piper obliged wi’ a tune outside and was invited in. Then he spots Mrs Laing’s merried dochter on a visir fae her hoose at the foot o’ the road – a lass as guid-herted as her mither.
“Oh, so this is whar ye are!” cried the piper in what could’ve been mock indignation, “An me blawing’ ma guts oot doonby at yer door!”
“He was surprised when I said ‘sit doon, Arthur, an’ gie’s yer crack;’ I’d kent him as a pony driver doon the mine.”
One of the collieries where he helped brother Dod in the concrete-block making enterprise was Denbeath, where they had brought in another ex-miner lad to help, Geordie Denham.
One lunch-time – “Mither, they twa lauds have tae sit there wi’ jist a dry piece”
“Bring them hame efter this, then ; anither plate o’ soup’s neither here nor there.”
Later, when the Denhams moved to Dundee, he visited them at weekends.
Geordie Denham was now working at the Café Royale in Edinburgh (a job he had made sure of getting by wearing a borrowed sophisticated hat at the interview to appear older, more experienced!) and Jimmy used to go for walks round the town with uncle Jim Denham.
Always they would stop for a long look in the windows of J.T. Forbes music shop in King Street with their glittering display of accordions.
One afternoon, after repeated urging that it would cost him nothing to try one, the reluctant virtuoso allowed himself to be ushered onto the premises and be introduced to Charles S. Forbes.
A couple of tunes later he was offered a job.
Not that he was sure he wanted it. Shop assistant? Sales rep? Jimmy Shand – a pick and shovel man all his working days until then? True, he would be spending his days among accordions of all shapes, sizes and prices, but what really interested him most was learning that he would also be expected to drive Forbes wee yellow van!
Already, Charles was convinced he was good enough to interest a recording company, and he had contacts in London.
Obviously, Jimmy’s virtuosity would have received proper recognition, the acclaim that was its due, before long. He does not entirely go along with the idea, though, seeing his meeting with Charles S. Forbes not so much as an opportunity to demonstrate his ability as illustrating the worldly-wise maxin – “It’s no’ whit ye ken, it’s wha ye ken!”
Actually, Jimmy did not have that much faith at the time that Forbes could do very much for him, respected though his opinion was in the music world. Had he not had only a few months before what had seemed the Big Chance? Nothing less than being granted an audition with the BBC – who turned him down for the unbelievable reason that he keeps time with his foot!
He had gone to that audition thinking how proud his father would have been to know of it. Erskine Shand senior had died earlier in the year, four years after his mother – had died on a Sunday, traditional day of rest, after long hours re-living a lifetime of hard work…..
While the family had watched at the bedside he once more took charge at the pit-head, conversed on the merits of farms horses and grieves, the nature of the work in various seasons, the entertaining nights in the bothies with melodeons and fiddle, recalling in equal details his first job as a farm-lad and his last as a roadman.
As a roadman he had looked well after a four-mile stretch near East Wemyss ; now, once again it seemed to him that damned big hollow approaching Rosie village was flooded, and he must, as so often in the past, wade waist-deep in the muddy ditch to clear the drains.
Worst of all though, was a work calamity to which his mind kept returning. Not many months before a tar boiler had been parked outside the Old Store Buildings for road repairs to start next day. Erskine the roadman was to see that the tar was melted in readiness. Conscientiously intent on making sure this would be so, he stoked the boiler last thing. A strong wind sprang up and the tar caught fire through the night, bringing the fire brigade. Next day, at work, he collapsed to be pronounced dead by a policeman and several others ; nor does it seem he would have survived had not Lou Adamson’s wife kept massaging his heart until it restarted. He was to die after all in bed in the house where he had brought up his family of nine.
Probably nothing would come of the possibility of making a record ; best not to build too much on it. Meantime he was in employment again, back with the Fife Power Co. laying a cable at Abercrombie Farm.
It was autumn 1933, and in the villages round about Dundee, were held diddling competitions (a form of ‘mouth music’), fiddling, and melodeon playing contests.
Charles Forbes persuaded Jimmy to have a go at one to be held in Alyth, about seventeen miles north of the town ; “I’ll run you out and back, of course. Come up to the house for your tea, first – the wife would like to hear you playing.”
As in Fife, there was plenty of local talent in the county of Angus, and such contests were well attended. One player who meant to compete at Alyth was lorry driver Wull Kydd, a consistent prize-winner, and he also would go in Forbes’ car. Confident? Well hadn’t he played his intended competition selection in the shop with “Well, if this Shand ye think sae much o’ can beat that, Mr Forbes…..!”
Jimmy duly had tea in Forbes’ house in Shamrock Street, then he strapped on the box to give Mrs Forbes a tune.
Outside, Wull Kydd was approaching the house with sure step – which suddenly faltered. He stopped, and listened ; listened with the ear of an expert, listened until the last faultless chord sounded. For a moment he hesitated, then went up to the door.
A few minutes later he was saying that he had actually considered turning back, for there was no point in playing against one of Jimmy calibre.
As it turned out, first place went to well-known Dundee footballer-accordionist Davie Raitt, Jimmy coming second with the march, strathspey and reel Inverness Gathering, Braes o’ Tullimet, John Cheap the Chapman. Will Powrie (father of Ian Powrie who was later to make records and broadcast with his own Scottish Country Dance Band) was third.
First prize was £3 and a chance to make a record with the Great Scot Company (of Drummond of Megginch). Jimmy’s prize was a chromium-plated cake-stand, and in view of the brilliance of his performance, the chance to record was also extended to him – which he declined!
