Chapter 04 (1938 – 1939) - (Pages 38 - 45) - My Ain Wee Hoose
Anne and Jimmy had with surprising ease cleared the first hurdle which so often causes the path of the newlyweds to take a zig-zag course between a succession of furnished rooms – they had managed to rent a house.
Now a much greater obstacle was barring their way, the renting of a better house.
And the stages they had so happily escaped in the beginning now had to be gone through – the trudging round house-factors’ offices (and damned snotty many of the clerks could be in cutting-off “Ye widna happen tae hae anything on yer books like….”) the drop-everything dashing off to follow up rumours of possible exchanges ; the advertising, the answering of adverts, all without another key to call their own….
Corporation houses were being built, but at a rate at which it would take a lifetime to cope with only a modest part of Dundee’s huge twin blemishes, chronic overcrowding and insanitary vermin-infested slums.
There was, however, a way of getting a key to a new home without having to wait twenty or more years while your name inched up the waiting-list…..Buy a house.
It is obviously a very likely feature of modest man that they do not set themselves above their station ; and Jimmy must have gone into figures and possibilities of managing to maintain himself in gainful employment and paying playing engagements very,very thoroughly before he took the plunge.
Paying up a ‘box’ at five bob a week hadn’t been that easy at the time ; but a house?
Today’s newly-weds will be amazed that he should have hesitated even for a moment. Bought through the Co-operative Building Society, a brand-new semi-detached villa of living-room, two bedrooms, kitchenette and bathroom required a deposit of - £37!
Repayments at less than £3 monthly! Cash price £545!
This was in 1938 of course. Jimmy’s wages, £3 a week. Commission made all the difference.
Without a doubt the touring demonstrations of himself, Charles Forbes and Louis Cabrelli played an enormous part in popularising the accordion, and the remuneration had been increasing all the time.
The farm-lads, miners, mill-hands, fishermen of the east coast of Scotland were particularly receptive, traditionally having always turned to the box as well as the fiddle to draw out their melancholy, vamp to the vocalists, squeeze out the schottisches, the hornpipes, the reels.
In Jimmy’s adopted town alone in that year of ’38 more than seventy players entered for the British College of Accordionists examination. Clubs were formed all over the district. Dundee was considered to have more box-players per head of population than any other city in Britain.
Fife has been known as the Kingdom from ancient times, but it seemed a happily apt choice for the King of the Button Keys to settle on Dundee as his capital.
For long a celebrity to his fellow-players he was now beginning to be increasingly widely accepted as such by the general public – and in the process of being elevated to godhood whenever and wherever accordionists discussed accordionists.
Interlude, featuring Louis Cabrelli.
Louis also was a prodigy, playing an International button-key by the age of ten. He changed to piano-key when his dad brought him one from Italy. There was very few such instruments around in Scotland in those days, and he taught himself by endlessly listening to records of the Diero brothers, Pietro and Guido.
Show business called him in the shape of scouts from Casey’s Court revue appearing in Dundee’s Victoria Theatre. For a young laddie to be paid for delighting an audience with his virtuosity on the piano-accordion – marvelous ; for a while…
The continual moving from one theatrical digs to another all over Britain…..Even worse, having to play exactly the same popular selections night after night – a couple of years and he knew this could never be the life for him. So he gave it up so he could play the accordion more. It was his great desire to go on improving, and he needed time for study.
Then he was ‘discovered’ again, by Charles Forbes.
He studied in London before going on a world tour.
Annual visits to Italy were playing marathons rather than holidays.
As Hohner’s representative he made many appearances in Germany.
One thing he was warned about before going there – “Don’t play any Jewish music.” This rules out a lot of stuff Louis was keen on including, works of Mendelssohn and Gershwin. As a matter of fact he found that British music did not seem to be very welcome either.
Then he was invited to play in a huge underground hall to a more liberal-minded audience of Germans. Here, everything was acceptable from Rhapsody in Blue to Lambeth Walk.
Always when Louis was shown round a factory there would be large posters of Hitler on the walls. On one tour he remarked to Willie Black, representative of a Dundee firm of music-sellers, that the disapproving eyes seemed to follow them all over, and he turned and made a grimace up at one of the blown-up likenesses….
