Tom Hughes (1908 – 1986)
by Peter Shepheard
B&F December 2015
Tom was born into a farm-working family near St. Boswells in the Scottish Borders in 1908. The whole family were talented musicians. His grandfather Henry Hughes, father Thomas Hughes and two uncles played together in a family band, two or three fiddles, melodeon and tambourine, for the local events, country weddings, harvest home and hiring fair dances. Like his father and grandfather before him, Tom spent his working life as a ploughman on farms in the Border countryside around Jedburgh. Tom was seven years old when he was presented with his first (half size) fiddle made by his grandfather. By the time he left school in 1921, Tom was playing fiddle with his father, traveling by bicycle to play at all the important rural events in the area around Hawick and Jedburgh. Like many traditional musicians in days gone by, Tom learned his music by ear within the family circle and Tom’s style and many of his tunes were learnt from family tradition.
The first time I remember hearing Tom Hughes play the fiddle was in June 1978 at Newcastleton, that gem of a traditional music festival just three miles on the ‘right’ side of the Scottish border. Tom was still playing fiddle on a bench in the cobbled back yard of The Grapes Hotel in the village square. In different quarters of the courtyard several other sessions were going strong. At Tom’s table were a couple of other fiddlers, at times playing together, at times taking turns. I had for a long time been interested in different styles of fiddle playing and Tom’s style immediately impressed me as being distinct from the usual Scottish styles and yet at the same time both Scottish and clearly traditional. My enthusiasm led to a project to record his playing, to explore his repertoire and to gain an understanding of what it was that made his playing so different.
Many hours of recordings were made between 1978 and 1980 and some 20 tunes played by Tom along with other Border fiddlers including Wattie Robson and Bob Hobkirk were issued as an LP by Springthyme Records in 1981 and over the years a new younger generation of fiddle players has taken an interest in Tom’s old Border’s style. The extensive original archive of recordings has now been revisited and digitalized for CD, with detailed transcriptions of 60 tunes included in a new book. The collection includes well-known tunes such as Flouers O’ Edinburgh and East Neuk o’ Fife and old tunes such as Lady Mary Ramsay and Farewell to Whisky – but in distinctive variants. Tom also had many unusual tunes in his repertoire and some that are unique to his family, many hornpipes, some old waltzes and some slow airs including several that have become a classic of the Borders repertoire: Tam’s Old Love Song, Faudenside Polka and Auld Graden Kim.
Tom maintained that he played with his fingers usually on the finger board in chord shapes, lifting his fingers off when they were not needed rather than placing his fingers on the board one at a time, the fiddle cupped in the palm of his left hand, his fingers fairly flat on the finger board, his elbow against his side and the fiddle and the fiddle not always against his chin. His fiddle and bow were set up in a way that suited his style of playing with a less curved bridge facilitating the playing of double stops, ringing strings and chords, using a conventional bow, but with a low tension, held with his thumb below the frog to tension the bow in a Baroque style of the 17th century.
Through Tom’s playing we are able to gain an insight into an old, traditional, fiddle style stretching back through Tom’s family well into the 1800’s – a valuable addition to the better known traditional styles extant in Scotland.
The first time I remember hearing Tom Hughes play the fiddle was in June 1978 at Newcastleton, that gem of a traditional music festival just three miles on the ‘right’ side of the Scottish border. Tom was still playing fiddle on a bench in the cobbled back yard of The Grapes Hotel in the village square. In different quarters of the courtyard several other sessions were going strong. At Tom’s table were a couple of other fiddlers, at times playing together, at times taking turns. I had for a long time been interested in different styles of fiddle playing and Tom’s style immediately impressed me as being distinct from the usual Scottish styles and yet at the same time both Scottish and clearly traditional. My enthusiasm led to a project to record his playing, to explore his repertoire and to gain an understanding of what it was that made his playing so different.
Many hours of recordings were made between 1978 and 1980 and some 20 tunes played by Tom along with other Border fiddlers including Wattie Robson and Bob Hobkirk were issued as an LP by Springthyme Records in 1981 and over the years a new younger generation of fiddle players has taken an interest in Tom’s old Border’s style. The extensive original archive of recordings has now been revisited and digitalized for CD, with detailed transcriptions of 60 tunes included in a new book. The collection includes well-known tunes such as Flouers O’ Edinburgh and East Neuk o’ Fife and old tunes such as Lady Mary Ramsay and Farewell to Whisky – but in distinctive variants. Tom also had many unusual tunes in his repertoire and some that are unique to his family, many hornpipes, some old waltzes and some slow airs including several that have become a classic of the Borders repertoire: Tam’s Old Love Song, Faudenside Polka and Auld Graden Kim.
Tom maintained that he played with his fingers usually on the finger board in chord shapes, lifting his fingers off when they were not needed rather than placing his fingers on the board one at a time, the fiddle cupped in the palm of his left hand, his fingers fairly flat on the finger board, his elbow against his side and the fiddle and the fiddle not always against his chin. His fiddle and bow were set up in a way that suited his style of playing with a less curved bridge facilitating the playing of double stops, ringing strings and chords, using a conventional bow, but with a low tension, held with his thumb below the frog to tension the bow in a Baroque style of the 17th century.
Through Tom’s playing we are able to gain an insight into an old, traditional, fiddle style stretching back through Tom’s family well into the 1800’s – a valuable addition to the better known traditional styles extant in Scotland.