Chapter 08 (1950 – 1952) – (Pgs 74 – 84) - Machine Without Horses
Sid Chalmers had a couple of spells with the band.
Son of Forfar Pipe Band’s Pipe Major (granddad was also a piper) he had enough confidence in his fiddle playing by the age of fifteen to enter at the Alyth Festival of 1933. Expert fiddler and on everything to do with the fiddle, Jim Barrie was there. He spoke encouragingly to the laddie in the short breeks.
“Playin’ lang, son?”
“Oh aye, fair while.”
“Mind ye there’s some guid players in yer class here the day.”
“What class dae ye mean?”
“Under sixteen of course, what else?”
“I’m entered for the open class.”
“Well, well! Ye realise a’ wha ye’re up against? The open ; an’ ye’re what, about fifteen?”
“Aye.”
“Look – tell ye what, son ; would ye like me tae listen tae ye first – I would like tae hear ye……”
“Just here? Now, ye mean?”
“Just that ; an’ dinna be nervous, son ; just dae yer best.”
Sid did his best.
A sure bow began to draw out the haunting slow march, Dark Lochnagar. The tune is a perfect setting for Lord Byron’s poem about the queen of the mountains of his beloved Deeside ; but now the melody stood alone, evoking the wildness, the majesty,the steep frowning glories, the exile’s yearning eerily conveyed in the playing of a laddie who had never been away from home.
What could Jim Barrie say after such an astonishing revelation of talent? Hardly anything, really. Signed “Aye,” perhaps ; put a hand on the laddie’s shoulder.
To the other mature competitors he was much more voluble. In view of what he had just heard he spoke to them of theirchances – which he confidently placed at nil.
And he was right. The laddie in the short breeks came first.
Two years later, at seventeen, Sid Chalmers, apprentice plumber, was Scottish Fiddle Champion.
Any day now, surely, Jimmy Shand would hear of him, want him in the band. Only, strangely, the laddie fae the county town so weel-versed in country style music seems to have harkened to the sirens ; and headed south. Give him his due, he didn’t give up the fiddle, but did feel the need to supplement it.
To this end he took up what his father probably – and his grandfather would have definitely – considered parodies, caricatures of the bagpipes ; he learned to play clarinet and saxophone. This doubling allowed him more scope getting engagements with band bands in London and round about.
Sid was 32 and back home in 1952 when Jimmy Shand sought a replacement fiddler. In return, many fiddlers wanted Shand as their leader. Jimmy had a sheaf of applications.
Perhaps old friend Jim Barrie would help him sort them out?
“Ye want me tae help ye get a fiddler?”
“That’s whit these letters are a’ aboot. Would ye hae a look through them when ye have time?”
Barrie pushed the letters to one side. “I’ll tell you about a fiddler,” he said ; “nae need tae gae through this lot.”
Sid became the band’s new fiddler (and youngest member) before Jimmy had even heard him play.
Incidentally, Jim Barrie not only provided Shand with a fiddler, but on occasions many a tune. And there was the almost unbelievable lucky day when his own stock of tunes was spectacularly enlarged.
An official with Dundee Cleansing Department, he had been watching a load tipped for destruction, when –
“Stop!”
The book was obviously old – but probably only a fiddler’s eye would have glimpsed the faded Gow………
The volume was rescued and dusted off with care. Niel Gow’s Repository of 1804 ; the legendary fiddler’s collection of 300 tunes!
Soon he was dipping into this on Shand’s behalf. One request was for no less than ‘ten new marches.’ Shand didn’t read music, but gained the required augmentation of his repertoire through Barrie whistling each of the recommended marches three times, from then on to be permanently recorded in Jimmy’s memory. Not only merely recorded, but also to undergo the unexplainable transmutation which stamped them his own from the first playing. As no less an authority than Dr. Herbert Wiseman, Scottish music chief of the BBC said during a lecture in Clydebank “In the matter of Scottish dance music Jimmy Shand has a lilt in his playing that none of the others ever had.”
Now it was always Jimmy Shand and His Band…..
It was to the group the bigger and bigger successes came.
Yet, in a way something of a pity. For despite the rapport that obtained – and which Jimmy Shand’s Band suited better as a title – the leader was now heard more as one of the boys.
No matter how much this effacing blending-in suited his nature it has to be regretted as a loss ; a loss to the public of one of the greatest individualistic instrumental soloists of his generation.
As celebrated clarinetists, trumpeters, even drummers regularly stepped out from in front of their groups to demonstrate their virtuosity, so also should Jimmy have done ; but, being Jimmy, he didn’t.
His solo playing was now mainly confined to appearances at hospitals, old folks’ clubs and other charitable causes.
The most individualistic of soloists ; yet surely the most diffident.
What other accordion player ever got so much out of the accordion with such a minimum movement of the bellows? Surely the most unflourishing, unflashiest of styles.
There was the little girl who was taken to a demonstration concert in Peebles when Jimmy was touring for Forbes the music-seller –
With round eyes she commented afterwards “The man just came out, and just stood ; and the music came itself!”
And there was the time when he appeared at Newcastle Empire, and a slightly inebriated, somewhat truculent young man demanded to see him backstage. Shand allowed him to be let into the dressing room ; asked him what he wanted.
“Just want to complain you’re taking in the public. We paid to hear you play, you know”!
“Well?”
“Only you’re not playing. You don’t take me in! And you haven’t even got the sense to make it look more realistic! Anybody could tell you’re miming.”
