Jim Halcrow is one of the most revered musicians on the Scottish dance band scene, a hero at home in Shetland and an international ambassador for Shetland music.
Jim was born on August 10th, 1934 in Scalloway on the Shetland mainland. His grandmother played the button key accordion and there was an organ in the house on which Jim’s ear for music soon became apparent but the musicians who made the biggest impression on him were the itinerant players, including Blind Geordie and Curly MacKay, who used to busk along the shore on Scalloway’s regatta days and public holidays.
On leaving school Jim was determined to buy a piano accordion but on an apprentice’s earnings of eightpence ha’penny (about four new pence) an hour, it took him two years to save up the £22 he needed to buy his first accordion.
Once in possession of this second hand Alvari 80 bass, the seventeen year old quickly adapted the fingering he had taught himself on the organ and without a formal music lesson or the ability to read music, within twelve months he was playing in what was to become Shetland’s top band for the next fifteen years, The New Players.
Featuring Lollie Young (saxophone), Tammy Cogle (fiddle), Tom Georgeson (piano and vocals) and Sonny Young (drums), the band were kept busy playing at dances and functions throughout the islands, as well as attracting over four hundred people every weekend to the T.A. Hall in Lerwick. In due course they were joined on double bass by another Shetlander, Ron Matthewson, who later moved to London and played with leading jazz musicians including Stan Getz, Ronnie Scott and Tubby Hayes.
Jim himself went on to play with a local jazz group alongside Shetland guitar legend Peerie Willie Johnson before forming his own band. He also toured with the Hamefarers, whose lineup included fiddler Willie Hunter and pianist/accordionist Ronnie Cooper, before, in 1972, he went off to college in Newark, in Nottinghamshire, to train as a piano tuner.
Returning to Shetland, Jim formed a new band with Ian Stewart (guitar), Ronnie Hunter (bass guitar), Mitchell MacLeod (drums) and Jackie Sinclair (vocals) and began a popular residency at the newly opened Lerwick Hotel. He also rejoined the Hamefarers, recording the Breath o’ Shetland album for Polydor Records, touring the Scottish mainland and broadcasting on Take the Floor.
By now Jim’s Daughter, Hazel, had joined him on piano and before long his son, David would take over on lead accordion and go on to lead the band, with Jim “filling in behind him”.
A long-time enthusiast of Norwegian accordion music, Jim has toured Scandinavia several times and was delighted to meet his hero, Arnstein Johansen, when the Norwegian virtuoso guested at Shetland Accordion and Fiddle Club in 1991.
Jim continues to play with his son David’s band and remains a much loved figure in Scottish dance music circles. Among the many tributes that have been paid to him over the years are tunes including Jim Halcrow’s Reel by Ian Holmes and others by Angus Fitchet, Donald Ridley and Garden Johnston. He received the National Association of Accordion and Clubs’ Honours Award in 2012 and remains possibly the only dance band leader to have a greyhound stadium named after him, The Jim Halcrow Stadium in Gretna.
Jim passed away in 2015.