Angus Grant on Jimmy Shand

Aonghas Grant, also known as the Left-handed Fiddler of Lochaber, has been playing fiddle since he was thirteen years old. His career spans over sixty years and he is still active as a teacher, soloist, composer and session participant, playing a wide range of fiddle music. Aonghas is a Gaelic speaker and particularly noted for his 'West Highland Style' of fiddling, influenced by both Gaelic and piping. In this audio extract, originally recorded for 'Moray Firth People' in the late 1990s, Aonghas talks to Andy Ross about Sir Jimmy Shand MBE (1908-2000), the great accordion player and one of Scotland's most popular musicians. <br /> <br /> Interviewer: You said that you did meet Jimmy Shand and played along with Jimmy Shand on some occasions too?<br /> <br /> Aye, when I started teaching along with Tom Anderson at Stirling University, and Shand and Tom Anderson were good friends, and Jimmy used to come up on a Friday night; we'd be about two weeks there teaching. He'd come up at least one of the Fridays and all the students there - there'd be about a hundred from America and all over the place, international crowd - and Jimmy would be playing there and Tom and myself would just sit beside him and play and he would say, 'Oh just, we'll tak it easy. Nothing fancy, ye ken? <br /> <br /> Interviewer: Nothing fancy?<br /> <br /> Aye, he'd such a nice style of playing, you know? It was so easy to play with him, you know? And he'd such a great tempo, but quite different from Bobby's style