“Think so?”
“I know so! Must think the public’s stupid – why man you’ve hardly been opening the bellows!”
“A’ richt, lauddie.” He strapped on the box.
“Watch closely, now, mind.” With one hand he held closed all but one of the accordion pleats. With the other land he launched into the tumultuous arpeggios of the melodeonists’ showpiece, the High Level Hornpipe, at speed.
The young man’s mouth opened far wider than the bellows. Then he was all apologies, eventually almost backing in awe out of the dressing room. Leter he put his apologies and enthusiasm into a letter.
By the ‘fifties records and broadcasts had established the band as what could be called the Top Teuchter Ensemble.
And as at first sight Jimmy’s still style dumbfounded an audience, so also did personal appearances of the band sometimes cause surprise.
They were five ; and would turn up for concert or dance to find places laid for them in the ante-room for a band of twelve.
Arriving at one remote village hall they heard one committee member whisper indignantly to another “B’Goad he’s only brung half the band.”
(Possibly the impression of the band being much larger came about through an enthusiastic turning up of the volume when they were on the air!)
Jimmy’s success was not without accompanying strains.
David was growing, his dad was, of necessity, away from home as lot. Despite the fantastic distances traveled to get back right after an engagement was over, very great demands must have been made upon Anne at this time.
Once I was in their house in Sutherland Street painting the kitchenette….Jimmy had set off for England that morning, and his departing words had been “Mind the lauddie, now, Anne.”
“Of coorse, of coorse ; I’ll pey attention. Awa’ ye go now, the baund’ll be waitin’ for ye. David’ll be a’ richt – I’ll mind yer lauddie.”
And lightly, as she cleared up the breakfast dishes after Jimmy had gone, “Aye – him an’ his lauddie!”
After lunch the phone rang. “There he is,” she said…..”Aye, aye Jimmy, he’s a’ richt…..
“What did I tell ye?” she said as she put the phone down – “Is the lauddie a’ richt?” – always his first words nae matter whaur he phones fae.”
In 1953, at the age of eight, David developed a severe attack of pneumonia and was admitted to King’s Cross Hospital. Dr. Jamieson was there –
………thanks to the availability of antibiotic remedies he made an excellent recovery, and after about a fortnight he was able to return home. In the same year, however, he fell ill again with a respiratory infection……This happened just a few days before Christmas….. Jimmy brought a tape of himself and the band so that we could have music in the ward on Christmas Day……”Just watch David’s face when he hears it” – and it was a great joy to see the laddie’s face light up as he listened with rapt attention.
Jimmy and Anne had showered quite expensive toys on David, and when the time came for him to go home Jimmy insisted that all the toys should remain in the ward for the other kids ; “You see, Bill, we bought twa o’ everything – the same things are waitin’ for him at hame.” This was a very typical gesture……
In 1949, the All-Britain Accordion Championships were revived, sponsored by the National Accordion Organisation of Great Britain.
There were classes for solo, duet, trio/quartet, bands, from junior and elementary to advanced, and amateur to open.
Area winners went to London to compete in the National Championships on Accordion Day, which finished with a Grand Evening Concert in Central Hall, Westminster, of virtuoso talent of not only the newly-elected Champions but also invited celebrities from the Continent as well as Britain. Jimmy was invited in 1950. I was in his house the day before he left for that particular Accordion Day Concert, and I can still remember the absorbed, meticulous patience he was devoting to tuning his box, which he had taken apart – to me looking as if he had at last achieved the ultimate in the instrument’s response with some unearthly inspired hornpipe so that it fragmented on the final chord. And I was indeed flattered when he added “Hoo does that soond tae you?”
Well, it appears to have been all right on the night!
There, the only busker among the cream of British and Continental Champions, his head averted much of the time as if in distaste at his playing, he stopped the show with Inverness Gathering, Braes o’ Tullimet, John Cheap the Chapman. Small wonder that the event was later to be known as the Jimmy Shand Show.
Quoting from the Accordion Day Souvenir Programme for the following year which presumably based comment on impressions gained in 1950 –
Bringing a further individual touch to the programme, and representing as he does a mighty accordion stronghold north of the Border, is Scots accordionist Jimmy Shand, whose own genial personality on stage reflects the sturdy joviality of the Scots songs and dances in whose interpretation he is the unchallenged master.
In 1950 he appeared as a straight soloist. In ’51 he was featured as a novelty spot playing for a team of dancers. In subsequent years it was Jimmy Shand and his Band and the Highland Country Dancers and programme notes like ‘Accordion Day would hardly be complete without the contribution of Jimmy Shand.’
The Shand name and sound were known widely abroad by the ‘fifties.
Not just heard of – heard more and more regularly.
For instance, a radio station in Moosejaw, Saskatchewan was putting out a weekly half-hour of Shand recordings.
And the records themselves were being acquired by Scots exiles all over the earth ; pounced upon on home trips ; dispatched by friends and relations in answer to urgent requests from mansions, penthouses, hunting-lodges, adobes, barracks, clubs, societies, yachts, naval bases, aerodromes, and a variety of outposts. The precise rhythms of the schottische, the reel, the polka and strathspey crept out from igloos, grass shacks, through the bead-curtains of oriental music-shops.
Igloos? Surely there were not many Scots exiles living in igloos?
