Sir Jimmy Shand

At 7.00pm on Friday 19 May David S* Crawford will talk about Sir Jimmy Shand – Scottish Musician and Broadcaster.

Jimmy Shand (1908–2000) was a Scottish musician who played and composed music for the accordion. In this talk, we will trace the career of this remarkable man from humble beginnings as a coal miner in Fife to becoming a successful recording artist and a well-known musician on radio and television. We will hear about his early work with the BBC, his time spent recording with Beltona Records, and then his recordings for Parlophone, where he was their best-selling artist until the Beatles came along in the 1960s.

We will also discuss “The White Heather Club”, a BBC Scotland TV programme featuring Scottish Country Music, for which Jimmy Shand wrote the introduction and was often the lead musician. It was launched in the late 1950s and was popular throughout Britain for many years. During that period Jimmy Shand and Andy Stewart (one of the programme’s presenters) could be regarded as the most prominent representatives of Scottish music to the other nations of the UK.

David Shand Crawford is Curator of the Wireless in Wales museum in Denbigh. He is an engineer who worked for many years in the field of broadcasting, for the BBC and other organisations.

This is another of the series of on-line talks hosted by Cwmulus. They’re usually interesting, all have Welsh connections, and many are given in Welsh with simultaneous translation. Details and registration at this link.