Search Results for: Jimmy Shand

Forestry’s loss was Scottish music’s gain when Kenneth McKellar joined the Aberdeen University chapel choir. McKellar had been singing since he was a young boy. At school in Paisley he sang and played violin in a group with some friends and he was always willing to entertain visitors to the family home with impersonations of […]

Bobby Crowe was an accordionist and bandleader who was as renowned for his generosity of spirit in passing the Scottish dance band tradition on to younger generations as he was for the distinctive, high quality sound of his internationally regarded band. He was born in Balmullo in north Fife on February 1, 1933 and took […]

Founded in Thurso in 1970, the Caithness band Mirk established a reputation for strong singing – particularly from Margie Sinclair, regarded as one of the finest voices on the Scottish folk scene – as well as skilled instrumental arrangements. Their repertoire of largely traditional material was augmented by songs composed by Margie’s fiddle-playing husband, Ian, […]

In circumstances that would defeat many, Peter Logue continues not only to be positive, but to devote his energy to playing music, in aid of others. Fighting cancer and nearly completely blind, he busks, playing his accordion to fundraise for charities such as the Glasgow City Mission Foodbank, the Salvation Army, Beatson West of Scotland […]

UNARGUABLY Shetland’s best-known pianist, Violet Tulloch has long been regarded as the accompanist par excellence for some of the most celebrated musicians from the Northern Isles and further afield. She has provided considerate and intuitively musical accompaniment for late great musicians such as Tom Anderson (who wrote Violet Tulloch’s Hornpipe in her honour), Peerie Willie […]

IN his time one of the most celebrated Scottish country dance musicians in the country, Dundee-born fiddler, bandleader and composer Angus Fitchet was largely self-taught, yet became a highly versatile player, as comfortable in celebrity TV shows as he was at a village dance. Yet the composer of one of the most broadcast Scottish dance […]

Archie Grant was a 1931 Mod Gold medallist and one of the best-known Gaelic singers during the pre- and post-war periods. While known through his recordings on Beltona and, latterly, Parlophone, and for his platform appearances and radio broadcasts, Grant was in his own way an example of the oral tradition, preferring to sing unaccompanied, […]

HIS innate musicality and innovative approach have made Ian Holmes a widely respected name, not just in the world of Scottish country dance music, but in the flourishing accordion scenes of Switzerland and Scandinavia, whose music and instruments he has adopted with characteristic enthusiasm. Expanding his accordion skills from the mainstream Scottish dance band instruments […]