This was noted, reported, and the next day he was on the carpet.
Twenty of his pupils went into ENSA during the war. Louis helped Dad in the family ice-cream business.
After the war the special Louis Morino, made in 1937 and worth about £500, was silent for many years. Then at a party at Louis’ house he was persuaded to play to please a guest who would not sing unless he obliged with a tune.
That was in 1971, and at the time of writing, 1975, he has been practicing an hour daily ever since.
Once again Rimsky-Korsakov’s Bumble Bee is in full flight ; Gershwin is given his due ; the old magic of the fingers releases everything from a mazurka to Canadian Capers. There is a long waiting list to become pupils of the maestro.
“What about Louis Cabrelli?” I asked Jimmy.
“A genius.”
Exactly how Louis described him.
I have seen an old snap of Jimmy as a lad of sixteen or seventeen sitting on a dyke with his melodeon. Two uncharacteristic features struck me about the pose ; first, the bellows were extended to an extremely un-Shandlike extent ; second, he had been playing while wearing a cap.
Then, he had hair on his head, although no doubt it had already started to steal quietly away. Since, the scholarly (to me at any rate) Shand dome has impressively paraded bald and unashamed on platforms before audiences from old folks in institutions to crowned heads in palaces.
He learned to live with baldness, but not without very many attempts at remedying it. At one period, no lotion was too outlandish to be tested. If it happens you are getting thin on top here’s one simple formula which costs nothing which you may care to try. It did nothing for Jimmy, but then he may have been a particularly stubborn case ; or maybe he didn’t keep up the treatment long enough.
Right? Here it is, as brewed in Mrs Denham’s kitchen ‘way back in ’33 –
Stewed grass.
Not a potion, but a lotion. Apply to affected part as a poultice.
A story Jimmy likes to tell about his scarcity of hair….
He was playing to a packed Victoria Hall in Coupar Angus. Outside a late-comer pleaded to be let in so he could set eyes on the rising star. And when he was allowed to enter his astonished reaction was a loud “Christ! He’s nae bluidy chicken, is he!”
Anne, Jim and the bairn moved into the new house at 16 Sutherland Street, a pleasant cul-de-sac across from a splendid public park where in a few years time Dad would have to round up Erskine from Cowboys and Indians, football and cricket, to keep appointments with his piano teacher.
The back of the house looked over the old tenements, narrow streets and little shops, the lums and spires of the suburb of Lochee to a magnificent panorama of the Sidlaw Hills. This was to be the Shand home for many years, a home that Jimmy was to see increasingly less of as the demands of his public grew.
Within a year he was able to afford his first new car, an 8 hp Ford. Before this he had equipped himself with an accordion made to his own specification ; but more about this period from Dr Sandy Tulloch –
In 1936 I went to University College Dundee Medical School and was always being asked to play at Smokers and other functions in the Union. The faithful Double Ray was in great demand and I must have been a trial and tribulation to the long-suffering ‘bunk wives,’ as our landladies were called in those days. I used to go out at times to the Diddling Competitions which were held in the country districts at that time. They were great fun. Later when I rose to the dizzy heights of a three row box, I used to be disqualified. The competition was strictly for two row melodeons at the time. I think I next saw Jimmy at such a concert in Coupar Angus. I remember vividly a competitor for the mouth organ getting through eight bars of the Mason’s Apron then he stopped, took out his teeth and put them on top of the piano, announcing that he “couldna play nane wi’ thae bluidy falsers in.” Then a march, strathspey and reel from a shy Jimmy Shand who could hardly be persuaded to come out from behind a draught screen on the small stage. But shy or not, the magic was there and this time Jimmy had a magnificent box, a three row Hohner special with full bass accompaniment on the left hand. This was something only found on piano and Continental accordions at the time and was a revelation to me. I found out later that this was the first in a line of Hohner Specials built for Jimmy in collaboration with head designer, Morino.
