Lanarkshire Bands of Yesteryear
by Charlie Todd
B&F May 2011
After an interesting history of just under 80 years, the mining village of Douglas Water in Lanarkshire, practically ceased to exist when an underground fire, which proved to be uncontrollable, closed the Douglas colliery in 1967. The seams were due to become exhausted two years later anyway so it was deemed uneconomically to extinguish the fire and repair the damage. The fire burned for many years afterwards with a tell-tale trickle of smoke from the pithead gear.
While researching for a local history of the village I came across the following two mentions regarding dance bands in the articles of the late Jim Hamilton (they appeared in his ‘Rigside Record.’) Fortunately Ben Morris of Rigside, an avid collector of old Douglas Water photographs, happened to have photos of three of the bands referred to, which prompted me to collect a few more of bands around the Lanark area in the 40s and 50s. There are still photos while elude me, particularly of the Forth based Locarno Band, Martin Miller’s Leadhills based band and Huge Devine’s resident band at the ‘The Palais’, Lanark’s Loch Ballroom. (This brings to mind a story from my own secondary schooldays at Lanark Grammar. There are two school pals involved John McCahon, nickname ‘Mally’ and ?, nickname ‘Slev’. One summer evening Slev and partner were walking on Hyndford Road having come from ‘The Pally’ and they met Mally and partner heading in the opposite direction i.e. towards the Pally. “Gaun tae The Pally, Mally?” enquired Slev. “Naw, gaun for a bev Slev?” Mally responded and they both continued on their way.)
Douglas Water and other surrounding mining villages had very successful Silver Bands from which several of the band members were drawn. Sam Girdwood, who appears as a young man in The Astorians photograph, gradually became completely blind due to a generic illness, but continued playing right up until the 1970s. Indeed he was my introduction to dance bands since it was his band which played for the Christmas dances at Lanark Grammar School at that time. I also knew Bobby Park, the drummer seated next to him, when he tutored the drummers of The Vale of Clyde Pipe Band in Lanark in the 1980s, by which time he stayed in Biggar. He claimed to be the first drummer in the area to use a hi-hat. It’s fascinating to come across this visual record of them 40 years earlier.
Jim Simpson (excerpt from interview in Vol 2 of The Rigside Record issued June 1992)
“I was never athletic at school. As a boy I played golf at Rigside and got my handicap reduced to ‘plus 2’ which I considered good. However, I gave up the game when I took up playing the accordion.
“Tom Martin gave me instruction when I got ma first accordion. It was an Italian made Crucianelli with 60 bass. Later I got a Hohner and it had 120 bass. I was soon playing at dances with a small group including Tom Martin and me on the accordions, Bobby Kennedy on dulcimer and Jimmy Hynds played the drums. I must give some credit to Tom Martin for being a wonderful player of the concertina. He could finger it crisply and to get vibration he would swing it about, sometime above his head.
“Our small combination played at dances in the village and surrounding hamlets. We played regularly at Carmichael. Before I mention another band I was associated with, I must tell you that my playing improved a lot when I went to get lessons from Mr Adamson in Muirkirk.
(Bobby Adamson, as well as being the composer of Triumph March, also taught Ronnie Easton, Kenny and Stuart Thomson from Cumnock, Brian Griffin and Matt Lammie all of them excellent players.)
“He was a close friend of Jimmy (Darkie) Davidson who was an organist. I remember Darkie went to fill in a gap as organist at St Bride’s Kirk in Douglas. It was supposed to be pro tem. He was there for over 40 years! Darkie was the Douglas Water correspondent for ‘The Hamilton Advertiser’. Nearly every year he wrote an essay about his climb of Tinto to mark his birthday. After Darkie gave up the post, Richard Dunn became the village correspondent.
“I was called on to play with The Georgians Dance Band when there was likely to be a lot of Scottish dances wi’ plenty of burling and hooching. All the instrumentalists in the band were excellent sight-readers and played with sheet music so we got the proper harmonies.”
Jim and I exchanged views about dancing in the 1930s and 40s. It was the years of ‘haud-on-tae-me’ dancing when partners were permitted body contact with their hands and arms. The scene today is quite different when the young attend discos and partners seem to circle round each other as if eyeing each other suspiciously.
Then there was the custom, which seems strange on reflection, that the males sat or stood along one side of the dance floor and the females on the opposite side. When a dance was announced by the MC the more confident males would cross the floor like missiles heading for the partner of their choice. The more bashful men would wait until some couples were already on the floor before deciding to walk across the floor to ask a lady for a dance. The drawback to being reticent was that the lady you intended to ask for a dance might be selected in the first rush. It reduced the prospects of getting the ‘lumber’ you wanted to take home at the end of the dance.