The Eskimos themselves love his music. And it was from Dundee a hundred years earlier that the whaling crews came who taught them the dances. And the manipulation of the squeeze-box. Many Eskimo women still play the accordion.
The records were now regularly in the Top Ten – reaching sales of 50,000 and more. Jimmy had come a long way from the laddie with a shop o’ his Dad’s box ‘haein’ a choon’ doon at the dykes at East Wemyss…..But in perhaps the most important way he really had not……..
Neighbour from the very start of Jimmy coming to live in Sutherland Street, male nurse Andy Sutherland recalls –
“On a fine night he’d come out and sit on the garden dyke, and he’d play. Often he’d persuade Big John Tosh, the police sergeant from No.25, to bring his accordion out for a duet.
“Before you knew it all the neighbours were out and there was an eightsome reel in full swing. The music and the word would get round, attracting more and more people, until some nights the street would be completely blocked and traffic further up brought to a standstill.
“And there was a permanent understanding that any time the wife and I had a few friends in we’d only to knock on Jimmy’s door and he’d be right over to entertain them.
“The Shand’s were the best of neighbours in every way. Like Jim, my missus had trouble with her stomach, and they used to swap tablets and powders.
“Jim loved pottering about in his garage, working on a car or a motor-bike, or making toys for the ladies. We had a son then, ages with his David, and the two of them were great pals, as at home in each others home as in their own.
“Many a time David would be playing with my Andrew when we’d hear his mother calling for him and he’d plead “Dinna tell her I’m here!” he’d be that absorbed in their wee ploys.
“I helped Jim with little jobs on his vehicles when I could ; went with him on a few trips and did a bit of relief driving.
“I think it helped Anne and him a bit to see how my wee boy unreservedly accepted theirs as a completely normal playmate, and I was glad to be able to use my own specialized experience to remind him that David was a high grade handicapped child.
“Often Jimmy would step across from his garage to show me some toy he was making ; or perhaps he would be preoccupied in the making of something else…..
“What do ye think o’ this Andra?” he would ask ; “Dy-dy-dydill-aye-di-dy-dy-dy…….” I was privileged to be the first to hear many of his compositions.
The late police sergeant John Tosh was not a man who would have been readily taken in by false modesty, insincere socialising. To Jimmy’s journalist friend Alan Dunsmore he said –
“Y’know, we havena got the right focus on Jimmy Shand. He’s no’ jist a braw box-player – an’ yon music has body to it, it’s better than a diet o’ meat ; when he plays ‘Rowan Tree’ ye can see it growin’…….even when my Doug was a bairn on my knee, he’d sit quiet when any other band was on the wireless – but wi’ Jimmy’s he’d jump up and doon like a mad ane an’ near fa’ aff! But it’s no’ just that Jimmy’s a braw box-player here for a whilie an’ then awa’. Shand’s pert o’ Scottish history. He’ll live lang efter he’s deid.”
Big John went to the village of Errol with Jimmy one time to visit mutual friends.
A woman from across the way called in when she heard the music, and wondered if Mr Shand could spare a minute to say hello to her daughter Margaret, long a fan of his, and bed-ridden for more than a year.
It turned into a three-hour long concert which lured the blacksmith from his anvil, the painter from his brushes, the bobby from his beat, the cattleman from his byre, and other friends and neighbours upstairs to the sick girl’s room.
Then the doctor called and stayed to hear a couple of tunes before duty compelled his departure.
Margaret’s mother expressed surprise that he had not left any medicine, but –
“He could see the lassie’s no’ needin’ any the day, an’ her singin’,” as Big John put it, “A drap o’ Shand’s better than a’ yer tablets!”
When they left for home Jimmy remarked to Big John “That’s the kind o’ thing that maks my job seem real worthwhile. Ye ken” (and there wasn’t the slightest doubt but he meant it) “I’d rather hae been in there than in the Albert Hall.”
His music mow was setting feet tapping in his street, in streets all over Britain. His records were selling well not only in places like Canada and Australia but also in Paris and Singapore.
There was the story in the early ‘fifties about the young emigrant in Canada who had never known what home-sickness was – until she heard a record of Jimmy playing reels.
Halfway through it she was crying ; and at the end of it she was off to book a passage on the next ship home.
Surely the time was ripe for him to go overseas?
The grand tours abroad were to come – but in 1952 the entire band came within a grace note of switching to harps……
Early evening in November, and they were on their way from London to an engagement in Elsdon, Northumberland. Jimmy was at the wheel of the big black saloon of which he was wont to remark that it was the best vehicle that he had ever had for freighting band and instruments around the country. It was running sweetly, as well it might, for he had recently spent £300 on it ; new engine, new gearbox, new tyres, new lamps. Near Doncaster, about a mile back, the sixteen-gallon tank had been filled. ‘Elsdon, here we come.’
Jimmy rubbed the inside of the windscreen. It wasn’t condensation.
“Getting’ a bit foggy, lads.”
Drummer Owney peered out of the back window. “Seems pretty clear fae here, Jim.”
“Well, it’s definitely – wait a minute ; it seems tae be inside!
He slammed the brakes on, and “oot, quick as ye can!”
Up came the bonnet, and a tongue of flame licked round his wrist.
The ropes holding John White’s double bass and Owney’s drum kit on the roof-rack were hurriedly slashed and all the instrument taken well off the road into a field as smoke puttered then billowed blackly and pungently from the car.
Norrie Whitelaw ran up the road to warn traffic of the hazard.