I’ll never forget that accordion. It was away in front of its time in design, range and tone. I’ve never played an instrument that handled as easily as that one. The reeds were hand made, specially long in the tongue and answered instantly to the slightest pressure or change of bellows movement. It was a four voice accordion with a coupler to bring in the lower octave reeds. The bass side was superb and had full chording. The button action was unique – three rows of buttons linked in two rows of palettes in some miraculous fashion. The keyboard was real mother of pearl, the buttons very nearly flush and so firm and positive in action that staccato triplets were a joy to play, something at that time distinctive to button box playing. Since then piano accordion have improved beyond all recognition but at the time, for staccato playing, nothing could touch the button box, especially when played by Jimmy Shand.
My Double Ray De Luxe now looked a poor toy compared to this magnificent instrument. I started saying and by 1939 had the necessary £40 to buy a three row Scandalli with eighty bass arrangement. It was, of course, the British Chromatic System. With Jimmy’s guidance I did some modifications. First, the air intake had to be almost blocked off with sticky paper so that I didn’t ‘gasp’ the accordion when playing. Then the composition buttons were replaced with real, smooth, mother of pearl buttons supplied by my favourite nurse at Maryfield, who was to become my wife in 1942.
Jimmy had a workshop in a garret above Watt’s in the Wellgate, Dundee, later on and I learned a great deal from Tommy Burns, but at that time we sat in Sutherland Street with a used razor blade and a set of needle files making sure that every reed was in perfect tune and every ‘leather’ in prime condition. I used to go to Sutherland Street about once a week for lessons – how Anne put up with me I’ll never know. And poor Jimmy – he must have tholed an awful lot as I struggled my way through the various exercises in three row technique. The British Chromatic is a complicated instrument.
Looking back, it would have been much simpler to use the Continental Chromatic but my heart was always set on the traditional melodeon system. It seemed to me to be essentially Scottish and the right instrument for playing Country Dance Music. Each button plays two notes as in the melodeon. Each octave is entirely different from the one above or the one below and gets more complex as one goes on. For instance, in the higher registers a mental somersault is required. A note of higher pitch may have to be played on a lower button. And in the lower registers the opposite holds good. A curious and desperately complicated system. With three rows there are a certain number of duplicates – notes that can be played on the ‘press’ or on the ‘draw’ of the bellows. Left hand action is all important and the use of these alternative fingering systems is the secret of smooth playing and ‘phrasing’ the music. If I could justify the expenditure, I would order yet another ‘Special’ with four rows of treble keys and perhaps a row of minor thirds on the bass side, but at today’s prices this dream will never be realised.
I remember my first exercise set by Jimmy. The six measures of the 6/8 march, the Atholl Highlanders. It was here that Jimmy showed me some of the secrets of crisp, smooth fingering and bellows work. Later we went on to 2/4 marches such as the Balkan Hills and John MacDonald of Glencoe. Jimmy was a tremendous help and inspiration at this time. The house at Sutherland Street was a home from home, not only for myself, but for a great number of other enthusiasts and musicians. I never saw the living-room empty or the table cleared. Poor Anne – she seemed to have half the musical population of Dundee and district to feed and look after. They were the most generous and kindest folk I have ever known.
In the late thirties he met a lorry-driver and left-handed fiddler, Dave Ireland, through Wull Kydd (incidentally, he remembers dissuading Wull from buying a Borsini. Wull was dead keen on this model, but he listened to Jim who explained that in his experience of the instrument there was difficulty in “getting’ wind intae the inner ra’.” As advised, Wull switched to a Scandalli ; “Och, but he did hae a Borsini later on when done!”)
As Jim taught himself on the family box as a laddie in Wemyss, so also had Dave Ireland picked up bowing and fingering on his family’s fiddle, plus a few lesson from Jim Barrie of Broughty Ferry.
They played together occasionally at Harvest Homes, etc…and kept in touch, which was later to be to their mutual advantage.
1939. By Shand! Beltona advertised his recordings in the local paper – These Are The Newest ; and the selections included such titles as a Rocky Mountain Medley ; She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain, Can I Sleep in Your Barn?, Hand Me Down My Walking Cane, Chicken Reel, Turkey in the Straw ; and the Blue Ridge Medley – De Ole Banjo, Kingdom Comin’, Oh Susannah! Another disc provided music for a Soft Shoe Dance ; Lily of Laguna, Shine on Harvest Moon backed by the Noble Duke of York, Tavern in the Town; surprisingly, nothing there to put a waggle in a kilt….But one side did offer Stonehaven March and Scotland the Brave.