Jim mentioned The Astorians Dance Band from Douglas Water which had what was considered, in the 1940s, a favourite combination of instruments for a small dance band – two saxophones, trumpet, piano accordion, drums and crooner. All the players were fine instrumentalists and I can still recall the pleasure of listening and dancing to them in The Miners’ Welfare Hall in Coalburn.
The McCabe Family (excerpt from interview in Vol 5 of The Rigside Record issued January 1994)
Peter McCabe, son of Pat and Grace, was serving as a motor driver in the RAF and while stationed at RAF Bawdsey in Suffolk, he met his future wife Maud, who was a Radar Operator in the WAAF. Her first visit to Scotland was at Hogmanay 1948, arriving at Ponfeigh Station at 7.30 in the morning. Maud remembers there was snow on the ground and it was very, very cold but she received a warm welcome from Mrs McCabe and the family at 25 Townfoot Place.
Maud was impressed by the friendliness of the people and liked the wonderful spirit shown by the compact community. The lives of the villagers revolved around the Douglas Colliery which gave most of the men employment and the local Co-operative Store which supplied most of the families’ needs by way of food and clothing. The Store was where the women met and could have a blether about village affairs. She thought that the housewives of the miners were very industrious and kept spotless homes.
Peter and Maud were married on 28th June 1949 in St Peter’s church, Ludlow in Shropshire, and in 1952 came to live in Scotland. Maud had been brought up on a farm in Shropshire, not far from Ludlow.
On coming to Scotland, Maud and Peter at first lived at Side Cottage, near Towers Farm, for a year and then for a period at Douglas. Next they were at Douglas Water then Rigside. Their present home is at Douglas Water.
Peter drove lorries for other companies before taking over the McCabe business in 1964. He had taxis, mini-buses and latterly coaches. Maud talked about the commitment of the work in the hiring business – the long hours and being on-call every day of the week. She was a regular driver of the family taxis and mini-buses. She quoted that she can remember after the war and in the 50s, when fewer people had cars of their own, regularly collecting Dance Bands at 2.20 in the morning dance, and delivering the bandsmen to their homes. Sometimes, with less than two hours in bed, she was up again driving at six in the morning taking miners to their work. The firm had regular contract work such as taking children to and from school. When the local pit closed in the late 60s they conveyed miners from Douglas Water and Rigside to Coalburn, Kennox and also to collieries in Ayrshire, including Cairnhill, Barony and Killoch.
While researching for a local history of the village I came across the following two mentions regarding dance bands in the articles of the late Jim Hamilton (they appeared in his ‘Rigside Record.’) Fortunately Ben Morris of Rigside, an avid collector of old Douglas Water photographs, happened to have photos of three of the bands referred to, which prompted me to collect a few more of bands around the Lanark area in the 40s and 50s. There are still photos while elude me, particularly of the Forth based Locarno Band, Martin Miller’s Leadhills based band and Huge Devine’s resident band at the ‘The Palais’, Lanark’s Loch Ballroom. (This brings to mind a story from my own secondary schooldays at Lanark Grammar. There are two school pals involved John McCahon, nickname ‘Mally’ and ?, nickname ‘Slev’. One summer evening Slev and partner were walking on Hyndford Road having come from ‘The Pally’ and they met Mally and partner heading in the opposite direction i.e. towards the Pally. “Gaun tae The Pally, Mally?” enquired Slev. “Naw, gaun for a bev Slev?” Mally responded and they both continued on their way.)
Douglas Water and other surrounding mining villages had very successful Silver Bands from which several of the band members were drawn. Sam Girdwood, who appears as a young man in The Astorians photograph, gradually became completely blind due to a generic illness, but continued playing right up until the 1970s. Indeed he was my introduction to dance bands since it was his band which played for the Christmas dances at Lanark Grammar School at that time. I also knew Bobby Park, the drummer seated next to him, when he tutored the drummers of The Vale of Clyde Pipe Band in Lanark in the 1980s, by which time he stayed in Biggar. He claimed to be the first drummer in the area to use a hi-hat. It’s fascinating to come across this visual record of them 40 years earlier.
Jim Simpson (excerpt from interview in Vol 2 of The Rigside Record issued June 1992)
“I was never athletic at school. As a boy I played golf at Rigside and got my handicap reduced to ‘plus 2’ which I considered good. However, I gave up the game when I took up playing the accordion.