An emergency phone call went to the Fire Service while the pall of smoke spread wider and higher, and the band could only helplessly keep their distance from it since it was liable to explode at any minute.
A little car came streaking out of the night, saw Norrie too late, swerved, grazed him so that he tumbled into the ditch, zoomed up a bank and stopped after a gigantic leap inches from a tree with the doors now jammed. Jimmy and the rest of the band ran over to let the young couple out, only shaken fortunately. (Norrie only bruised a hip).
Meanwhile the Fire Brigade arrived – then almost immediately another one from a different direction. The car was on a boundary between their areas.
The smoke continued to billow for a few more minutes while a discussion took place, then WHOOSH! The black pall suddenly rolled aside as forty-foot flames leapt up. It was a big car, and it ended in a big way.
And as the windows writhed and melted and the brand-new tyres swelled monstrously the eyes of Jimmy and Owney sadly met.
“Pitty aboot the bairns’ toys, Owney; ” glove puppets they had bought in London for their ladies and left in the car.
Jimmy thought highly of that Packard.
In January 1951 I was doing a job for him in a shop in Arbroath he planned to open. (In the long run it wasn’t opened).
He arrived on this particular afternoon beaming, having done 85 or maybe it was 95 on the way from Dundee. A tune to celebrate?
And hoo no’!
He strapped on a box over his overcoat and gave a wonderfully stirring rendering, not of Scots dance, but the Old Comrades March, one of his own great favourites. It was never more apparent than an accordion was like a toy in his hands.
Following this the band traveled in their own little bus with the opening bars of Bonnie Dundee painted on it.
And though Jimmy liked driving he was now getting a bit too much of it, so he took on ex-taxi driver, Andy Gow.
Now they could all get a little sleep on the long journeys home – somewhat fitful naps it is true at times when Andy was in one helluva hurry ; and he often enough was.
Andy’s expertise was really put to the test when in 1954 they went to Ireland.
But surely, with so many demands for their services, it did not make much sense for a Scottish Country Dance Band to agree to a tour of Ireland?
Nevertheless, on Saturday night, 11th September 1954, the bus, Andy and the Band sailed to Belfast from whence they immediately sped to Dublin for a couple of broadcasts. The tour had started the way it was to go on.
The twenty-two one-night stands were to involve 3,000 miles of travel up and down, back and forth across the little bit of heaven that once fell from out the sky.
Jimmy could have wished for a more logical sequence in the engagements. As it was, the bus, bearing the band’s name, passed and repassed through various districts pursuing their eccentrically laid out timetable. No doubt this continued, if inadvertent keeping of their name before the public had at least a little to do with the near-riotous enthusiasm which greeted them everywhere ; modestly enough Jimmy thinks it had.
At Cappagh White, near Tipperary, the bus was welcomed by a pipe band playing Scotland the Brave. And for the dance that night no cramping hall was booked, but a vast marquee capable of having 2,000 crammed into it. Actually, a crowd of 10,000 turned up, some from fifty miles away…..The dance committee patrolled round the outside bulging walls with shillelaghs to dissuade would-be gate-crashers. But as the evening wore on the walls were rolled up out of the way, so that only the marquee roof uselessly marked the ridiculous attempt to limit the Shand magic to a select 2,000.
(In fact before the band even got out of the bus there was such a crowd around it that the door could be opened only with the greatest difficulty).
The dance went on until 3am. Ex blacksmith Norrie Whitelaw could at least relax after the hardest spell of work he’d ever had – holding the piano in place with one hand against the crush of bodies while he played with the other. Jimmy was still to be besieged for almost another three hours by autograph hunters. He might well have signed himself Mr Scotland for such he had been dubbed as soon as they arrived in Ireland.
Crowds ; hundreds, thousands. And then there was this one lonely little teenage fan……
It was at Glenfarne, a little place. And the girl with the caliper sat by herself watching the early comers dancing to gramophone records. She was perhaps not even wistful – cripple girls get used to not being asked to dance.
And then, incredibly, Mr Scotland himself was standing before her, and with the humble courtesy of – of a prince surely –
“Will ye hae this ane wi’ me?”
And she who had not had much hope of even getting through the crush to get his autograph was borne away in an old-fashioned waltz by the maestro himself.
In Cork, where they appeared at the celebrated Arcadia Ballroom, the crowds in the streets caused such obstructions that police were up at the hotel hours before the dance was due to begin, imploring Jimmy to have the doors opened to get the people off the streets.
The hall held 1,400. More than 3,000 more than that paid for admission.
“We’ll let them in at the front,” explained one policeman to Andy the driver, “and when it starts to get a bit too crowded sure we’ll start lettin’ them out the back!”
Andy will always remember the sweating, harassed waitress at the buffet when he managed to get to it for a cup of tea –
“An’ it’ll be one on THEM now ye are is it?” she snapped with a glare. “Well I hope Jimmy Shand stays in Scotland for evermore!”
Nor will he ever forget the 300 miles from the last dance at Tralee to Belfast to meet the boat. It was after 3am when the dance finished, and they’d have to get a move on, which the bus certainly did, until near Ninagh the brakes were slapped on at encountering a herd of cattle.
And it was a herd! It would have gladdened the heart of a film producer intent on making a really lavish epic on the west – the kind of man who thinks BIG, for cattle occupied the road for the next twenty miles, forcing driver Andy to think small – about 5 m.p.h., in fact. They made the boat with three minutes to spare.