Of course plenty of recordings of reels, strathspeys and schottisches were to follow…..Within a few months Another Grand Selection By The Champion Performer on the Button-key appeared in an issue of the weekly – and on another page a picture of a kiltie, not, alas, dancing, but ferociously charging at the reader with a fixed bayonet.
At that particular time, however, Anne urgently need ed defending against a much more insidious enemy – which gained the Shands another friend ; and like Dr Sandy Tulloch, Dr Jameson was also musically talented, although not a box-player. His instrument was the ukulele with which he accompanied himself in full-blooded rendering of bothy ballads.
He was at King’s Cross Hospital when Anne was admitted suffering from diphtheria. He writes “three days later their 2½ year old son Erskine was also admitted with the same disease. Jimmy himself, as a contact, had a throat swab taken, but this proved negative, so that he was left to fend for himself at home and to visit the hospital regularly to see his family. Both Mrs Shand and Erskine made good recoveries without developing any complications, and were allowed home after spending 4-6 weeks in hospital. Since then I have been privileged to enjoy the friendship of Jimmy and his family….” A friendship lasting over thirty years.
Shortly before war was declared there had been signs that although the accordion was fantastically popular, the market was becoming saturated. And obviously the importing of instruments would soon be impossible ; also many who were potential customers were already joining up in order to have some say in which lot they would serve.
Jimmy left Forbes, on the best of terms, to take a job driving a furniture van for Robertson of Barrack Street.
As already stated, travelling around demonstrating and playing had meant being away from home a lot. With Anne and Erskine well again, he now took steps which were likely in his being away from them for considerably longer periods. And what else would such a speed-lover volunteer for but to fly with the RAF?
Not a hope. And with his unreliable digestive system it would have meant the briefest of acquaintance with any service which he had managed to join.
He finished up in the Fire Service.
This at least had the advantage that he was able to a great extent to continue playing to his ain folk.
Now a much greater obstacle was barring their way, the renting of a better house.
And the stages they had so happily escaped in the beginning now had to be gone through – the trudging round house-factors’ offices (and damned snotty many of the clerks could be in cutting-off “Ye widna happen tae hae anything on yer books like….”) the drop-everything dashing off to follow up rumours of possible exchanges ; the advertising, the answering of adverts, all without another key to call their own….
Corporation houses were being built, but at a rate at which it would take a lifetime to cope with only a modest part of Dundee’s huge twin blemishes, chronic overcrowding and insanitary vermin-infested slums.
There was, however, a way of getting a key to a new home without having to wait twenty or more years while your name inched up the waiting-list…..Buy a house.
It is obviously a very likely feature of modest man that they do not set themselves above their station ; and Jimmy must have gone into figures and possibilities of managing to maintain himself in gainful employment and paying playing engagements very,very thoroughly before he took the plunge.
Paying up a ‘box’ at five bob a week hadn’t been that easy at the time ; but a house?
Today’s newly-weds will be amazed that he should have hesitated even for a moment. Bought through the Co-operative Building Society, a brand-new semi-detached villa of living-room, two bedrooms, kitchenette and bathroom required a deposit of - £37!
Repayments at less than £3 monthly! Cash price £545!
This was in 1938 of course. Jimmy’s wages, £3 a week. Commission made all the difference.
Without a doubt the touring demonstrations of himself, Charles Forbes and Louis Cabrelli played an enormous part in popularising the accordion, and the remuneration had been increasing all the time.
The farm-lads, miners, mill-hands, fishermen of the east coast of Scotland were particularly receptive, traditionally having always turned to the box as well as the fiddle to draw out their melancholy, vamp to the vocalists, squeeze out the schottisches, the hornpipes, the reels.
In Jimmy’s adopted town alone in that year of ’38 more than seventy players entered for the British College of Accordionists examination. Clubs were formed all over the district. Dundee was considered to have more box-players per head of population than any other city in Britain.
