Billy Thom was the most influential Scottish dance band drummer of his era and a musician whose modest description of himself as “just a teuchter drummer” belied the accomplishment of a playing style that graced countless recordings and broadcasts.
He was born in Bridge of Allan on January 20, 1937 and became fascinated with the sound and swing of Scottish dance music through going along to the dances that his father, James, organised at the town’s Victoria Hall. James wasn’t a musician himself but he recognised that the young Billy showed a natural feeling for rhythm and persuaded Willie Gemmel, a neighbour who was lead drummer with Dunblane City Pipe Band, to take Billy on as his pupil at the age of eight.
Billy’s keenness and diligence soon produced rewards and awards. Within two years he was winning prizes at Grade 3 level with the Dunblane band and he moved on to the renowned Red Hackle Pipe Band while still at school. A spare-time job as a grocer’s message boy then led to Billy’s first gig on a drum kit. One day on his after-school round, the well-known bandleader Jim McLeod approached him and asked if he fancied trying out for the dance band he co-led at the time with accordionist Alex McArthur.
The trial went so well that Billy was taken on immediately and later that same year, 1952, he made his first broadcast with the band aged only fifteen. Billy continued to work with the band for the next five years, appearing regularly on radio programmes including Down at the Mains and Children’s Hour, and served his apprenticeship as a joiner until his National Service with the RAF took him to South Wales in 1957.
It was while serving with the RAF that Billy became interested in jazz in general and big bands in particular, a passion that would see him running his own jazz gigs in tandem with his work in Scottish dance bands and cabaret for the rest of his career.
On completing his National Service in 1959, Billy joined Andrew Rankine’s Scottish dance band, going on the road full-time. Then, after two years, he left to join the Jimmy Watson Quintet, a swing band that allowed him to develop his drumming style in a five-year residency at the Rob Roy Motel in Aberfoyle. During this same time he was appearing on The White Heather Club with Bobby MacLeod and Andy Stewart and making albums regularly with accordionist Max Houliston.
Jim Johnstone then became the next of a long list of top bandleaders with whom Billy played and recorded, a list that includes Jimmy Shand, Gordon Patullo and John Carmichael, and the association was to continue with Johnstone’s legendary summer shows at the King James Hotel in Edinburgh until 2003. Billy also worked with singing stars Matt Munro and Vince Hill and ran his own monthly jazz afternoons in the ten years leading up to his death on September 8, 2010.
It is on the Scottish dance music scene that this versatile and always thoroughly professional musician is remembered with particular fondness, however. His contribution to the music was recognised with a lifetime achievement award from the National Association of Accordion and Fiddle Clubs and Jim Johnstone ensured that Billy’s name will live on as long as Scottish dance music is played by composing the Billy Thom Reel in his honour.
Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame is run by
Hands Up for Trad.