Son of Forfar Pipe Band’s Pipe Major (granddad was also a piper) he had enough confidence in his fiddle playing by the age of fifteen to enter at the Alyth Festival of 1933. Expert fiddler and on everything to do with the fiddle, Jim Barrie was there. He spoke encouragingly to the laddie in the short breeks.
“Playin’ lang, son?”
“Oh aye, fair while.”
“Mind ye there’s some guid players in yer class here the day.”
“What class dae ye mean?”
“Under sixteen of course, what else?”
“I’m entered for the open class.”
“Well, well! Ye realise a’ wha ye’re up against? The open ; an’ ye’re what, about fifteen?”
“Aye.”
“Look – tell ye what, son ; would ye like me tae listen tae ye first – I would like tae hear ye……”
“Just here? Now, ye mean?”
“Just that ; an’ dinna be nervous, son ; just dae yer best.”
Sid did his best.
A sure bow began to draw out the haunting slow march, Dark Lochnagar. The tune is a perfect setting for Lord Byron’s poem about the queen of the mountains of his beloved Deeside ; but now the melody stood alone, evoking the wildness, the majesty,the steep frowning glories, the exile’s yearning eerily conveyed in the playing of a laddie who had never been away from home.
What could Jim Barrie say after such an astonishing revelation of talent? Hardly anything, really. Signed “Aye,” perhaps ; put a hand on the laddie’s shoulder.
To the other mature competitors he was much more voluble. In view of what he had just heard he spoke to them of theirchances – which he confidently placed at nil.
And he was right. The laddie in the short breeks came first.
Two years later, at seventeen, Sid Chalmers, apprentice plumber, was Scottish Fiddle Champion.
Any day now, surely, Jimmy Shand would hear of him, want him in the band. Only, strangely, the laddie fae the county town so weel-versed in country style music seems to have harkened to the sirens ; and headed south. Give him his due, he didn’t give up the fiddle, but did feel the need to supplement it.
To this end he took up what his father probably – and his grandfather would have definitely – considered parodies, caricatures of the bagpipes ; he learned to play clarinet and saxophone. This doubling allowed him more scope getting engagements with band bands in London and round about.
Sid was 32 and back home in 1952 when Jimmy Shand sought a replacement fiddler. In return, many fiddlers wanted Shand as their leader. Jimmy had a sheaf of applications.
Perhaps old friend Jim Barrie would help him sort them out?
“Ye want me tae help ye get a fiddler?”
“That’s whit these letters are a’ aboot. Would ye hae a look through them when ye have time?”
Barrie pushed the letters to one side. “I’ll tell you about a fiddler,” he said ; “nae need tae gae through this lot.”
Sid became the band’s new fiddler (and youngest member) before Jimmy had even heard him play.
Incidentally, Jim Barrie not only provided Shand with a fiddler, but on occasions many a tune. And there was the almost unbelievable lucky day when his own stock of tunes was spectacularly enlarged.
An official with Dundee Cleansing Department, he had been watching a load tipped for destruction, when –
“Stop!”
The book was obviously old – but probably only a fiddler’s eye would have glimpsed the faded Gow………
The volume was rescued and dusted off with care. Niel Gow’s Repository of 1804 ; the legendary fiddler’s collection of 300 tunes!
Soon he was dipping into this on Shand’s behalf. One request was for no less than ‘ten new marches.’ Shand didn’t read music, but gained the required augmentation of his repertoire through Barrie whistling each of the recommended marches three times, from then on to be permanently recorded in Jimmy’s memory. Not only merely recorded, but also to undergo the unexplainable transmutation which stamped them his own from the first playing. As no less an authority than Dr. Herbert Wiseman, Scottish music chief of the BBC said during a lecture in Clydebank “In the matter of Scottish dance music Jimmy Shand has a lilt in his playing that none of the others ever had.”
Now it was always Jimmy Shand and His Band…..
It was to the group the bigger and bigger successes came.
Yet, in a way something of a pity. For despite the rapport that obtained – and which Jimmy Shand’s Band suited better as a title – the leader was now heard more as one of the boys.
No matter how much this effacing blending-in suited his nature it has to be regretted as a loss ; a loss to the public of one of the greatest individualistic instrumental soloists of his generation.
As celebrated clarinetists, trumpeters, even drummers regularly stepped out from in front of their groups to demonstrate their virtuosity, so also should Jimmy have done ; but, being Jimmy, he didn’t.
His solo playing was now mainly confined to appearances at hospitals, old folks’ clubs and other charitable causes.
The most individualistic of soloists ; yet surely the most diffident.
What other accordion player ever got so much out of the accordion with such a minimum movement of the bellows? Surely the most unflourishing, unflashiest of styles.
There was the little girl who was taken to a demonstration concert in Peebles when Jimmy was touring for Forbes the music-seller –
With round eyes she commented afterwards “The man just came out, and just stood ; and the music came itself!”
And there was the time when he appeared at Newcastle Empire, and a slightly inebriated, somewhat truculent young man demanded to see him backstage. Shand allowed him to be let into the dressing room ; asked him what he wanted.
“Just want to complain you’re taking in the public. We paid to hear you play, you know”!
“Well?”
“Only you’re not playing. You don’t take me in! And you haven’t even got the sense to make it look more realistic! Anybody could tell you’re miming.”
“Think so?”