Fife has been known as the Kingdom from ancient times, but it seemed a happily apt choice for the King of the Button Keys to settle on Dundee as his capital.
For long a celebrity to his fellow-players he was now beginning to be increasingly widely accepted as such by the general public – and in the process of being elevated to godhood whenever and wherever accordionists discussed accordionists.
Interlude, featuring Louis Cabrelli.
Louis also was a prodigy, playing an International button-key by the age of ten. He changed to piano-key when his dad brought him one from Italy. There was very few such instruments around in Scotland in those days, and he taught himself by endlessly listening to records of the Diero brothers, Pietro and Guido.
Show business called him in the shape of scouts from Casey’s Court revue appearing in Dundee’s Victoria Theatre. For a young laddie to be paid for delighting an audience with his virtuosity on the piano-accordion – marvelous ; for a while…
The continual moving from one theatrical digs to another all over Britain…..Even worse, having to play exactly the same popular selections night after night – a couple of years and he knew this could never be the life for him. So he gave it up so he could play the accordion more. It was his great desire to go on improving, and he needed time for study.
Then he was ‘discovered’ again, by Charles Forbes.
He studied in London before going on a world tour.
Annual visits to Italy were playing marathons rather than holidays.
As Hohner’s representative he made many appearances in Germany.
One thing he was warned about before going there – “Don’t play any Jewish music.” This rules out a lot of stuff Louis was keen on including, works of Mendelssohn and Gershwin. As a matter of fact he found that British music did not seem to be very welcome either.
Then he was invited to play in a huge underground hall to a more liberal-minded audience of Germans. Here, everything was acceptable from Rhapsody in Blue to Lambeth Walk.
Always when Louis was shown round a factory there would be large posters of Hitler on the walls. On one tour he remarked to Willie Black, representative of a Dundee firm of music-sellers, that the disapproving eyes seemed to follow them all over, and he turned and made a grimace up at one of the blown-up likenesses….
This was noted, reported, and the next day he was on the carpet.
Twenty of his pupils went into ENSA during the war. Louis helped Dad in the family ice-cream business.
After the war the special Louis Morino, made in 1937 and worth about £500, was silent for many years. Then at a party at Louis’ house he was persuaded to play to please a guest who would not sing unless he obliged with a tune.
That was in 1971, and at the time of writing, 1975, he has been practicing an hour daily ever since.
Once again Rimsky-Korsakov’s Bumble Bee is in full flight ; Gershwin is given his due ; the old magic of the fingers releases everything from a mazurka to Canadian Capers. There is a long waiting list to become pupils of the maestro.
“What about Louis Cabrelli?” I asked Jimmy.
“A genius.”
Exactly how Louis described him.
I have seen an old snap of Jimmy as a lad of sixteen or seventeen sitting on a dyke with his melodeon. Two uncharacteristic features struck me about the pose ; first, the bellows were extended to an extremely un-Shandlike extent ; second, he had been playing while wearing a cap.
Then, he had hair on his head, although no doubt it had already started to steal quietly away. Since, the scholarly (to me at any rate) Shand dome has impressively paraded bald and unashamed on platforms before audiences from old folks in institutions to crowned heads in palaces.
He learned to live with baldness, but not without very many attempts at remedying it. At one period, no lotion was too outlandish to be tested. If it happens you are getting thin on top here’s one simple formula which costs nothing which you may care to try. It did nothing for Jimmy, but then he may have been a particularly stubborn case ; or maybe he didn’t keep up the treatment long enough.
Right? Here it is, as brewed in Mrs Denham’s kitchen ‘way back in ’33 –
Stewed grass.
Not a potion, but a lotion. Apply to affected part as a poultice.
A story Jimmy likes to tell about his scarcity of hair….
He was playing to a packed Victoria Hall in Coupar Angus. Outside a late-comer pleaded to be let in so he could set eyes on the rising star. And when he was allowed to enter his astonished reaction was a loud “Christ! He’s nae bluidy chicken, is he!”
