Another Farewell - Jimmy Shand.
Micheil
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Sir James Shand, better known as Jimmy Shand, the Scottish
accordionist and band leader who has died aged 92, was probably the
most famous exponent of Scottish country dance music in the world.
Having formed the Jimmy Shand Band in 1945, it was in the 1950s and
1960s that he became a household name. He appeared on television
shows, notably The White Heather Club, and in 1955 had a Top Twenty
hit with The Bluebell Polka. Traffic in Aberdeen was brought to a
standstill when he gave an open-air concert which attracted 20,000
people.
As well as being a popular request on BBC Radio's Housewife's Choice,
Shand appeared on Top of the Pops. The Rolling Stones' drummer Charlie
Watts once confessed that a recording of country dances made by Shand
in 1949 was a great favourite.
"I love his music," Watts said. "It's the drumming. It's real
dancehall stuff. The record swings like mad. It's always the record
people put on in our house at Christmas parties and we all end up
doing jigs and reels." The Queen and the Queen Mother were also among
Shand's fans, and over the years he gave Royal Command performances at
Balmoral, Holyroodhouse, Glamis and Windsor.
James Shand, one of nine children, was born on January 28 1908 at East
Wemyss, in the heart of the Fife coalfield. His father, a ploughman
who had left the land for the mines for the better wages, taught
himself to play the melodeon and Jimmy followed in his footsteps.
At 14, he left school to go down the pit and he worked as a miner
until the General Strike of 1926. "After that," he recalled, "there
wasn't much work." So he joined the Fife Power Company and saved
enough money to buy a motorbike - the first of many he would own. One
afternoon in 1933, Shand took a ride on his bike across the Tay Bridge
to Dundee, where he went into a music shop to try out the accordions.
The shop keeper heard him play and promptly offered him a job as a
salesman and demonstrator.
During the Second World War, Shand served as a fireman and in the
evenings, duties permitting, played with a small dance band.
Eventually, he decided to become a full-time musician. "I'd been
broadcasting during the war," he later explained, "and was beginning
to make a wee bit of a name." He had made his first recording in 1933
and gave his first performance on the wireless in 1934. In 1945 he
formed the Jimmy Shand Band and in the post-war years gave regular
Saturday evening performances on the BBC Scottish Home Service, with a
programme of jigs and reels and polkas.
Although Shand's hit with The Bluebell Polka in 1955 earned him no
more than a Ł12 session fee, he went on to earn two gold records and a
silver, and in due course had a locomotive, a racehorse and a public
house named after him. With his frequent appearances on BBC
Television's White Heather Club in the 1960s, his somewhat austere,
reticent, moustachioed figure - glimpsed playing the accordion through
a whirl of dancers - became a familiar sight to millions of viewers.
Dogged by ill-health, in 1972 Shand retired to his home at
Auchtermuchty, Fife, where he was a revered local figure. In 1978, he
was a subject of the television programme This Is Your Life, and in
1998 Ian Cameron published a biography of him, The Jimmy Shand Story.
In 1990, when Shand was 82, he and his son Jimmy, with Jimmy's band,
made the music video Dancing with the Shands, filmed at a live concert
and country dance in Letham village hall in Angus. When the video was
finally released in 1994, it reached No 9 in the musical video charts
in the first week. When Shand was 88, he saw his portrait, by George
Bruce, unveiled by the Lord Lieutenant of Fife in the National
Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh. "I'm neither up nor doon," he remarked;
but he thought the portrait a good likeness.
Shand was appointed MBE in 1962. He was awarded the Freedom of Fife,
and in 1999 he was knighted, for services to Scottish culture, by the
Prince of Wales during an investiture at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh.
He married, in 1936, Anne Anderson; they had two sons.
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- měcheil
- innis dhomh sgéile mu 'n Thěr nan Ňg...
Glenallan
It is truly the end of an era. I grieve for my childhood already.
Glenallan
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"Micheil" <mic...@arainnmhor.com> wrote in message
news:3a481fa7.13956225@news...
Micheil
<RMB...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>I cannot believe this unassuming Godsend of a man has gone.
>
>It is truly the end of an era. I grieve for my childhood already.
>
>Glenallan
>---------
You're okay, Glenallan - I've taken the piss out of you long enough.
Want to be friends?
~wedding-service~ UK
driving his car into his house up the hill. Time before I saw him was in
Sands shop, he looking Very frail which made it more surprising to see him
driving.
I have taken one of the Very few pictures of Jimmy Shand showing him
smileing which was taken when he played at Glenrothes Hospital, Fife around
1980?
(I must try to find the negs)
--
~wedding-service~ UK
http://www.wedding-service.co.uk
Best wishes ~ d@vid @llison HNC IT Systems
Licentiate of the Royal Photographic Society
da...@wedding-service.co.uk
"Glenallan" <RMB...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:92981o$m1c$1...@neptunium.btinternet.com...
Glenallan
> You're okay, Glenallan - I've taken the piss out of you long enough.
>
> Want to be friends?
---------
That option is permanently closed to you.
I have closed it.
You see, I think you mean every word you say
and 'piss taking' was never your intention.
You will eventually run out of steam and move on
to someone else. I see there are plenty of other
candidates already.
Glenallan
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"Micheil" <mic...@arainnmhor.com> wrote in message
news:3a485b4e.29229883@news...
Micheil
<RMB...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>"Micheil" <mic...@arainnmhor.com> wrote:
>
>> You're okay, Glenallan - I've taken the piss out of you long enough.
>>
>> Want to be friends?
>---------
>
>That option is permanently closed to you.
>I have closed it.
>
>You see, I think you mean every word you say
>and 'piss taking' was never your intention.
>You will eventually run out of steam and move on
>to someone else. I see there are plenty of other
>candidates already.
>
>Glenallan
>---------
I must admit to feeling relief. One has to compromise occasionally,
but in this case I really didn't fancy smiling wearily through the
steady spray of bullshit which is the essence of your personality.