“I know so! Must think the public’s stupid – why man you’ve hardly been opening the bellows!”
“A’ richt, lauddie.” He strapped on the box.
“Watch closely, now, mind.” With one hand he held closed all but one of the accordion pleats. With the other land he launched into the tumultuous arpeggios of the melodeonists’ showpiece, the High Level Hornpipe, at speed.
The young man’s mouth opened far wider than the bellows. Then he was all apologies, eventually almost backing in awe out of the dressing room. Leter he put his apologies and enthusiasm into a letter.
By the ‘fifties records and broadcasts had established the band as what could be called the Top Teuchter Ensemble.
And as at first sight Jimmy’s still style dumbfounded an audience, so also did personal appearances of the band sometimes cause surprise.
They were five ; and would turn up for concert or dance to find places laid for them in the ante-room for a band of twelve.
Arriving at one remote village hall they heard one committee member whisper indignantly to another “B’Goad he’s only brung half the band.”
(Possibly the impression of the band being much larger came about through an enthusiastic turning up of the volume when they were on the air!)
Jimmy’s success was not without accompanying strains.
David was growing, his dad was, of necessity, away from home as lot. Despite the fantastic distances traveled to get back right after an engagement was over, very great demands must have been made upon Anne at this time.
Once I was in their house in Sutherland Street painting the kitchenette….Jimmy had set off for England that morning, and his departing words had been “Mind the lauddie, now, Anne.”
“Of coorse, of coorse ; I’ll pey attention. Awa’ ye go now, the baund’ll be waitin’ for ye. David’ll be a’ richt – I’ll mind yer lauddie.”
And lightly, as she cleared up the breakfast dishes after Jimmy had gone, “Aye – him an’ his lauddie!”
After lunch the phone rang. “There he is,” she said…..”Aye, aye Jimmy, he’s a’ richt…..
“What did I tell ye?” she said as she put the phone down – “Is the lauddie a’ richt?” – always his first words nae matter whaur he phones fae.”
In 1953, at the age of eight, David developed a severe attack of pneumonia and was admitted to King’s Cross Hospital. Dr. Jamieson was there –
………thanks to the availability of antibiotic remedies he made an excellent recovery, and after about a fortnight he was able to return home. In the same year, however, he fell ill again with a respiratory infection……This happened just a few days before Christmas….. Jimmy brought a tape of himself and the band so that we could have music in the ward on Christmas Day……”Just watch David’s face when he hears it” – and it was a great joy to see the laddie’s face light up as he listened with rapt attention.
Jimmy and Anne had showered quite expensive toys on David, and when the time came for him to go home Jimmy insisted that all the toys should remain in the ward for the other kids ; “You see, Bill, we bought twa o’ everything – the same things are waitin’ for him at hame.” This was a very typical gesture……
In 1949, the All-Britain Accordion Championships were revived, sponsored by the National Accordion Organisation of Great Britain.
There were classes for solo, duet, trio/quartet, bands, from junior and elementary to advanced, and amateur to open.
Area winners went to London to compete in the National Championships on Accordion Day, which finished with a Grand Evening Concert in Central Hall, Westminster, of virtuoso talent of not only the newly-elected Champions but also invited celebrities from the Continent as well as Britain. Jimmy was invited in 1950. I was in his house the day before he left for that particular Accordion Day Concert, and I can still remember the absorbed, meticulous patience he was devoting to tuning his box, which he had taken apart – to me looking as if he had at last achieved the ultimate in the instrument’s response with some unearthly inspired hornpipe so that it fragmented on the final chord. And I was indeed flattered when he added “Hoo does that soond tae you?”
Well, it appears to have been all right on the night!
There, the only busker among the cream of British and Continental Champions, his head averted much of the time as if in distaste at his playing, he stopped the show with Inverness Gathering, Braes o’ Tullimet, John Cheap the Chapman. Small wonder that the event was later to be known as the Jimmy Shand Show.
Quoting from the Accordion Day Souvenir Programme for the following year which presumably based comment on impressions gained in 1950 –
Bringing a further individual touch to the programme, and representing as he does a mighty accordion stronghold north of the Border, is Scots accordionist Jimmy Shand, whose own genial personality on stage reflects the sturdy joviality of the Scots songs and dances in whose interpretation he is the unchallenged master.
In 1950 he appeared as a straight soloist. In ’51 he was featured as a novelty spot playing for a team of dancers. In subsequent years it was Jimmy Shand and his Band and the Highland Country Dancers and programme notes like ‘Accordion Day would hardly be complete without the contribution of Jimmy Shand.’
The Shand name and sound were known widely abroad by the ‘fifties.
Not just heard of – heard more and more regularly.
For instance, a radio station in Moosejaw, Saskatchewan was putting out a weekly half-hour of Shand recordings.
And the records themselves were being acquired by Scots exiles all over the earth ; pounced upon on home trips ; dispatched by friends and relations in answer to urgent requests from mansions, penthouses, hunting-lodges, adobes, barracks, clubs, societies, yachts, naval bases, aerodromes, and a variety of outposts. The precise rhythms of the schottische, the reel, the polka and strathspey crept out from igloos, grass shacks, through the bead-curtains of oriental music-shops.
Igloos? Surely there were not many Scots exiles living in igloos?
The Eskimos themselves love his music. And it was from Dundee a hundred years earlier that the whaling crews came who taught them the dances. And the manipulation of the squeeze-box. Many Eskimo women still play the accordion.