Anne, Jim and the bairn moved into the new house at 16 Sutherland Street, a pleasant cul-de-sac across from a splendid public park where in a few years time Dad would have to round up Erskine from Cowboys and Indians, football and cricket, to keep appointments with his piano teacher.
The back of the house looked over the old tenements, narrow streets and little shops, the lums and spires of the suburb of Lochee to a magnificent panorama of the Sidlaw Hills. This was to be the Shand home for many years, a home that Jimmy was to see increasingly less of as the demands of his public grew.
Within a year he was able to afford his first new car, an 8 hp Ford. Before this he had equipped himself with an accordion made to his own specification ; but more about this period from Dr Sandy Tulloch –
In 1936 I went to University College Dundee Medical School and was always being asked to play at Smokers and other functions in the Union. The faithful Double Ray was in great demand and I must have been a trial and tribulation to the long-suffering ‘bunk wives,’ as our landladies were called in those days. I used to go out at times to the Diddling Competitions which were held in the country districts at that time. They were great fun. Later when I rose to the dizzy heights of a three row box, I used to be disqualified. The competition was strictly for two row melodeons at the time. I think I next saw Jimmy at such a concert in Coupar Angus. I remember vividly a competitor for the mouth organ getting through eight bars of the Mason’s Apron then he stopped, took out his teeth and put them on top of the piano, announcing that he “couldna play nane wi’ thae bluidy falsers in.” Then a march, strathspey and reel from a shy Jimmy Shand who could hardly be persuaded to come out from behind a draught screen on the small stage. But shy or not, the magic was there and this time Jimmy had a magnificent box, a three row Hohner special with full bass accompaniment on the left hand. This was something only found on piano and Continental accordions at the time and was a revelation to me. I found out later that this was the first in a line of Hohner Specials built for Jimmy in collaboration with head designer, Morino.
I’ll never forget that accordion. It was away in front of its time in design, range and tone. I’ve never played an instrument that handled as easily as that one. The reeds were hand made, specially long in the tongue and answered instantly to the slightest pressure or change of bellows movement. It was a four voice accordion with a coupler to bring in the lower octave reeds. The bass side was superb and had full chording. The button action was unique – three rows of buttons linked in two rows of palettes in some miraculous fashion. The keyboard was real mother of pearl, the buttons very nearly flush and so firm and positive in action that staccato triplets were a joy to play, something at that time distinctive to button box playing. Since then piano accordion have improved beyond all recognition but at the time, for staccato playing, nothing could touch the button box, especially when played by Jimmy Shand.
My Double Ray De Luxe now looked a poor toy compared to this magnificent instrument. I started saying and by 1939 had the necessary £40 to buy a three row Scandalli with eighty bass arrangement. It was, of course, the British Chromatic System. With Jimmy’s guidance I did some modifications. First, the air intake had to be almost blocked off with sticky paper so that I didn’t ‘gasp’ the accordion when playing. Then the composition buttons were replaced with real, smooth, mother of pearl buttons supplied by my favourite nurse at Maryfield, who was to become my wife in 1942.
Jimmy had a workshop in a garret above Watt’s in the Wellgate, Dundee, later on and I learned a great deal from Tommy Burns, but at that time we sat in Sutherland Street with a used razor blade and a set of needle files making sure that every reed was in perfect tune and every ‘leather’ in prime condition. I used to go to Sutherland Street about once a week for lessons – how Anne put up with me I’ll never know. And poor Jimmy – he must have tholed an awful lot as I struggled my way through the various exercises in three row technique. The British Chromatic is a complicated instrument.
Looking back, it would have been much simpler to use the Continental Chromatic but my heart was always set on the traditional melodeon system. It seemed to me to be essentially Scottish and the right instrument for playing Country Dance Music. Each button plays two notes as in the melodeon. Each octave is entirely different from the one above or the one below and gets more complex as one goes on. For instance, in the higher registers a mental somersault is required. A note of higher pitch may have to be played on a lower button. And in the lower registers the opposite holds good. A curious and desperately complicated system. With three rows there are a certain number of duplicates – notes that can be played on the ‘press’ or on the ‘draw’ of the bellows. Left hand action is all important and the use of these alternative fingering systems is the secret of smooth playing and ‘phrasing’ the music. If I could justify the expenditure, I would order yet another ‘Special’ with four rows of treble keys and perhaps a row of minor thirds on the bass side, but at today’s prices this dream will never be realised.