You see, he had other arrangement in hand – with Regal-Zonophone of London, no less! He had had a letter from Forbes with the news not long before.
The celebrated recording company had accepted Charles Forbes’ word that Jimmy was worth taking a chance on, then?
Well, not completely quite. They had also received a guarantee that if the record was a failure Forbes would foot the bill.
His money was safe, for though the records (three were actually made, but for technical reasons only two were issued) did not top the charts, they did modestly well. Tunes : Drunken Piper, Laird o’ Drumblair, Deil Amang the Tailors, Punchbowl, Fair Maid of Perth, Atholl Gathering, Rakes o’ Kildare, Teviot Bridge, Londonderry and the High Level Hornpipes – the only recording of this last he ever made, incidentally.
This might be a good time to bring in one of his earliest fans, oldest friends and fellow-player ; Sandy Tulloch, an eye specialist of considerable eminence in his profession – and of considerable eminence as an exponent of the box in the eyes (and ears) of Jimmy Shand. Dr Sandy Tulloch –
I suppose I was about nine or ten when I first took a serious interest in Scottish Country Dance Music. The Scout and Guide Movement was vigorous in Montrose in the 1920s and we had regular Country Dances in the Black Watch Drill Hall and Mill Street. Strangely enough, my earliest recollection of a catchy tune was the Morpeth Rant – not really a Scottish tune at all but good to dance to and full of rhythm. At the time I played the ‘moothie’ and was beginning to understand the working of the mandolin. I was able to play some of the commoner traditional tunes and at one of the concerts in St. John’s Church Hall, I was asked to accompany a Rover Scout, Jim McHardie from Usan, who played an International Melodeon. I remember it well. Absolutely rectangular with sharp corners bound in nickel-plated brass work. The palettes were on the outside for all to see. Two stops – I suppose the precursors of treble couplers – were sticking out like organ stops on top and there was four incredible bass clappers which never seemed to harmonise with the treble but acted in a way like bagpipe drones. Also a ‘breather’ which took in great gasps of air or exhaled equally noisily when a difficult passage had to be played. Jim McHardie’s box was a two row and with this arrangement it was possible to play in C or B, or perhaps D, G and A. But the flats were difficult if not impossible. I was greatly taken with this instrument and decided there and then that this was to be it. The mandolin was not exactly forgotten but, from then on, took second place.
My Scout Master, Mr Potter, was good enough to give me a very simple instrument – only a single row treble and two bass notes, but I practiced away until I had managed to master the bellows work to a certain extent. Having played the mouth organ, the principal came fairly naturally to me. Each button is responsible for two notes, a half tone in between, one with a press action of the bellows, one on the draw. The scale of C for instance would be press, draw, press, draw, press draw, draw, press. The bass accompaniment, such as it was, had to synchronise with the bellows action. The simple chords appeared to please everybody at the time but are sheer torture to listen to nowadays. I practiced away at Country Dance tunes and gradually increased my repertoire as far as this very simple instrument would allow.
I collected records of the great Peter Wyper and played them over and over on an ancient gramophone with a huge sounding horn – just like the one with the faithful dog on the old HMV records. I think it was about 1932 or 1933 that I was down at the Fair Ground in Montrose and I heard a melodeon recording on a gramophone at one of the stalls. I had thought Peter Wyper brilliant but this record surpassed anything I had ever heard before. I hung around and asked questions. The record was a Regal-Zonophone and the player was one James Shand. For me this was it – I became a Jimmy Shand fan there and then, and forty years on, have never wavered.
I practiced on my single row box until frustration set in. I just didn’t have the range of notes required. At that time, J.T. Forbes of Dundee advertised an instrument called the Double Ray British Chromatic Accordion. There were two models – The Standard, away beyond my pocket money range, and the De Luxe, far beyond my wildest dreams at £8 10/-! A glimmer of hope arose when an aunt of mine announced that she had a piano she did not want and that if I could do a deal with Forbes, I could have it for the asking. I saved up the 3/4d required for a return ticket to Dundee, found my way up from the Tay Bridge Station to the shop and the deal was completed. They would collect the piano from Montrose and I would go away the proud owner of a Double Ray De Luxe complete with case, and a tutor by Charles S. Forbes and James Shand.
Jimmy’s picture, even in those days, showed a balding top, and in all the days I have known him, he hasn’t changed a bit. Mr Forbes assured me that the reeds in this accordion would ring out loud and clear above the sound of a full orchestra. He would get his demonstrator to give me a tune and sure enough the object of my hero-worship appeared, and with no obvious bellows movement, and fingers that seemed to flow without hand movement, I had my first experience of hearing Jimmy Shand ‘live.’ I suppose this was around 1934-35. I often wonder if Jimmy spotted an enthusiast at the time, but although it was a year or two later before I got to know him well, I think the beginnings of a lifetime friendship started there and then.
Laying cable for the Fife Power Co. was to be his last navvying job. By Christmas that year he had agreed to work for Forbes (the chance to drive the bright yellow Austin 10 van, YJ1136 clinched it!) and had come to lodge with Geordie Denham’s mother at 185 Princes Street in Dundee.
Life would now undoubtedly be more comfortable than when he had had to lope, half-naked, like a half-shut knife, over the widely-spaced sleepers of the hutches tracks in hellishly cramped tunnels ; or grapple in glaur with pick, shovel, barrow, or obstinate rock.