The records were now regularly in the Top Ten – reaching sales of 50,000 and more. Jimmy had come a long way from the laddie with a shop o’ his Dad’s box ‘haein’ a choon’ doon at the dykes at East Wemyss…..But in perhaps the most important way he really had not……..
Neighbour from the very start of Jimmy coming to live in Sutherland Street, male nurse Andy Sutherland recalls –
“On a fine night he’d come out and sit on the garden dyke, and he’d play. Often he’d persuade Big John Tosh, the police sergeant from No.25, to bring his accordion out for a duet.
“Before you knew it all the neighbours were out and there was an eightsome reel in full swing. The music and the word would get round, attracting more and more people, until some nights the street would be completely blocked and traffic further up brought to a standstill.
“And there was a permanent understanding that any time the wife and I had a few friends in we’d only to knock on Jimmy’s door and he’d be right over to entertain them.
“The Shand’s were the best of neighbours in every way. Like Jim, my missus had trouble with her stomach, and they used to swap tablets and powders.
“Jim loved pottering about in his garage, working on a car or a motor-bike, or making toys for the ladies. We had a son then, ages with his David, and the two of them were great pals, as at home in each others home as in their own.
“Many a time David would be playing with my Andrew when we’d hear his mother calling for him and he’d plead “Dinna tell her I’m here!” he’d be that absorbed in their wee ploys.
“I helped Jim with little jobs on his vehicles when I could ; went with him on a few trips and did a bit of relief driving.
“I think it helped Anne and him a bit to see how my wee boy unreservedly accepted theirs as a completely normal playmate, and I was glad to be able to use my own specialized experience to remind him that David was a high grade handicapped child.
“Often Jimmy would step across from his garage to show me some toy he was making ; or perhaps he would be preoccupied in the making of something else…..
“What do ye think o’ this Andra?” he would ask ; “Dy-dy-dydill-aye-di-dy-dy-dy…….” I was privileged to be the first to hear many of his compositions.
The late police sergeant John Tosh was not a man who would have been readily taken in by false modesty, insincere socialising. To Jimmy’s journalist friend Alan Dunsmore he said –
“Y’know, we havena got the right focus on Jimmy Shand. He’s no’ jist a braw box-player – an’ yon music has body to it, it’s better than a diet o’ meat ; when he plays ‘Rowan Tree’ ye can see it growin’…….even when my Doug was a bairn on my knee, he’d sit quiet when any other band was on the wireless – but wi’ Jimmy’s he’d jump up and doon like a mad ane an’ near fa’ aff! But it’s no’ just that Jimmy’s a braw box-player here for a whilie an’ then awa’. Shand’s pert o’ Scottish history. He’ll live lang efter he’s deid.”
Big John went to the village of Errol with Jimmy one time to visit mutual friends.
A woman from across the way called in when she heard the music, and wondered if Mr Shand could spare a minute to say hello to her daughter Margaret, long a fan of his, and bed-ridden for more than a year.
It turned into a three-hour long concert which lured the blacksmith from his anvil, the painter from his brushes, the bobby from his beat, the cattleman from his byre, and other friends and neighbours upstairs to the sick girl’s room.
Then the doctor called and stayed to hear a couple of tunes before duty compelled his departure.
Margaret’s mother expressed surprise that he had not left any medicine, but –
“He could see the lassie’s no’ needin’ any the day, an’ her singin’,” as Big John put it, “A drap o’ Shand’s better than a’ yer tablets!”
When they left for home Jimmy remarked to Big John “That’s the kind o’ thing that maks my job seem real worthwhile. Ye ken” (and there wasn’t the slightest doubt but he meant it) “I’d rather hae been in there than in the Albert Hall.”
His music mow was setting feet tapping in his street, in streets all over Britain. His records were selling well not only in places like Canada and Australia but also in Paris and Singapore.
There was the story in the early ‘fifties about the young emigrant in Canada who had never known what home-sickness was – until she heard a record of Jimmy playing reels.
Halfway through it she was crying ; and at the end of it she was off to book a passage on the next ship home.
Surely the time was ripe for him to go overseas?
The grand tours abroad were to come – but in 1952 the entire band came within a grace note of switching to harps……
Early evening in November, and they were on their way from London to an engagement in Elsdon, Northumberland. Jimmy was at the wheel of the big black saloon of which he was wont to remark that it was the best vehicle that he had ever had for freighting band and instruments around the country. It was running sweetly, as well it might, for he had recently spent £300 on it ; new engine, new gearbox, new tyres, new lamps. Near Doncaster, about a mile back, the sixteen-gallon tank had been filled. ‘Elsdon, here we come.’
Jimmy rubbed the inside of the windscreen. It wasn’t condensation.
“Getting’ a bit foggy, lads.”
Drummer Owney peered out of the back window. “Seems pretty clear fae here, Jim.”
“Well, it’s definitely – wait a minute ; it seems tae be inside!
He slammed the brakes on, and “oot, quick as ye can!”
Up came the bonnet, and a tongue of flame licked round his wrist.
The ropes holding John White’s double bass and Owney’s drum kit on the roof-rack were hurriedly slashed and all the instrument taken well off the road into a field as smoke puttered then billowed blackly and pungently from the car.
Norrie Whitelaw ran up the road to warn traffic of the hazard.