“Tom Martin gave me instruction when I got ma first accordion. It was an Italian made Crucianelli with 60 bass. Later I got a Hohner and it had 120 bass. I was soon playing at dances with a small group including Tom Martin and me on the accordions, Bobby Kennedy on dulcimer and Jimmy Hynds played the drums. I must give some credit to Tom Martin for being a wonderful player of the concertina. He could finger it crisply and to get vibration he would swing it about, sometime above his head.
“Our small combination played at dances in the village and surrounding hamlets. We played regularly at Carmichael. Before I mention another band I was associated with, I must tell you that my playing improved a lot when I went to get lessons from Mr Adamson in Muirkirk.
(Bobby Adamson, as well as being the composer of Triumph March, also taught Ronnie Easton, Kenny and Stuart Thomson from Cumnock, Brian Griffin and Matt Lammie all of them excellent players.)
“He was a close friend of Jimmy (Darkie) Davidson who was an organist. I remember Darkie went to fill in a gap as organist at St Bride’s Kirk in Douglas. It was supposed to be pro tem. He was there for over 40 years! Darkie was the Douglas Water correspondent for ‘The Hamilton Advertiser’. Nearly every year he wrote an essay about his climb of Tinto to mark his birthday. After Darkie gave up the post, Richard Dunn became the village correspondent.
“I was called on to play with The Georgians Dance Band when there was likely to be a lot of Scottish dances wi’ plenty of burling and hooching. All the instrumentalists in the band were excellent sight-readers and played with sheet music so we got the proper harmonies.”
Jim and I exchanged views about dancing in the 1930s and 40s. It was the years of ‘haud-on-tae-me’ dancing when partners were permitted body contact with their hands and arms. The scene today is quite different when the young attend discos and partners seem to circle round each other as if eyeing each other suspiciously.
Then there was the custom, which seems strange on reflection, that the males sat or stood along one side of the dance floor and the females on the opposite side. When a dance was announced by the MC the more confident males would cross the floor like missiles heading for the partner of their choice. The more bashful men would wait until some couples were already on the floor before deciding to walk across the floor to ask a lady for a dance. The drawback to being reticent was that the lady you intended to ask for a dance might be selected in the first rush. It reduced the prospects of getting the ‘lumber’ you wanted to take home at the end of the dance.
Jim mentioned The Astorians Dance Band from Douglas Water which had what was considered, in the 1940s, a favourite combination of instruments for a small dance band – two saxophones, trumpet, piano accordion, drums and crooner. All the players were fine instrumentalists and I can still recall the pleasure of listening and dancing to them in The Miners’ Welfare Hall in Coalburn.
The McCabe Family (excerpt from interview in Vol 5 of The Rigside Record issued January 1994)
Peter McCabe, son of Pat and Grace, was serving as a motor driver in the RAF and while stationed at RAF Bawdsey in Suffolk, he met his future wife Maud, who was a Radar Operator in the WAAF. Her first visit to Scotland was at Hogmanay 1948, arriving at Ponfeigh Station at 7.30 in the morning. Maud remembers there was snow on the ground and it was very, very cold but she received a warm welcome from Mrs McCabe and the family at 25 Townfoot Place.
Maud was impressed by the friendliness of the people and liked the wonderful spirit shown by the compact community. The lives of the villagers revolved around the Douglas Colliery which gave most of the men employment and the local Co-operative Store which supplied most of the families’ needs by way of food and clothing. The Store was where the women met and could have a blether about village affairs. She thought that the housewives of the miners were very industrious and kept spotless homes.
Peter and Maud were married on 28th June 1949 in St Peter’s church, Ludlow in Shropshire, and in 1952 came to live in Scotland. Maud had been brought up on a farm in Shropshire, not far from Ludlow.
On coming to Scotland, Maud and Peter at first lived at Side Cottage, near Towers Farm, for a year and then for a period at Douglas. Next they were at Douglas Water then Rigside. Their present home is at Douglas Water.
Peter drove lorries for other companies before taking over the McCabe business in 1964. He had taxis, mini-buses and latterly coaches. Maud talked about the commitment of the work in the hiring business – the long hours and being on-call every day of the week. She was a regular driver of the family taxis and mini-buses. She quoted that she can remember after the war and in the 50s, when fewer people had cars of their own, regularly collecting Dance Bands at 2.20 in the morning dance, and delivering the bandsmen to their homes. Sometimes, with less than two hours in bed, she was up again driving at six in the morning taking miners to their work. The firm had regular contract work such as taking children to and from school. When the local pit closed in the late 60s they conveyed miners from Douglas Water and Rigside to Coalburn, Kennox and also to collieries in Ayrshire, including Cairnhill, Barony and Killoch.