I remember my first exercise set by Jimmy. The six measures of the 6/8 march, the Atholl Highlanders. It was here that Jimmy showed me some of the secrets of crisp, smooth fingering and bellows work. Later we went on to 2/4 marches such as the Balkan Hills and John MacDonald of Glencoe. Jimmy was a tremendous help and inspiration at this time. The house at Sutherland Street was a home from home, not only for myself, but for a great number of other enthusiasts and musicians. I never saw the living-room empty or the table cleared. Poor Anne – she seemed to have half the musical population of Dundee and district to feed and look after. They were the most generous and kindest folk I have ever known.
In the late thirties he met a lorry-driver and left-handed fiddler, Dave Ireland, through Wull Kydd (incidentally, he remembers dissuading Wull from buying a Borsini. Wull was dead keen on this model, but he listened to Jim who explained that in his experience of the instrument there was difficulty in “getting’ wind intae the inner ra’.” As advised, Wull switched to a Scandalli ; “Och, but he did hae a Borsini later on when done!”)
As Jim taught himself on the family box as a laddie in Wemyss, so also had Dave Ireland picked up bowing and fingering on his family’s fiddle, plus a few lesson from Jim Barrie of Broughty Ferry.
They played together occasionally at Harvest Homes, etc…and kept in touch, which was later to be to their mutual advantage.
1939. By Shand! Beltona advertised his recordings in the local paper – These Are The Newest ; and the selections included such titles as a Rocky Mountain Medley ; She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain, Can I Sleep in Your Barn?, Hand Me Down My Walking Cane, Chicken Reel, Turkey in the Straw ; and the Blue Ridge Medley – De Ole Banjo, Kingdom Comin’, Oh Susannah! Another disc provided music for a Soft Shoe Dance ; Lily of Laguna, Shine on Harvest Moon backed by the Noble Duke of York, Tavern in the Town; surprisingly, nothing there to put a waggle in a kilt….But one side did offer Stonehaven March and Scotland the Brave.
Of course plenty of recordings of reels, strathspeys and schottisches were to follow…..Within a few months Another Grand Selection By The Champion Performer on the Button-key appeared in an issue of the weekly – and on another page a picture of a kiltie, not, alas, dancing, but ferociously charging at the reader with a fixed bayonet.
At that particular time, however, Anne urgently need ed defending against a much more insidious enemy – which gained the Shands another friend ; and like Dr Sandy Tulloch, Dr Jameson was also musically talented, although not a box-player. His instrument was the ukulele with which he accompanied himself in full-blooded rendering of bothy ballads.
He was at King’s Cross Hospital when Anne was admitted suffering from diphtheria. He writes “three days later their 2½ year old son Erskine was also admitted with the same disease. Jimmy himself, as a contact, had a throat swab taken, but this proved negative, so that he was left to fend for himself at home and to visit the hospital regularly to see his family. Both Mrs Shand and Erskine made good recoveries without developing any complications, and were allowed home after spending 4-6 weeks in hospital. Since then I have been privileged to enjoy the friendship of Jimmy and his family….” A friendship lasting over thirty years.
Shortly before war was declared there had been signs that although the accordion was fantastically popular, the market was becoming saturated. And obviously the importing of instruments would soon be impossible ; also many who were potential customers were already joining up in order to have some say in which lot they would serve.
Jimmy left Forbes, on the best of terms, to take a job driving a furniture van for Robertson of Barrack Street.
As already stated, travelling around demonstrating and playing had meant being away from home a lot. With Anne and Erskine well again, he now took steps which were likely in his being away from them for considerably longer periods. And what else would such a speed-lover volunteer for but to fly with the RAF?
Not a hope. And with his unreliable digestive system it would have meant the briefest of acquaintance with any service which he had managed to join.
He finished up in the Fire Service.
This at least had the advantage that he was able to a great extent to continue playing to his ain folk.