An emergency phone call went to the Fire Service while the pall of smoke spread wider and higher, and the band could only helplessly keep their distance from it since it was liable to explode at any minute.
A little car came streaking out of the night, saw Norrie too late, swerved, grazed him so that he tumbled into the ditch, zoomed up a bank and stopped after a gigantic leap inches from a tree with the doors now jammed. Jimmy and the rest of the band ran over to let the young couple out, only shaken fortunately. (Norrie only bruised a hip).
Meanwhile the Fire Brigade arrived – then almost immediately another one from a different direction. The car was on a boundary between their areas.
The smoke continued to billow for a few more minutes while a discussion took place, then WHOOSH! The black pall suddenly rolled aside as forty-foot flames leapt up. It was a big car, and it ended in a big way.
And as the windows writhed and melted and the brand-new tyres swelled monstrously the eyes of Jimmy and Owney sadly met.
“Pitty aboot the bairns’ toys, Owney; ” glove puppets they had bought in London for their ladies and left in the car.
Jimmy thought highly of that Packard.
In January 1951 I was doing a job for him in a shop in Arbroath he planned to open. (In the long run it wasn’t opened).
He arrived on this particular afternoon beaming, having done 85 or maybe it was 95 on the way from Dundee. A tune to celebrate?
And hoo no’!
He strapped on a box over his overcoat and gave a wonderfully stirring rendering, not of Scots dance, but the Old Comrades March, one of his own great favourites. It was never more apparent than an accordion was like a toy in his hands.
Following this the band traveled in their own little bus with the opening bars of Bonnie Dundee painted on it.
And though Jimmy liked driving he was now getting a bit too much of it, so he took on ex-taxi driver, Andy Gow.
Now they could all get a little sleep on the long journeys home – somewhat fitful naps it is true at times when Andy was in one helluva hurry ; and he often enough was.
Andy’s expertise was really put to the test when in 1954 they went to Ireland.
But surely, with so many demands for their services, it did not make much sense for a Scottish Country Dance Band to agree to a tour of Ireland?
Nevertheless, on Saturday night, 11th September 1954, the bus, Andy and the Band sailed to Belfast from whence they immediately sped to Dublin for a couple of broadcasts. The tour had started the way it was to go on.
The twenty-two one-night stands were to involve 3,000 miles of travel up and down, back and forth across the little bit of heaven that once fell from out the sky.
Jimmy could have wished for a more logical sequence in the engagements. As it was, the bus, bearing the band’s name, passed and repassed through various districts pursuing their eccentrically laid out timetable. No doubt this continued, if inadvertent keeping of their name before the public had at least a little to do with the near-riotous enthusiasm which greeted them everywhere ; modestly enough Jimmy thinks it had.
At Cappagh White, near Tipperary, the bus was welcomed by a pipe band playing Scotland the Brave. And for the dance that night no cramping hall was booked, but a vast marquee capable of having 2,000 crammed into it. Actually, a crowd of 10,000 turned up, some from fifty miles away…..The dance committee patrolled round the outside bulging walls with shillelaghs to dissuade would-be gate-crashers. But as the evening wore on the walls were rolled up out of the way, so that only the marquee roof uselessly marked the ridiculous attempt to limit the Shand magic to a select 2,000.
(In fact before the band even got out of the bus there was such a crowd around it that the door could be opened only with the greatest difficulty).
The dance went on until 3am. Ex blacksmith Norrie Whitelaw could at least relax after the hardest spell of work he’d ever had – holding the piano in place with one hand against the crush of bodies while he played with the other. Jimmy was still to be besieged for almost another three hours by autograph hunters. He might well have signed himself Mr Scotland for such he had been dubbed as soon as they arrived in Ireland.
Crowds ; hundreds, thousands. And then there was this one lonely little teenage fan……
It was at Glenfarne, a little place. And the girl with the caliper sat by herself watching the early comers dancing to gramophone records. She was perhaps not even wistful – cripple girls get used to not being asked to dance.
And then, incredibly, Mr Scotland himself was standing before her, and with the humble courtesy of – of a prince surely –
“Will ye hae this ane wi’ me?”
And she who had not had much hope of even getting through the crush to get his autograph was borne away in an old-fashioned waltz by the maestro himself.
In Cork, where they appeared at the celebrated Arcadia Ballroom, the crowds in the streets caused such obstructions that police were up at the hotel hours before the dance was due to begin, imploring Jimmy to have the doors opened to get the people off the streets.
The hall held 1,400. More than 3,000 more than that paid for admission.
“We’ll let them in at the front,” explained one policeman to Andy the driver, “and when it starts to get a bit too crowded sure we’ll start lettin’ them out the back!”
Andy will always remember the sweating, harassed waitress at the buffet when he managed to get to it for a cup of tea –
“An’ it’ll be one on THEM now ye are is it?” she snapped with a glare. “Well I hope Jimmy Shand stays in Scotland for evermore!”
Nor will he ever forget the 300 miles from the last dance at Tralee to Belfast to meet the boat. It was after 3am when the dance finished, and they’d have to get a move on, which the bus certainly did, until near Ninagh the brakes were slapped on at encountering a herd of cattle.
And it was a herd! It would have gladdened the heart of a film producer intent on making a really lavish epic on the west – the kind of man who thinks BIG, for cattle occupied the road for the next twenty miles, forcing driver Andy to think small – about 5 m.p.h., in fact. They made the boat with three minutes to spare.
